A Companion to Wittgenstein on Education

This book, bringing together contributions by forty-five authors from fourteen countries, represents mostly new material from both emerging and seasoned scholars in the field of philosophy of education.  Topics range widely both within and across the four parts of the book: Wittgenstein's biography and style as an educator and philosopher, illustrating the pedagogical dimensions of his early and late philosophy; Wittgenstein's thought and methods in relation to other philosophers such as Cavell, Dewey, Foucault, Hegel and the Buddha; contrasting investigations of training in relation to initiation into forms of life, emotions, mathematics and the arts (dance, poetry, film, and drama), including questions from theory of mind (nativism vs. initiation into social practices), neuroscience, primate studies, constructivism and relativity; and the role of Wittgenstein's philosophy in religious studies and moral philosophy, as well as their profound impact on his own life. This collection explores Wittgenstein not so much as a philosopher who provides a method for teaching or analyzing educational concepts but rather as one who approaches philosophical questions from a pedagogical point of view.  Wittgenstein's philosophy is essentially pedagogical: he provides pictures, drawings, analogies, similes, jokes, equations, dialogues with himself, questions and wrong answers, experiments and so on, as a means of shifting our thinking, or of helping us escape the pictures that hold us captive.

This book, bringing together contributions by forty-five authors from fourteen countries, represents mostly new material from both emerging and seasoned scholars in the field of philosophy of education.  Topics range widely both within and across the four parts of the book: Wittgenstein’s biography and style as an educator and philosopher, illustrating the pedagogical dimensions of his early and late philosophy; Wittgenstein’s thought and methods in relation to other philosophers such as Cavell, Dewey, Foucault, Hegel and the Buddha; contrasting investigations of training in relation to initiation into forms of life, emotions, mathematics and the arts (dance, poetry, film, and drama), including questions from theory of mind (nativism vs. initiation into social practices), neuroscience, primate studies, constructivism and relativity; and the role of Wittgenstein’s philosophy in religious studies and moral philosophy, as well as their profound impact on his own life.

This collection explores Wittgenstein not so much as a philosopher who provides a method for teaching or analyzing educational concepts but rather as one who approaches philosophical questions from a pedagogical point of view.  Wittgenstein’s philosophy is essentially pedagogical: he provides pictures, drawings, analogies, similes, jokes, equations, dialogues with himself, questions and wrong answers, experiments and so on, as a means of shifting our thinking, or of helping us escape the pictures that hold us captive.

Part I. Introduction.- 1. Journeys with Wittgenstein: Assembling Sketches of a Philosophical Landscape.- Part II. Biographical and Stylistic Investigations.- 2. Subjectivity After Descartes: Wittgenstein as a Pedagogical Philosopher.- 3. Wittgenstein as Educator.- 4. Wittgenstein’s Philosophy: Viva Voce.- 5. Wittgenstein’s Hut.- 6. Slow Learning and the Multiplicity of Meaning.- 7. Elucidation in Transition of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy .- 8. Wittgenstein’s Metaphors and His Pedagogical Philosophy.- 9. Imagination and Reality.- 10. Do Your Exercises: Reader Participation in Wittgenstein’s Investigations.- 11. "A Spontaneous Following": Wittgenstein, Education and the Limits of Trust.- 12. Seeing Connections: From Cats and Classes to Characteristics and Cultures.- 13. Wittgenstein, Cavell and the Register of Philosophy: Discerning Seriousness and Triviality in Drama Teaching.- Part III. Wittgenstein in Dialogue with Other Thinkers.- 14. Wittgenstein’s Trials, Teaching and Cavell’s Romantic ‘Figure of the Child’.- 15. Wittgenstein, Education and Contemporary American Philosophy.- 16. “This is simply what I do.”: On the relevance of Wittgenstein’s Alleged Conservatism and the Debate about Cavell’s Legacy for Children and Grown-Ups.- 17. This is simply what I do too: A Response to Paul Smeyers.- 18. On “the temptation to attack common sense”.- 19. Learning Politics by Means of Examples.- 20. Wittgenstein and Foucault: The Limits and Possibilities of Constructivism.- 21. Wittgenstein and Classical Pragmatism.- 22. The Weight of Dogmatism: Investigating “Learning” in Dewey’s Pragmatism and Wittgenstein’s Ordinary Language Philosophy.- 23. How Should We Recognize the Otherness of Learner?: Hegelian and Wittgensteinian Views.-24. Liberation from Solitude: Wittgenstein on Human Finitude and Possibility.- 25. Wittgenstein and Philosophy of Education: A Feminist Re-Assessment.-26. Meditating with Wittgenstein: Constructing and Deconstructing the Language Games of Masculinity.- 27. Meditation on Wittgenstein and Education.- Part IV. Training, Learning and Education.- 28. Wittgenstein, Learning and the Expressive Formation of Emotions.-  29. Wittgenstein and the Path of Learning.- 30. Pedagogy and the Second Person.-  31. Engagement, Expression, and Initiation.- 32. Wittgenstein and Judging the Soundness of Curriculum Reforms: Investigating the Math Wars.- 33. Language and Mathematical Formation.- 34. Wittgenstein, Dewey, and Mathematics Education in Sweden.- 35. &c..- 36. Can an Ape become your co-author? Reflections on Becoming as a Presupposition of Teaching.- 37. Something Animal? Wittgenstein, Language, and Instinct.- 38. Universal Grammar: Wittgenstein versus Chomsky.- 39. Learning without Storing: Wittgenstein's Cognitive Science of Learning and Memory.- 40. How Scientific Frameworks ‘frame parents’: Wittgenstein on the Import of Changing Language-games.- 41. Professional Learning and Wittgenstein: A Learning Paradox Emerges.- 42. Wittgenstein on Teaching and Learning the Rules: Taking him at his word.- 43. And if L. Wittgenstein helped us to think differently about Teacher Education?.- 44. More Insight into the Understanding of a Movement: Using Wittgenstein for Dance Education.- 45. “Not to explain, but to accept”: Wittgenstein and the Pedagogic Potential of Film.- Part V. Religious & Moral Education.- 46. The Learner as Teacher.- 47. Imagining Philosophy of Religion Differently: Interdisciplinary Wittgensteinian Approaches.- 48. To Think for Oneself: Philosophy as the Unravelling of Moral Responsibility.- 49. Wittgenstein and Therapeutic Education.- 50. Clarifying Conversations: Understanding Cultural Difference in Philosophical Education.