Educative justice in viral modernity. A Badiouan reading

ABSTRACT

The metaphor of ‘viral modernity’ denotes an era characterized by communal experiences of how viruses, be they in the shape of physical, virtual or symbolic forms, permeate and shape social and cultural life. To think educative justice in viral modernity thus require a radical move beyond the surfaces of conventional paradigms in order to reach at a deep-seated understanding of the phenomena of education and justice itself. Motivated by this ambition, I here present a Badiouan reading of educative justice in relation to the aims and mission of philosophy of education. I start by briefly mapping out current educational philosophical paradigms and their ways of treating the issue of justice. Next, I contrast these orthodoxies to a Badiouan model. My overall ambition is to promote a philosophy of education that avoids philosophical doctrines, old and new, while simultaneously carrying a potential for unveiling the phenomenon of justice as educative truths-in-worlds.

KEYWORDS:

• Educative justice
• Badiou
• philosophy of education
• viral modernity

“Philosophy is not worth an hour’s effort

if it is not based on the idea

that the true life is present”

(Badiou 2009, 14)

The situation

The coronavirus has sparked an intense philosophical debate on how the virus cuts in the very fabric of human existence (Foucault, Agamben, and Benvenuto 2020; Butler and Yancy 2020; Castrillón and Marchevsky 2021; Žižek 2020). The pandemic has revealed our physical fragility, destabilized our economy and isolated us from family and friends. Moreover, the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic clearly connects us to a global community of destiny and inflicts our mindsets. Furthermore, the Covid-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the discourse on ‘viral modernity,’ which refers to ‘the nature of viruses and the ancient and critical role they play in evolution of culture’ (Peters, Jandrić, and McLaren 2020, 3). Viruses act as pharmakon, both as remedy and as poison, as they form part of the system and processes of their host (Dupré and Guttinger 2016; Ronchi 2021). In the shape of physical, virtual or symbolic forms, they may well infect human bodies, social networks and minds. When speaking of a ‘viral modernity,’ contemporary philosophers thus refer to ‘the profound interaction between the sociological and the ecological, understanding them as part of the same metabolism’ (Malabou 2017, 1).

In a telephone interview on the Covid-19 situation, performed by Corriere della Sera on 29 April 2020 Julie Kristeva responds:

It is curious how before the pandemic the word “viral” was already being used a lot and for quite some time. “Viral” reactions were already part of our hyper-connected economic and political reality. Everything that proceeds by contagion, precipitation, and then, after a sparkling beginning linked to pleasure, culminates in deadly explosion. “Virality” is part of our environment, for example, where social media exalt themselves only to mistreat and destroy. […] The acceleration of our civilization had already arrived at a viral stage, and today this metaphor overwhelms us and enters into the real, because it is internal as well as an external menace – perhaps we do not have strong enough immune defense and the danger is also inside of us (Kristeva 2021, 101).

Therefore, as our ‘civilization has entered a viral stage’ and the metaphor enters the real, viral modernity calls for a considerate rethinking of current social, cultural and mental representations and forms of practices. This also goes for the educational philosophical discourse on how to promote justice in, for and through education. To rethink the relation between justice and education in viral modernity, however, does not only regard an attentive rethinking of educational practices in face of today’s challenges. It also require a radical move beyond the surfaces of conventional paradigms in order to reach at a deep-seated and far-reaching understanding of the phenomena of education and justice itself. Motivated by such an ambition, I here present a Badiouan reading of educative justice in relation to the aims and mission of philosophy of education.

