Existential Intelligence, Peim’s Critique of Pure Education, and Tanabe’s Metanoetics

This paper explores the meaning of existential intelligence by critically engaging with Nick Peim’s critique of “pure education.” Peim’s work challenges the ontotheological status of education as an unquestioned good, exposing its complicity in bureaucratic control, instrumental rationality, and the ecological devastations of the Anthropocene. Drawing on this critique, the paper reflects on the limitations of prevailing ethical and conceptual frameworks, which often prove inadequate in the face of systemic violence and historical crisis. To reimagine education beyond these limits, the paper turns to Tanabe Hajime’s philosophy of metanoetics, engaging his work through the growing body of scholarship on the Kyoto School in philosophy of education. It is argued that Tanabe’s emphasis on radical self-reflection, repentance, and transformation offers an alternative grounded in lived, moral engagement with the world. The paper further considers this through the narrative of Franz Jägerstätter, as portrayed in Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, interpreting his path of non-reactive suffering, spiritual integrity, and unyielding love through the lens of Tanabe’s gyō–shin–shō (practice-faith-witness). In doing so, the paper proposes a framework for education that resists the dominant logics of progress, productivity, and control, making room for ethical transformation and communities beyond national egoism.