Recovering kairos in education: Cultivating ‘timeless time’ through ritualized aesthetic experience

In an educational landscape governed by acceleration and efficiency — concepts driven by measurable time (chronos) — this paper argues for recovering kairos: moments of heightened presence and transformative significance. Drawing on Dewey, Bergson, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Augustine, I develop a framework linking kairos to formative education through aesthetic experience. My argument is threefold. First, works of art are trans-temporal: vestiges of the past, encountered in the present, thresholds to future possibility. Second, this trans-temporality makes aesthetic encounters uniquely suited to induce kairotic moments. Third, such moments paradoxically require extended chronological engagement — what I call ‘fertile chronos.’ I offer Re-presencing, a pedagogical approach involving slow looking and ritualized return to artworks across expanded time horizons. A phenomenological study with emerging adults illustrates the framework: participants described existential reorientation, relational connection, and recovered vitality. Slow, ritualized aesthetic encounters are not luxuries but necessities for cultivating ethical, imaginative, and relational ways of being.