In the first part of the article, I start by asking ‘Do we dare to see what is going on’? On the background of a recent review (Papastephanou 2021), I claim that the philosophical discourse on justice in, for and through education not only tends to move at the surface of the scientific deep, but also mostly operates behind closed-classroom doors or inside the schoolyard fences only. A danger is that contemporary philosophical discourses on education close out worldly truths, and thereby exclude children’s real lives from the sphere of pedagogy. Another danger is that philosophers of education promote themselves as ‘philosopher kings’ that possess wisdom, intelligence, and reliable knowledge of how to promote justice in, for and through education. Next, under the heading ‘a call to justice,’ I tentatively map out three educational philosophical paradigms – the didactic, romantic and classical – and their ways of treating the issue of justice. My question ‘Is another outlook possible?’ thus motivates the third part of the article, in which I perform a closer reading of Badiou’s way of recognizing justice as emerging truths-in-worlds. To him, justice is ‘not a concept for which we would have to track down more or less approximate realisations in the empirical world’ (Badiou 2006, 99). On the contrary, he describes justice as generic truths-in-worlds imbued with educative potentials (Badiou 2005, 14). Badiou thus clearly distinguishes educational justice from educative justice. Educational justice comes forward as a philosophical doctrine or program, while educative justice is a phenomenon emerging from real life. In other words, the phenomenon of educative justice materializes as generic truths-in-world. Such truths belong to our being in the world, not to philosophy. The task of philosophy, however, is to unveil and uphold these truths-in-worlds. In summing up the article, I thus endorse an argument for a more sensitive philosophy of education that avoids philosophical doctrines, old and new, while potentially unveiling educative justice as truths-in-worlds.

Do we dare to see what is going on?

The ongoing pandemic has ended the world, as we know it. Žižek (2020), for example, opens his pamphlet on the pandemic by a reference to what Jesus said to Mary Magdalena when she recognized him after his resurrection: ‘Touch me not’ (John 20:17). Strangely enough, this ‘touch me not’ seems to be the worldwide slogan of today. In the midst of the pandemic, we are required to keep our distance. We are asked not to touch others and to isolate ourselves at the slightest symptom of a cold or flu. We cannot shake hands, give each other a hug or even eat at the same table. In public places, facemasks have become the new normal. The pandemic has definitely changed the social world. It is therefore tempting to ask how the new practice of social distancing has altered our mindsets. Next, to what degree we dare to see what is going on.

This question seems to motivate Papastephanou’s (2021) attentive review of recent publications within philosophy of education journals. Papastephanou has reviewed articles published in Journal of Philosophy of Education, Ethics and Education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Studies in Philosophy and Education, and Educational Theory during the period from 2004 to 2020. The thematic review is limited to articles that fully engage with the topic of justice and which uses the term ‘justice’ in the title. The adjectival specifications of justice, such as ‘social,’ ‘distributive’ and ‘democratic,’ constitute the themes of the review. Regrettably, this attentive review reveals a philosophical discourse that tends to narrow down, singularize and limit the spaces of justice in, for and through education today. ‘What is theorized within our field as a situation inviting justice is only what falls within the scope of the corresponding perspective’ (Papastephanou 2021, 3). As these perspectives are adopted from conventional theories of justice, the discourse never moves beyond the given. Papastephanou’s three major critiques are first, the narrow focus of the discourse; next, that the idea of justice remains normatively unchallenged; and third, that the discourse tends to confirm to ‘the spatial conventions of perspective’ (Papastephanou 2021, 13). The foundational issue of justice thereby loses its power as a qualifier for ethical-political education. Papastephanou (2021) points out several discursive blind spots: First, a tendency to overlook justice as a real-world challenge. Second, to limit the scope of justice to life in classrooms. Third, an inclination to turn students into achievers by offering normative statements about how education should be. Fourth, to take the concept of justice for granted. Consequently, the current philosophical discourse does not only tend to narrow down, singularize and limit the spaces of justice in, for and through education. There is also a tendency to offer solutions based on orthodox ideas and to promote, uphold and legitimize the hegemonic position of conventional – if not dogmatic – philosophies of education. Overall, there is a tendency to turn the philosopher of education ‘into a metaphysical deus ex machine who will take education by the hand and lead it to a better world’ (Papastephanou 2021, 12).

