From the Archimedean point to circles in the sand—Post-sustainable curriculum and the critical subject

Abstract

Critical thinking (CT) is frequently mentioned as a key competence in sustainability curricula. In this context our era is often diagnosed as being ‘post-truth’, indicating an epistemic concern. However, emerging ‘post-sustainable’ views in education indicate that environmental crises are posing increasingly existential concerns, which might partly explain why simple consciousness-raising sometimes faces denial or fails to promote sustainable action. To overcome this challenge, we undertake a philosophical critique of modern (individual, rational, autonomous) subjectivity assumed in CT and much of curricular thinking. We follow the ‘ontological turn’ where criticality means self-reflective questioning of one’s own being-in-the-world. One acute question concerns energy, especially fossil fuels, which constitute much of the autonomous experience of modern, critical subjectivity, while simultaneously endangering the future horizon of that same subjectivity. Climate strikes at schools and the yellow vest movements indicate, in their own ways, how ecologically problematic fossil fuels are bending modern rationality into unpredicted directions. Metaphoric Archimedes and his ‘circles in the sand’ demonstrate the vulnerability of critical thought facing post-sustainability. This vulnerability should be addressed in curriculum theory, since it is interdependent persons—rather than independent subjects—who are open to sustainable transformation and action.

Keywords:

• Curriculum
• critical thinking
• post-sustainability
• energy humanities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 However individuality is not uniform, since ‘minorities, women, indigenous groups, and the working class tend to have more interdependent selves’ (Komatsu et al., 2021, p. 26).

2 Including CT and CP.

3 Also recently Pettersson (2023, p. 10), albeit defending the CT tradition, admits that the anglophone origins of CT expose it to criticisms of possible cultural biases and limitations.

4 Interestingly Hughes (2017) has pointed out how an ‘amoral’ attitude to energy characterises both societies that rely on human slaves for labour and societies that rely on fossil fuels. In these societies, the actual ‘human-on-human structural violence’ (2017, p. 23) disappears behind a supposedly rational calculus of measurable, transportable and salable labour.

5 For the sake of the analogy, we portray Archimedes₂ as planning defensive mechanisms, even if some suggest he was trying to solve a mathematical problem unrelated to the war.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation under Grant 202100031 and Kone Foundation under Grant 201801313.

Notes on contributors

Pasi Takkinen

Pasi Takkinen researches the connections between educational philosophy, post-sustainability and technology in Tampere University ([email protected]).

Jani Pulkki

Jani Pulkki, PhD, is a philosopher of education from University of Oulu, Faculty of Education and Psychology, where he works as a postdoctoral researcher. He is also an associate professor of social pedagogy in University of Eastern Finland.

Tere Vadén

Tere Vadén, PhD, associate professor. As a philosopher, Vadén has studied the material and intellectual underpinnings of politics and culture, in particular the experiential dimensions of energy. Vadén works with BIOS Research Unit, analysing socio-ecological changes that will affect Finnish society.