Humility and radical attending. The transformative potential of a different gesture

In this paper, I consider the role and the need for humility in education and teaching. Theoretically, my attempt is framed by the decisive anti-foundationalist turn that, over the last couple of decades, has crossed educational philosophy and theory. Politically, I build my argument against the background of the neoliberal shift which has widely affected educational discourse, policies, and practices worldwide. Given these premises, I wish to argue that humility may be the starting point for a different educational gesture, one of radical attentiveness to others and world. Humility may help understand that all human flourishing depends on the others’ support. Humility, as related to teaching, entails moving towards the others and exerting ourselves to the others. Such a different gesture, I argue, may floor and disrupt the narrow instrumentalism and the one-sided performativity of neoliberal educational governmentality.