In short, the review reveals that contemporary philosophy of education not only tend to close out worldly realities, and thereby exclude children’s real lives from the sphere of pedagogy. The discourse also seems to have a tendency to portray philosophers of education – despite their narrow, spatial perspectives on educative phenomena – as ‘philosopher kings’ that possess wisdom, intelligence, and reliable knowledge of how to promote justice in, for and through education. While recognizing and pointing to this discursive blindness, poor judgments, and aspirations to achieve and preserve hegemony, Papastephanou (2020) suggests to adopt the notion ‘pandemic’ as a constitutive metaphor of education. Because education can easily be turned into a toxic social institution. Example is that which is now happening to educational institutions and the educational discourse during the pandemic:

The medicalization of epidemics and pandemics had the side effect of our overlooking the vulnerability and infectiousness, localization and universality of education. Education negotiates right movement and pause, the public and private, the old and new, the one and the many. It turns the utopian grammar of degree (good, better, best; fit, fitter, fittest) into aims (its own society’s): it hosts and exchanges; it includes, excludes and allocates places. It does so regardless of medical emergencies (Papastephanou 2020, 11)

As a normative field of theory and practice, education can definitely be infectious. ‘Education, whatever the intention of educators, often suffers from its contagious character, that is, from the fact that its often praiseworthy aspirations to transmission and dissemination turn education into a toxic social institution’ (Papastephanou 2020, 12). To reinvigorate and redirect the discourse, Papastephanou calls for a paradigmatic shift from the spatial conventional perspectives towards a stereoscopic optic on the ‘anatomy of seeing and the process of space-making’ (Papastephanou 2021, 13). The intention is to prevent epistemic blindness and to engage more fully with the issue of justice in, for and through education. My immediate response, however, is the question of whether it is possible to escape the discourse. Yes, a stereoscopic optic may help to enact a productive reflexivity. However, as a new optic does not wipe out conventional perspectives, but rather combine and connect them in new ways, a stereoscopic optic may not necessarily help to disclose and debunk unhealthy and somewhat pandemic myths permeating the discourse. Following Kristeva: ‘The acceleration of our civilization had already arrived at a viral stage, and today this metaphor overwhelms us and enters into the real, because it is internal as well as an external menace – perhaps we do not have strong enough immune defense and the danger is also inside of us’ (Kristeva 2021, 101).

A call to justice

Papastephanou (2021) maps an educational philosophical discourse guided by the ambition to recognize justice in, for and through education, despite the fact that ‘justice’ – as a philosophical term – is unmistakably obscure. Injustice is recognizable and visible, while justice is harder to identify. People who suffer, struggle and persevere testify for injustice. But who testifies for justice? In other words, it seems doable to recognize injustice by its consequences: human suffering, anger, despair, discouragement, uprising and revolt. However, by what means do we recognize justice? What are the signs? As justice never appear as a drama, play or emotion, justice remains somewhat obscure. Consequently, it is highly dubious to promote ‘justice’ as a philosophical doctrine or program. Justice is ‘not a concept for which we would have to track down more or less approximate realisations in the empirical world’ (Badiou 2006, 99). To recognize justice in, for and through education today therefore require a move beyond the surfaces of conventional paradigms¹ in order to reach towards deeper and more radical understanding of the phenomena of education and justice itself.

With the danger of exercising symbolic violence against the present educational philosophical discourse, I here propose to distinguish between three slightly different ways of treating the obscure issue of justice in, for and through education: The didactic, romantic and classical exemplar. These ideal-types seem commonly used, and do not mirror an ongoing ‘epistemic war.’ Rather, they represent three contemporary and equally recognized ways of treating issues related to justice in, for and through education today.

A didactic exemplar reduces education to a means of achieving an external goal. Philosophers of education here use philosophy to ‘shape’ our visions of what counts as educative justice, since the values and norms of what counts as justice are given by the philosophical theory. Consequently, philosophers of education here apply philosophical theories of justice to identify, promote and validate just education. Philosophy is thus instrumental to our notion of justice and to our ways of recognizing justice in, for and through education.

A romantic exemplar elevates and somewhat glorifies the philosophical discourse. The task of philosophy of education is here to generate meaningful visions of justice in, for and through education. Within this paradigm, however, education just complete what philosophy is capable of pointing at. Consequently, the romantic exemplar promotes the philosophical production of meaningful visions of justice in, for and through education without regard to the tangible situation.

