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The Money and the Cow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

E. F. Thompkins
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Extract

In spite of his profound influence on philosophy in general, Wittgenstein has had no discernible effect upon the philosophy of education. It was not to be expected that his rejection of doctrine in favour of the clarification of language as the goal of philosophical activity would readily find favour with those for whom the medium was intrinsically less important than the message it was intended to convey. Nevertheless philosophers of education have no medium other than language and no means of identifying the subject of their discourse other than the word ‘education’. They cannot convey a clear message if the meaning of their words, ‘education’ in particular, is not clear. Accordingly they cannot take for granted but must clarify in accordance with a postulated theory of meaning the nexus between ‘education’ and education. In his early Tractatus and his later Philosophical Investigations respectively, Wittgenstein proposes alternative theories of meaning. I apply each in turn to ‘education’ and sketch my view of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of education.

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Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 67 , Issue 259 , January 1992, pp. 51 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1992

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References

1 Encyclopaedia Britannica (London: XIIth Edition, 1922), Vol 25, 100.Google Scholar

2 O'Connor, D. J., An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), 8.Google Scholar

3 Hirst, P. H. and Peters, R. S., The Logic of Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), 24.Google Scholar

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7 Op. cit. note 3, 77.

8 Dewey, J., Experience and Education (New York: Collier Books, 1975), 90.Google Scholar

9 Op. cit. note 5, 24–25.

10 For an archetypal account see Spark, M., The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984), 36.Google Scholar

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13 Op. cit. note 4, 11.