Bildung from an Object-Oriented Ontology perspective: guiding an ethical-aesthetic journey through worlds

This article reconceptualises Bildung by positioning educational worlds as its primary horizon. Educational theory has often grounded Bildung in competing ontological horizons, including cultural participation, individual self-formation, political emancipation, critical resistance, transformative self-world relations, and world-centred education. Rather than asking which of these provides the proper foundation for Bildung, this article explores how Bildung can be understood as a plural pedagogical concept capable of engaging this ontological plurality. Drawing on Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), educational reality is conceived as a plurality of educational worlds emerging through encounters between human and non-human objects. Through ontological acts – including imagination, beholding, embodiment, and allure – educational worlds disclose possibilities for experience, reflection, and experimentation. Bildung is therefore reconceptualised as an ethical-aesthetic practice of inhabiting educational worlds through which an educational journey may emerge, revealing different educational qualities, possibilities for becoming, and ways of being.