Reflections on an ethic of presence
Marina Schwimmer 2025
Université du Québec à Montréal
INTRODUCTION
To persevere with the modern educational project despite the evidence that rationality and science are unable to bring about the progress envisaged in the future seems at the very least unproductive. In this presentation, I tackle the central question of the call for papers: Should the future be the idea that animates education at all?
To explore this question, I propose to examine the characteristics of the futuristic relationship with time that characterizes modernity and the extent to which a different relationship, more focused on the present, could be envisaged. I then examine what might be the contours of an education in the present. To do this, two different paths are analyzed: the postcritical gesture as developed by the main proponents of postcritical pedagogy and the ethics of presence developed by the French philosopher Eirick Prairat. In both cases, attention to the present guides reflection with a view to overcoming the impasses of our current educational systems, which are oriented by programmatic structures that tend to distance the actors from the world they seek to bring about. Finally, I assess the extent to which these approaches are consistent with the idea that we are now living in a presentist temporality, as advocated by François Hartog.
INDICATIONS ON OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH TIME
Criticisms of progress have a long history, encapsulated for example in the Sex Pistols' slogan from the 1970s “no future”. Nevertheless, the idea of progress continues to guide the way we think and act in our lives and in our democratic societies. In that sense, we are still profoundly modern. However, we are also fully aware of the impossibility of the modern project, disillusioned by the accumulation of failures and tragedies caused in its name. As Peter Sloterdijk puts it quite forcefully, we are already enlightened and have moved beyond the era of hopeful promises. We are now terribly lucid.
Hartog argues that three regimes of historicity run through the history of Western societies: pastism (typical of traditional societies) is based on the domination of the past as a model for the present and the future. Futurism (characteristic of revolutionary movements and teleologies) would place the past and the present at the service of a great future achievement. The modern age, founded on the hope of a rational, just and democratic society, is fundamentally futuristic. The most recent regime of historicity, presentism, is still partly in the making (to which we shall return later).
Our school systems are particularly sensitive to the temporal orientation of modernity insofar as school systems are generally trying to adapt to an anticipated future, in which education must prepare for the future. This orientation towards the future is justified in several ways. It is in line with the modern project of making education an instrument for the economic and social (and environmental) progress of nations. Secondly, from an individual point of view, education is seen as a right to the best possible future for individuals. In this context, education is a time for capitalisation with a view to future withdrawal.
As many have showed, our relationship with the future has changed over the last decades and the future is increasingly seen as a source of danger and risk. Anticipation is less and less that of the excitement of a better future and source of hope, but the fear of a future that we must be wary of and prepare for in order to be able to face it. In this sense, in the futuristic temporality regime, we would be subjectively oriented towards calculating the possible risks and benefits instead of being oriented towards the hope of progress. What's more, our era is also subject to the acceleration of time (technical, social and life rhythm acceleration), resulting in experiences of stress and temporal deficiencies. These trends are also being felt in the school environment in the form of burnout, academic performance anxiety, narrowing of curricula, etc.
This orientation towards the future and what it supposedly requires of us, an orientation that puts us in a position of constant vigilance in order to avoid dangers and to capitalise in the future, takes us further and further away from the present. It desensitises us to the problems of the present. Indeed, because it must prepare for the future, school often becomes insensitive to what it imposes and produces in the present: stress, anxiety, exclusion, alienation, boredom and cynicism.
As Miguel Benasayag and Bastien Cany note, the world that we thought we could control with the instruments of rationality escapes us in an uncontrollable and unpredictable future. The solutions we think of immediately become part of the problem: hyper-capitalism, sustainable development, humanist ecology. According to Benasayag and Cany, these human-centered approaches leave us at a dead end and we need to favour decolonial paths, unhinged from the myth of modern individuality, where people exist ‘in the completeness of a thick, non-instantaneous present, which unfolds in a spiral fashion and for which change can only be thought of organically ’. In short, it's a question of giving priority to being-there rather than being-someone, so that we can renew our commitment to action that finds its reasons and purposes in the interiority of our situations.
Several contemporary thinkers are moving in the same direction, arguing that we need to learn to adopt a more attentive relationship with the present, with its resonance , with its encounters , with knowing how to seize the right moment , or to dwell attentively in the present moment .
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO EDUCATE IN THE PRESENT?
To reflect on what an education in the present might be, and what its contributions or limitations might be, and as mentioned before, I explore two recent proposals that come from two different cultural contexts: the ethics of presence imagined by the French philosopher of education Eirick Prairat and increasingly discussed in France, and the post-critical proposals developed in the wake of the manifesto written by Naomi Hodgson, Joris Vlieghe and Piotr Zamojski. Each of these proposals explores different dimensions of presence. The first focuses on the affective dimension of an ethic that is present to others.
