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340500 1 En Bookfrontmatter 1..39 A Companion to Wittgenstein on Education Michael A. Peters • Jeff Stickney Editors A Companion to Wittgenstein on Education Pedagogical Investigations 123 Editors Michael A. Peters Jeff Stickney University of Waikato Ontario Institute for Studies Hamilton, Waikato in Education New Zealand University of Toronto Toronto, ON Canada ISBN 978-981-10-3134-2 ISBN 978-981-10-3136-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-3136-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957487 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Foreword Wittgenstein and Education Wittgenstein’s Relevance to Education: A Sceptical Introduction The claim has often been made that the work of the later Wittgenstein is, or ought to be, of paramount importance to the philosophy of education. This might seem puzzling. Philosophical studies of education aspire to elucidate the place of edu- cation in the human condition. If we are to characterize the sort of thing that human beings are, and the kind of lives they lead, what significance should we give to the fact that human lives are marked by learning from and teaching others, in myriad contexts, informal and formal? This question is one of more than purely theoretical significance. Most philosophers of education seek to address it in a way that illu- minates and advances the practice of education. They want to understand the nature of teaching and learning with a view to determining what can be taught and learnt, what ought to be taught and learnt, and how best to teach and learn. What reason is there to think that Wittgenstein’s thought is particularly relevant to this enterprise? It is tempting to answer that Wittgenstein’s philosophy abounds with reference to learning and teaching. Wittgenstein opens Philosophical Investigations by quoting Augustine’s account of how a child learns her first language, a conception Wittgenstein proceeds to reject. His famous reflections on rule-following have as their centrepiece examples of the teaching and learning of mathematical concepts designed to explore how, on the basis of exposure to a finite set of instructions or examples, learners can acquire concepts, the understanding of which encompasses how those concepts bear on an infinite number of as yet unencountered cases. Indeed, whenever Wittgenstein considers what it is to possess a particular concept or family of concepts—such as those we use to report and express mental phe- nomena—his technique is to ask how such concepts can be taught or learnt. Yet this is not enough in itself to establish that Wittgenstein has something to teach us about education. For his motives in these discussions are to get to the bottom of the concepts in question, not to elucidate teaching or learning as such. As Hamlyn v vi Foreword (1989) points out, Wittgenstein might reflect on situations of teaching and learning, but his interest lies elsewhere, in the nature of what is learnt rather than the learning of it.1 So, however many remarks there may be about teaching and learning in his later philosophy, Wittgenstein cannot be parlayed into a theorist of teaching and learn- ing. And there should be no surprise in that, for Wittgenstein explicitly rejects the idea that philosophy done properly involves building substantive theories of any- thing. Philosophy done right is a therapeutic rather than constructive enterprise, a “struggle against the bewitchment of our understanding by the resources of our language” (PI §109). Philosophy’s aim is to “dissolve” philosophical problems rather than solve them (PO, p. 183); that is, instead of answering philosophical questions by proposing theoretical solutions, we are to work to dispel the confu- sions that generate the questions in the first place. We thereby make ourselves room to say everything it comes naturally to say and thus, in this sense, philosophy leaves everything as it is (PI §124).2 From the fact that Wittgenstein’s work offers no theory of education, we might naturally conclude that it is unlikely to contain insights to inform educational practice. Of course, there is a sense in which Wittgenstein’s philosophy is applied. For him, philosophy is an activity, and one that has profound practical significance. It involves working upon oneself to quieten conceptual anxieties so that we see things aright (CV 16) and liberate ourselves from debilitating perplexity. But such a project is unlike what most philosophers of education have in mind when they claim their discipline is, or ought to be, applied. They mean that it ought to help solve practical questions about educational policy, the content of curricula, effective teaching strategies, classroom dynamics, student motivation, and so on. But such questions are remote from the substance and style of Wittgenstein’s writings, and any attempt to build a bridge from the one to the other is likely to be buttressed by theoretical structures of which Wittgenstein would have disapproved. 1Hamlyn writes, “At various places in his works there are remarks about learning and teaching, but they are generally incidental, in my opinion, to other issues on which he thinks they cast light… The references to teaching and learning are all heuristic. The main issues are about what language is and what understanding a language presupposes” (1989: 213). Meredith Williams seems to disagree with Hamlyn’s view. In her 1994 paper, “The Significance of Learning in Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy” (see also Williams 2010), she explicitly departs from those who maintain that Wittgenstein’s references to teaching and learning are merely expository or heuristic, and extols the significance of his account of initiate learning. Yet its importance, she argues, lies in the light it casts on his “conception of language, concept mastery, and his contrast between the grammatical and the empirical” (1994: 203). So although Williams clearly takes Wittgenstein’s views of initiate learning to illuminate the human condition, she does not maintain it advances our understanding of education as such. 2Following convention, titles for Wittgenstein works are abbreviated (PI = Philosophical Investigations, PO = Philosophical Occasions, CV = Culture and Value), with section (§) or page number (p.), with full citation and initials in the References. Foreword vii Contrasting Views So why, in the light of this, do some philosophers see Wittgenstein as an important resource for philosophy of education? It is instructive to consider some examples. David Hamlyn, in the paper cited above, argues that it is not so much what Wittgenstein says about teaching and learning that is significant. His importance for education lies rather in his opposition to Cartesian conceptions of mind and knowledge (1989: 216). Wittgenstein teaches us that it is a precondition of learning that human children are participants in a shared form of life—“a shared form of reaction and behavior” (218)—that constitutes the common ground underlying the possibility of language and thought. In Wittgenstein, this view takes the form of (something like) a transcendental argument, but a similar position finds empirical expression in the writings of L.S. Vygotsky.3 Together they disclose the short- comings of Piaget’s individualistic genetic epistemology, the then-dominant para- digm in developmental psychology, highly influential among educational theorists. So, Hamlyn concludes, we have much to gain from applying to philosophy of education what Wittgenstein “has to say in philosophy in general” (221). In 1995, one of the editors of this volume advanced a more radical vision of Wittgenstein’s significance. For Michael Peters, Wittgenstein’s critique of Cartesianism, so admired by Hamlyn, represents a wholesale rejection of the phi- losophy of modernity. Wittgenstein’s later thought is thus best seen, not as an intervention within the analytic tradition, but as allied to continental thinkers who urge us to “shift away from a single, universal and formal model of rationality motivated by considerations of logic, to informal, historical and sociological models that more closely approximate the ‘rationalities’ employed by agents in their practices and in their active construction of social reality” (Peters 1995: 316). If we follow the lead of Rorty and Lyotard and bring Wittgenstein into dialogue with postmodernism and post-structuralism, we can liberate philosophy from its tired preoccupations with the foundations of knowledge and turn it into a vehicle of cultural criticism. All this has enormous significance for educational theory and practice, for it puts into question the very conceptions of knowledge, reason and self that are central to education as modernity understands it. The critique of modernity figures just as centrally in Alven Neiman’s vision of Wittgenstein’s significance for education, published in the same volume as Peters’s paper.
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