A classical exemplar mirrors an idea that justice in, for and through education has a therapeutic function. A precondition, however, is a communal recognition of the discourse. The classical exemplar therefore delegates to the community to capture, mirror, and shape communal desires and ambitions on what counts as justice. We may thus characterize the relationship between philosophy of education and the phenomenon of justice in terms of Bildung or cultivation. The classical paradigm thus limits educational justice to those aspects recognized. Moreover, it reduces philosophy of education to an instrument for public cultivation.

In sum, these three paradigms or exemplars illustrate three ways of treating the issue of justice in, for and through education. The didactic exemplar promotes philosophical doctrines of justice; the romantic exemplar promotes justice as true promise; while the classical exemplar limits educational justice to those aspects receiving public recognition. In doing so, the didactic exemplar promotes an instrumental philosophy of education; the romantic glorifies the educational philosophical discourse; while the classical reduces philosophy of education to an instrument for public cultivation. Consequently, the three paradigms do not only represent three different ways of treating issues related to justice in, for and through education. They also represent three exemplars on the vision and mission of a philosophy of education.

In this way, the three exemplars may be taken to signify the ongoing struggle to identifying and creating doctrines of justice in, for and through education. However, according to Alain Badiou, these three exemplars on a normative philosophy of education distort the relation – or rather, ‘non-relation’ – between justice and philosophy, with the ugly consequence that true life is ignored and the pedagogical theme collapses: ‘None of these schemas operates a pedagogical form that is both singular and immanent’ (Bartlett 2006, 53). Following Badiou, the task of philosophy is not to promote doctrines of educational justice, but simply to unveil justice in its very being. To clarify, it seems pertinent to take a closer look at Badiou’s conception of education.

Is another outlook possible?

To explore the possibility of (re)thinking the phenomena of education and justice in viral modernity, I referred to Marianna Papastephanou’s diligent analysis and critique of the philosophical discourse of education (Papastephanou 2020, 2021), which point towards an onto-epistemic blindness that may well turn education into a toxic institution. I must admit that it seems nearly impossible to advocate any remedy against such an onto-epistemic blindness. However, it may be fruitful to try to remove the veil from our eyes and turn towards real-life situations instead of gazing towards the philosophical discourse of education only.

Such a turn is encouraged by Badiou’s claim, ‘the only education is an education by truths’ (Badiou 2005, 14). I should here underline that truths, to Badiou, are truths-in-worlds belonging to real-life situations, not to philosophy. An education by such truths-in-worlds is a transformative, open-ended and ongoing process instituted by an exception, a rupture, or event. Thus, education never follows any curriculum or pre-established methods in its promotion of ontological awareness, curiosity and search for non-knowledge. Processes of true education rather move beyond current orthodoxies, social imaginaries and discursive representations.

An illustrative example is Badiou’s hyper-translation of Plato’s allegory of the cave, which Badiou transforms to an allegory of cinema (Badiou 2012; Strand 2016). ‘I’ll paint you a picture in which shadows and lights intermingle.’ I encourage philosophers of education to read this text. Not only because it reveals Badiou’s way of re-reading and re-writing Plato in the light of his own philosophy of justice. It also highlights the way Badiou thinks the intersection between education, truth, and justice (Strand 2016, 2020).

Overall, Plato’s Republic treats the topics of morality and justice, but also many other issues, such as education, politics and images of the good. Throughout the Republic, Plato offers elusive imageries of the importance of goodness, in which the allegory of the cave is the most famous. It seems that Plato wants to tell us that justice can never be achieved, without an understanding of goodness (Altman 2013). So how do we come to such understanding of goodness?

In chapter nine of Plato’s Republic, Socrates portrays ‘a situation which you can use as an analogy for the human condition – for our education or lack of it’ (514a). Plato’s allegory tells a story of imprisoners chained to the wall of a cave since early childhood. Their legs and necks are fixed, so that they are forced to look in one direction only. They gaze at the empty wall in front of them, unable to look around, not even at themselves or at each other. However, a fire behind their backs throws shadows on the wall in front from people, puppets, objects or animals passing by. As the prisoners have never experienced life outside the cave, not even realized that they are inside a cave, these shadows constitute reality.