BEING ATTENTIVE TO STUDENTS IN THE PRESENT
According to Prairat, teachers’ ethics, often based on a deontological approach, are generally too formal, which makes them insensitive to students’ difficulties. He claims that more recognition should therefore be given to the intuitive dimension of ethics, which emphasises attention to the present. He thematises the idea of presence by explaining three lines of meaning that structure it:
‘Presence is first and foremost the art of being present, to oneself and to others, of resonating with the class and the group with which one is working. Presence is also an art of being in the present, of being there, here and now, in the immediacy of what is unfolding. Being available, we might say. Finally, presence is the art of the present in the sense of the gift, of what we give, the gift of our knowledge, our know-how, our experience... Presence is a way of being.’
He goes on to say that the ethic of presence is a way of living in the classroom that assigns teachers responsibilities that go way beyond deontology. Prairat develops this ethic by focusing on the attitudes (or ethos) to be adopted in the situated contexts of the classroom. In his view, the teacher's primary virtue is justice, because it is the recognition of rights and merits. Justice is usually approached in terms of rights, equality and inclusion. It is seen as a goal to be achieved in a controlled way through laws, jurisprudence and procedures. However, Prairat wants to emphasise justice in terms of fairness, and the sensitivity required to respond to the different realities of each student. In this respect, fairness must be part of the overall organisation of the act of teaching. In other words, one should be particularly attentive to those who are more vulnerable, and offer support and assistance tailored to each individual. This orientation is based on two other essential virtues: benevolence and tact.
Benevolence is reminiscent of the work being done under the banner of the ethics of care. It's about caring for students, taking their emotions into account, taking responsibility for responding to their needs with sensitivity, looking after them with care. In the classroom, it manifests itself in attitudes that take the form of help, attention or encouragement. And tact, the importance of which is too often underestimated, refers to an intelligence of situations, an appropriate way of adjusting to others. Tact is different from civility, which is based on respect for established conventions and customs. Tact manifests itself ‘where rules and prescriptions are lacking’, in the sensitivity of knowing what to say at what moment and knowing when to keep quiet too.
Presence in this ethical framework is essentially about learning to be sensitive to the complexity of the pedagogical situation as it unfolds, especially to the way students are affected in the present. But presence is not just the art of being present to others and being present here and now, as Prairat himself says. A present is also a gift, a gift of knowledge, know-how and experience. This dimension seems to be underplayed in Prairat's model, and I will try to add to it. An ethic of presence should undoubtedly pay more attention to the care and attention we give to the world we seek to initiate to. The postcritical attitude developed by Hodgson, Vlieghe & Zamojski seems to offer interesting avenues, as it puts forward the importance of presence, but focuses on the objects of study and not the actors in the pedagogical relationship. Two post-critical gestures seem worth examining: 1) affirming one's love of the world and 2) acting as if we were equals.
AFFIRMING OUR LOVE OF THE WORLD
By focusing on the objects of study, the postcritical stance makes it possible to relocate the pedagogical activity as one of transmission between generations, i.e. in the work of preserving a stable world. According to Arendt, a stable world means the cultural world made up of works created by human beings and constituting a universe of shared meanings. It is only through the transmission of a certain number of common objects of culture that such a world can exist. These objects that we turn into object of study are not random; they represent objects of the world that we care enough about to want to pass them on to the next generation.
It is important to insist that if a stable world is to be preserved, it is not for its own sake, but to ensure a symbolic space that makes it possible to exist and act beyond our biological existence. The stability of a common world is the condition for political action and freedom, that is to say, for the human capacity to assert its singularity in the midst of plurality, to begin, to initiate something new. This is what justifies the need to preserve it, as well as the idea that the educational ethos should be one of affirmation and love of the world. The teacher is the one who loves the world enough to want to preserve it, to devote himself to its study and to initiate the next generation into it with a view to its renewal.
