Studying with a Teacher. Education beyond the logic of progress

Abstract The article presents a thought-experiment aimed at indicating a possibility for thinking education beyond the logic of progress. In its first part, the argument reconstructs the entanglement of the Modern idea of progress (as found in Francis Bacon and Comenius) and education, while tracking down the specific coupling of obedience and conquest at work. Through such an analysis a link between the ideas of progress and of emancipation is determined, which leads to the acknowledgment of the difficulty of the task of imagining education outside of the logic of progress. In the second part an attempt is made to match this task by suggesting that when studying with a teacher, the logic of progress is deactivated. A phenomenological analysis of the practices involved in studying with a teacher points to a specific way of living together that such a collective study involves. This way of living together is formed by continual exercises in the humble equality realized through shared attention to something worthy of study: this stems from attentiveness to what exists, and it develops an attitude of care and respect for being as such. [Editorial note: This paper forms part of the suite entitled ‘Education After Progress’.]