In his hypertranslation of Plato’s Republic, Badiou transforms this allegory to a fable of a movie theater or cinema: ‘I’ll try to paint you a picture, with shadow and light intermingled,’ Socrates says (Badiou 2012, 212). He tells a story of a gigantic movie theater, a full house of ‘tens of thousands of spectators’ chained to their seats and with rigid headphones covering their ears, holding their heads in place. The audience gazes at an enormous screen in front, which goes all the way up to the ceiling. At their back there are huge projectors throwing lights and shadows on the screen. The spectators can thus watch images of a colorful parade, consisting of a myriad of characters, such as puppets, robots, animals, soldiers, gangs of youths, cultural consultants, turtledoves and scythe-bearers that shout, sing, dance, play or just move silently along a wooden walkway in front of the projectors.

- My God! Amantha bursts out. That’s one weird show and an even weirder audience!

- They’re just like us. Can they see anything of themselves, of the people sitting next to them, of the movie theater, and of the bizarre scenes on the walkway other than the shadows projected onto the screen by the lights? Can they hear anything other than what their headset deliver to them?

- Not a thing, for sure, exclaimed Glaucon, if their heads have always been prevented from looking anywhere but at the screen and their ears have been blocked by the headphones.

- And that is the case […]

- Not to mention, added Amantha, that the object on the walkway, whether it is a robot or a puppet, is already a copy of itself. We could say that all they see is a shadow of a shadow.

- And that all they hear, Glaucon completed, is the digital copy of a physical copy of human voices (Badiou 2012, 212-213).

Next, Badiou’s fable invites us to imagine that a member of the audience is forced to stand up, turn his head and look at the light. The sight hurts his eyes, so his impulse is to turn back to his seat. However, ‘a bunch of tough guys’ again violently forces him to leave the cinema, enter a small side door that leads through a muddy tunnel, and climb up into the open air.

At first he is blinded by the glare of everything and can see nothing of all the things about which we routinely say: “This exists, this is really here.” He’s hardly someone who, like Hegel standing in front of the Jungfrau, could say, with total disdain, “das ist,” it just is (Badiou 2012, 214).

After he has been used to the light outside the movie theater, he enjoys the reflection of flowers and trees in the water, before he after a while finds pleasure in the flowers themselves. As the night falls, he lifts his head to the sky and sees the moon and the stars. ‘Finally, one morning, he sees the sun, not in the ever-changing waters, or in its purely external reflection, but the sun itself, in and for itself, in its own place’ (Badiou 2012, 214). Plato, in his allegory of the cave, suggests that the freed prisoner ‘feel happy about his own altered circumstances’ (Plato 1993, 516c). Badiou, however, states in his hypertranslation of Plato that the spectator ‘is glad to have been forced to leave’ (Badiou 2012, 215).

Badiou’s allegory of the cinema clearly portrays a move away from illusio (illusion), beyond doxa (common beliefs) and towards noësis (insight, wisdom or knowledge of the good). Three dimensions portray this process: The situation, the event and the subject. The situation is the cinema in which the artificial images, the shadows of the simulacra and the glimpses of light intermingles. A parallel may be the orthodoxy of the conventional discourse on educational justice (Papastephanou 2021). The event is the unexpected turning of the head; the unpredictable and violent enforced escape; the surprising ascension into the open air; and the experience of the sun and the beauty of the objects of the world outside. A parallel may be the sudden lockdown and closing of schools following the Covid-19 pandemic. The subject is a thought-process that gradually unfolds the imports of the event by addressing the whole situation and unfolding the infinity of the truths exposed by the event.

A close reading of Badiou’s re-reading of Plato, however, does not only reveal how he rewrites Plato’s allegory in the light of his own philosophy. His transformation of the allegory also discloses his theory of covering (recouvrement). To Badiou, covering is a general figure of oppression that refers to ‘a deep underlying logic that is even more fundamental than the system of means for maintaining the existing order.’ It is a practice, procedure, or attempt to neutralize the possible emergence of a novelty by ‘covering it with preexisting significations’ (Badiou 2021). So again, and at the risk of inflicting symbolic violence, we are invited to ask if the didactic, romantic and classical exemplars indicate such a covering: To what degree may contemporary philosophical discourses conceal or reveal emerging phenomena of justice?