Defending the affirmation of the love of the world as an educational principle also means defending the importance of presence: it means refusing to turn teaching into a technology of sterile, disembodied learning and favouring engaged study of the world. The study we are talking about here focuses on school subjects, not with a view to achieving predefined learning objectives, but to seek answers to the great questions that human beings have asked themselves and the problems they have encountered over the generations. As Philippe Meirieu argues, school subjects are too often presented as fossilised bits of knowledge scattered and compiled in textbooks. But disciplines are first and foremost human products, the result of people's persistence in finding answers to the most central questions of our existence: Who are we, where do we come from? Why do we feel this way and that way, etc. Study, if it succeeds in reconnecting to the present, and to the way the present connects the past to the future, seems to have the potential to reanimate what makes research and knowledge alive and hopefully the pleasure and joy they can provide. Also, by focusing on the significant human productions of the past, the study enables the subject to better understand the present because he or she is able to position him or herself in relation to the world and its history.
The teacher who introduces the student to the world finds himself in a position where he affirms his love of the world and the value of the things he proposes we should preserve. Rather than being responsible for learning, they are responsible for opening up possibilities and revealing the interest of things, for initiating desire, will and action by making visible the pleasure that can be derived from taking part. In her work on Arendt, Olivia Guaraldo emphasises the driving role of the desire for freedom and the joy that political action brings in revolutionary processes. Whereas liberation is sought through struggle, protest and violence, freedom is a project, a concerted creation of lasting free institutions that inspires exaltation. Study, while it may well subsume itself in the dry and bitter observation of the world, can also be founded on the desire to bring about something new and exciting together. It can be the driving force behind meaningful educational action.
ACTING AS IF WE WERE EQUAL HERE AND NOW
By focusing on the objects of study, the postcritical posture also makes it possible to work on the presence of forms of social equality in the present. The postcritical approach seeks to go beyond the critical ideal of equality of opportunity, according to which the main aim of education is to counter social inequalities by offering opportunities for equalisation. Special education tools to help students learn are a good example. But while this personalised support has the quality of being sensitive to the particular needs of each individual, as Prairat pointed out, it has the drawback of leading to other forms of exclusion, because it is based on the premise of inequality from the outset.
According to Jacques Rancière, when we assume that there are superior forms of intelligence, we reduce those considered inferior to aspiring to them indefinitely. In so doing, we deny the potential for emancipation that is already here and now. This is Rancière's criticism of all the mystifying fictions from Plato to Marx and Paolo Freire, etc. In their models of emancipation, equality is always postponed until a hypothetical future. To avoid postponing equality and emancipation until later (in other words, forever), Rancière defends the importance of positing the equality of intelligences as a starting axiom that must be recognised for everyone here and now, without waiting. Although there are individual differences, Rancière argues that all human beings nevertheless share a common intelligence, i.e. that the same intelligence is at work in all work (whether that of the shoemaker, the farmer, the artist or the scientist), that all have the same capacity to name things and give meaning to their existence. Rancière therefore proposes a kind of thought game: do as if everyone is already equal in intelligence and see where this leads us, what it makes possible, what relationships between people emerge. This game of temporal interruption allows us to move away from the desire to actualise a good in an uncontrollable future towards a concrete experience of that good in the present.
Rancière illuminates his thesis with various examples from history where individuals or social groups have broken with the normal temporal linearity, stepped out of line and proclaimed their freedom: when the proletarian decides to write poetry, when the illiterate father decides to teach his son to read and write. Based on this premise, he argues that the role of the teacher should not be to impart knowledge, but to reveal an intelligence to itself. Schools should allow all students to experience their intelligence in concrete terms, because this experience is the condition of their emancipation.
To encourage this concrete experience, Rancière conceptualises the universal method, which focuses neither on the teacher as in traditional pedagogy, nor on the pupil as in progressive pedagogy, but on the object of study (a story, a technology, a natural phenomenon, a subject, etc.). Everyone can be equal in front of an object. Everyone can look at it, study it, analyse it, make connections, judge it and give it meaning. And this shared possibility may have an equalising power because the only authority that can validate or invalidate the ideas formulated is the object itself.
Our schools already have practices that seek to break with the linear temporality of school and instigate forms of equality in the present. For isn't acting as if, what Meirieu also calls the principle of educability, in fact an implicit pedagogical law? According to Meirieu, all teachers should start from the premise that all their pupils are educable, even the most difficult and vulnerable. They can't guarantee anything, but they act as if they can, hoping that their faith will be justified. And this faith, which can only manifest itself in the present, seems to be a basic condition for getting started. It is in this sense that acting as if everyone is equally educable may be part of an ethic of presence.
As such, it may be relevant to think of an ethic of presence for education that englobes the many ethical dimensions of educational activity: respecting the dignity of students and being sensitive to their wellbeing is a key element. However, it should not obliterate the importance of the educational imperative, of what is being taught to what end. It should not obliterate the democratic imperative neither. In this sense, the attention and sensitivity given to each student is not personalized, it is not directed towards individual identities, but to what connects us, makes each of us human, equal, and worthy of consideration. Reflecting on these three key principles in a framework of presence, that make them present in the present.
