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Teaching as an Immortality Project: Positing Weakness in Response to Terror
Author(s) -
KESSEL CATHRYN VAN,
BURKE KEVIN
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9752.12301
Subject(s) - immortality , existentialism , terror management theory , context (archaeology) , epistemology , sociology , psychology , social psychology , philosophy , theology , history , archaeology
Abstract Teaching as a profession can be read as an immortality project, a form of compensation to help resolve a certain kind of existential terror. Terror management theory can help us understand the ways teachers might compensate for their limitedness as humans by imposing prescribed attributes on their students. In response to the freighted reality of teaching as quasi‐missionary work, we suggest a new orientation, namely that the profession embrace the terror of the future that it cannot know. Through a theoretical engagement with Weak Theology in the context of Eugene Thacker's philosophical ‘doomcore’, we hope to re‐orient the educational project into one with lower stakes, a shift from immortality to more ‘goodness’. The desired result is to refocus on the relationships we develop with other humans as well as with the planet.