Claiming that ‘the only education is an education by truths’ (Badiou 2005, 14), Badiou’s allegory of cinema illustrates that education is simply about directing, or re-directing, thinking towards truths-in-worlds. Socrates sums up: ‘education isn’t what some people claim it is’ (Badiou 2012, 218). Education is not a question of a lack of the capacity of sight. It is neither about a lack of the capacity of knowledge. Every subject has such capacities. Education is rather about turning the subject into the right direction. ‘So education isn’t a matter of imposing, but rather of orienting: It is a technique of conversion … ’ (Badiou 2012, 218). In short, Badiou portrays education as a ‘reorientation’ and incorporation into truths. These truths are generic in the sense that they go beyond the situation and unfold something entirely new; something that we cannot immediately grasp or apprehend by the already established categories of the discourse. In other words, education is a reorientation. Thought has its own power, which it can never lose. However, whether thought is useful or useless, constructive or destructive, valuable or damaging depends on the direction in which that power is turned. If the same goes for the educational philosophical discourse, we can say that the discourse has its own power. However, whether the discourse is useful or useless, constructive or destructive, valuable or damaging depends on the direction in which the power of that discourse is turned. So, in what ways may a Badiouan outlook help to illuminate the phenomenon of educative justice in viral modernity?

Encountering truths-in-worlds

Following Badiou, an ‘education by truths’ seems to be the only way to see what is going on. Badiou thus turns the task of philosophy of education upside down. First, because he argues that the task of philosophy is not to promote doctrines of justice in, for and through education, but simply to unveil phenomena of justice in their very being. Second, because he does not conceive education as a programmatic procedure, but rather as an incorporation into truths. These truths do not belong to philosophy, but to the world, be it within the sphere of science, art, politics, or love.

There is no doubt whatsoever concerning the existence of truths, which are not bodies, languages or combinations of the two. And this evidence is materialist, since it does not require any splitting of worlds, any intelligible place, any ‘height’. In our worlds, such as they are, truths advance. These truths are incorporeal bodies, languages devoid of meaning, generic infinities, unconditioned supplements. They become and maintain suspended, like the poet’s conscience, between the void and the pure event (Badiou 2009, 4).

To Badiou, truths are immanent exceptions that emerge, appear and disappear dependent on the conditions they are part of. At the same time, they go beyond the situation as they reveal or unfold something entirely new, something that we cannot grasp or apprehend by the already established categories of the discourse. In other words, an ‘education by truths’ may help to escape the onto-epistemic blindness embedded in conventional discourse.

However, as these truths belongs to real-life situation, not to philosophy, it is unfortunate to start in philosophy. The task of philosophy is never to educate. The task of philosophy is rather to think transformations of life through encounters with truths. Consequently, Badiou has adopted Lacan’s term ‘anti-philosophy’ – which has helped him to re-think philosophy, or rather the philosophical practice, through its internal and external relations. Anti-philosophy signifies a conditioned philosophical practice based on the postulate that there are truths-in-worlds, independent of philosophy. Anti-philosophy has three characteristics (Badiou 2011): First, it is a practice disentangled from any pretensions of philosophy to constitute itself as a theory. Second, it recognizes the fact that it is impossible to reduce philosophy to its discursive appearance. Third, anti-philosophy is concurrently destroying the philosophical act, clarifying its noxious character, and affirming the rights of the real.

So again, Badiou claims that there is a fruitful gap between philosophy and real-life situations. On the one hand, he holds that ‘philosophy is not worth an hour’s effort if it is not based on the idea that the true life is present’ (Badiou 2009, 14). On the other hand, he argues that we should never mix up or confuse philosophy with real life. In this way, and in this way only, the work of philosophy can reveal and promote the potential powers of truths.

In short – to rethink educative justice in viral modernity does not regard an attentive rethinking of educational practices in face of today’s challenges. It requires a radical move beyond the surfaces of conventional paradigms in order to reach at a deep-seated and far-reaching understanding of the phenomena of education and justice itself. Following Badiou, an attentive (re)thinking of educative justice can never happen within philosophy or the conventional philosophical discourses on justice. By contrast, a diligently (re)reading of educative justice can only happen through an attentive reading of the situation (the world), by appreciating the unusual, and by asking new questions.