THE LIMITS OF EDUCATION IN THE PRESENT
Hartog argues that we cannot decree a regime of historicity; we can only illuminate it. Our apprehension of time has a history, a context, structures that actualise it on a daily basis, and we cannot simply declare that it is time to change. However, he also argues that regimes of historicity are not mutually exclusive, and that they coexist within each epoch with different dominants. Earlier, we argued that our education systems were particularly dominated by a futuristic regime because of their political orientations centred on educational aims. However, according to Hartog and other contemporary commentators (e.g. Myriam Revault D'Allonnes), we are now (and have been for several decades) experiencing in situ a transformation of our regime of historicity, in late modernity. This regime is based on immediacy, situating us in a perpetual, all-encompassing, omnipresent present. It is a regime of everything immediately, instantaneously, a compressed and accelerated time in which the past no longer serves as a model and the future appears as a source of danger. More than ever, we would be immersed in a present without perspective, where the past no longer enlightens us and uncertainty about the future paralyses us.
In this presentism, where the present dominates, even the past is devoted to the present by serving as its ‘memory’. This is how Hartog interprets our era's obsession with archives, commemorations and heritage, the aim of which is not to understand what distinguishes history from the present and how it might shed light on it, but to comfort us in the present and confine us to it.
According to Revault D'Allonnes, we are experiencing a ‘time without promise’ in which the future is so uncertain that we are incapable of believing in it. This inability to project ourselves into the future is at the root of our ‘perception of a generalised crisis whose outcome we cannot see’, she argues. Nothing can guide our actions anymore, leaving us in a shapeless present. What's more, time today is so constrained and so fast-paced, says Revault d'Allonnes, that crisis seems to have become a normal state of affairs to which we have to be ready to respond at all times: the accumulation of crises (mental health crisis, teacher shortage crisis, school dropout crisis, environmental crisis, etc.) makes it unimaginable to escape from this omnipresent present. In other words, if our education systems seem to be politically oriented by a futuristic regime, our educational institutions cannot escape what now seems to be a predominantly presentist regime.
Every year on the 30th of September, my daughter comes home from school with an orange square pinned to her jacket. It's Truth and Reconciliation Day, a day of recognition for survivors of Canada's residential school system, their families and their communities. The anecdote is a good example of our educational institutions' relationship with time. This day is not really used to reflect on the present and our current colonial relations, or to initiate any initiative for the future. It is treated as a commemoration frozen in the present day. In such a context, it seems important to take precautions with regard to the idea of education in the present, because while paying greater attention to the here and now seems important, the present can also impose its dictates and lead to vacuity.
The challenge seems to be to re-situate the present in terms of what unites it with the past and the future, without falling back into a temporal dictatorship, either that of a past that serves as a model to be restored, or that of an idealised future to be achieved, or that of a present without direction. The ethic of presence presented above seems to offer interesting ways of dealing with the possible hazards of the presentist regime, insofar as it re-establishes the temporal thread that unites past and future generations while focusing on the present. As we have said, we cannot decree a regime of historicity, but perhaps we can nevertheless develop appropriate ethical perspectives? It's a question of finding ways of being present in the present without breaking with the past and the future, of learning to dwell better in the breach that the present represents, as Arendt proposed. The past and the future are forces that we need to be able to draw on, but we need to remain connected to the event, to the action and to the world.
The notion of study discussed above had provided stimulating avenues, because it takes account of affective, physical, intellectual and political dimensions that situate educational action fully in the present. The study dissociates itself from the need for results and classification in order to focus on the construction of the self. Faced with the legacy of the past, the subject who ‘studies’ is not in a position to accumulate vestiges of knowledge or seek to make them productive. They simply reappropriate it to nourish themselves, define themselves and their projects hopefully with vitality. Prefigurative practices also seem to open up promising avenues. Within our schools there are already underexplored practices of study and forms of equality in the present. There are also relationships marked by hospitality and tact. In other words, there are already ways of looking to the future in the present that are outside the futuristic scheme of things, while remaining linked to what is yet to come.
CONCLUSION
So, to the question of whether we should get rid of the future as a guide for our educational undertakings, the answer is rather that we need to put the future in ‘its place’. It's not the whole idea of the future that should be abandoned, but a certain relationship to the future. The future is an uncertain future, not a controllable one. It is this relationship that has drifted and that needs to be readjusted.
