The phrase in the title comes from a passage on page 150 of Thinking Again. Employed by the authors in the course of an engagement with works of Kierkegaard and Derrida, it is also an apt phrase to give a suggestive summary of one of the chief themes in the book as a whole. The theme I have in mind here is really a twofold one: firstly, the book’s critique-largely an unsympathetic one-of those paths of reasoning associated with the modernist legacies of the Enlightenment and their educational embodiments; secondly its critique-a more sympathetic one-of postmodern moves to abandon the grand ideals and universalistic pretensions of the Enlightenment’s legacies. In this short contribution to the symposium I will concentrate on these two critiques.