Unveiling educative justice in viral modernity

To sum up, the metaphor of ‘viral modernity’ symbolizes an era characterized by communal experiences of how viruses, be they in the shape of physical, virtual or symbolic forms, saturate and shape social and cultural life. Viruses spread quickly and widely and may well cover true justice while contaminating human bodies, networks and minds. Conceiving the viral as ‘internal as well as external menace’ (Kristeva 2021, 101), it seems pertinent to ask how viral modernity educates us and if we have the capacity to see what is going on.

Papastephanou’s (2021) review of recent philosophical studies on justice in, for and through education reveals an ugly tendency to only move at the surfaces of the scientific deep and to leave the philosophical concept of justice normatively unchallenged. What is more, philosophers of education tend to offer normative statements on how education should be. This tendency goes well with the three educational philosophical exemplars portrayed above – the didactic, the romantic and the classical – that illustrate an ongoing struggle to identifying and creating doctrines of justice in, for and through philosophy of education. Consequently, contemporary discourses on philosophy of education contribute to a covering, with the ugly consequence that true life is ignored and the pedagogical theme collapses.

To rescue the pedagogical form, Badiou suggests turning philosophy of education upside down. To him, the task of philosophy is not to promote doctrines of educative justice, but simply to unveil justice in its very being. Because orthodox philosophies, in their very conventional forms, are in danger of neutralizing the potential emergence of justice by ‘covering it with preexisting significations’ (Badiou 2021). They thereby distort the relation – or rather, ‘non-relation’ – between justice and philosophy. Consequently, Badiou proposes a fourth paradigm based on the consideration of justice as a truth-procedure sui generis: ‘Justice’ is simply one of the words through which a philosophy attempts to seize the egalitarian axiom inherent in a genuine educational procedure” (Badiou 2006, 99).

What justice educates for is nothing but its own existence. The pedagogical theme is simply a question of encountering that existence. Philosophy’s task is to unveil justice as truth-procedures in their very being. In this way, philosophy of education becomes the go-between in the encounters with truth and justice, because philosophy has the power to point to the configurations of truths, reveal their thinking subjects, and help to distinguish truth from opinion.

Badiou’s undeniably novel position on the triadic knot of justice, philosophy and education thereby firstly recognizes justice as a genuine truth-procedure; secondly refuses to mix philosophy up with these truths while similarly pointing out that philosophy is duty-bound to make truths-in-worlds manifest; and thirdly claims that the only education is an education by truths. In short ‘education amounts to nothing more and nothing less than establishing the effect of an encounter as a transformation,’ (Bartlett 2006, 55). However, what is it that is being transformed?

An education by truths transforms the thinking subject. Such an education operates through a subtraction from the situation and proposes a radical different direction in regard to the true life. To put it differently, an educated subject is subtracted from any concept of the situation, and may next contribute to a deep-seated transformation of the world.

Badiou thus clearly distinguishes educational justice from educative justice. Educational justice comes forward as a philosophical doctrine or program, while educative justice is a phenomenon emerging from real life. In other words, the phenomenon of educative justice materializes as generic truths-in-world. Such truths belong to our being in the world, not to philosophy. The task of philosophy, however, is to unveil and uphold these truths-in-worlds. Thus, a Badiouan reading of educative justice in viral modernity implies a more sensitive philosophy of education that avoids philosophical doctrines, old and new, while potentially unveiling educative justice as truths-in-worlds.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. A paradigm is a pattern or model, a typical instance of something, or an example. In his postscript to ‘The structure of scientific revolutions’, Thomas S. Kuhn distinguishes between two notions of a paradigm. On the one hand, the concept may denote the ‘entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques and so on shared by the members of a given community’. On the other hand, the concept denotes ‘exemplary past achievements’ (Kuhn [1962] 1996, 175). If we perceive an educational philosophical paradigm as an exemplar, an ideal model, the face of the educational philosophical paradigms or exemplars shed light on why and how philosophers of education persistently strive to identifying and creating doctrines of justice in, for and through education.