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What are philosophers of education for in a destitute time?

But alas! We’ve come too late. For, though the gods still live on,
   It’s up in the other world they are, over our heads.
There they’ve not ceased. And yet, such is their gentle forbearance,
   It seems they no longer care to be bothered with us.
For we’re delicate vessels, we mortals, easily shattered,
   And their presence is pressure we can scarcely sustain.

Bread and Wine (segment) – Friedrich Hölderlin

The gods have fled. The fires that once gathered us, set on a hill, in a temple, in the hearth, are extinguished. In their stead, plagues of fireflies torment us with their dark seductive light.

Are philosophers of education unwittingly preparing a new home for the gods? The turn towards Indigenous cosmologies; the supremacy of the other and sanctity of the stranger; our neo-gnostic entanglements with the other-than-human; our bewitchment with AI as a deus ex machina; ritualised identities and magical selfhood; the call for a rational, globalised humanity: are these not attempts to cope with our exile from a once sacred world? Are philosophers of education trying to re-imagine and re-impose the holy…or simply remember it? What are we forgetting?

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Contact the host of PESA Mid-Year Symposium: What Are Philosophers of Education For in a Destitute Time?