Michael Peters

This text presents a comprehensive overview of the author’s experiences and contributions to PESA, as well as the themes and concerns that have shaped their academic work. The lecture series, named in the author’s honour, aims to foster new thinking among emerging scholars. The author’s intellectual journey has been deeply influenced by the contemporary apocalyptic zeitgeist, which they frame as a series of local and global crises that underpin the spirit of the age. These crises encompass environmental degradation, geopolitical tensions, the erosion of democracy, and the potential for nuclear conflict. The author’s work in EPAT has been characterised by a commitment to innovation and inclusivity, with a focus on topics such as social justice, decolonization, and gender and subjectivity. The genre and methodology of collective writing and open peer review have been instrumental in nurturing the work of younger scholars. The author’s inaugural lecture, ‘Refuge and Resilience: Being-together in a post-apocalyptic era,’ explores the dynamics of being-together as a means of fostering deep relationships with the environment and biosphere, and as a source of resilience and cultural value. Four key themes are discussed: the apocalyptic problematic in modern Western philosophy, the philosophy of place, complexity and catastrophe, and ecopedagogies for living in the post-apocalyptic era. The author argues that apocalyptic philosophy can be used to unsettle the dominant worldview without resorting to fanaticism or fundamentalism, and that the concept of ‘Being-together’ can provide a framework for community, renewal, and resilience. The label ‘post-apocalyptic philosophy’ is proposed as a means of moving beyond the determinism of apocalyptic thinking. The author concludes by suggesting that the themes of Being-together offer a basis for the development of a new curriculum.

Briefly discussing Wittgenstein’s own elementary teaching experience to provide background, contrast is drawn between issues of efficacy in teaching and normative training into regular patterns or customs of usage. Wittgenstein attended teacher training in Vienna in 1919 and taught in Austrian rural village schools until 1926 when he abruptly resigned after an incident involving hitting a pupil that led to a court trial that lasted several months. The judge called for a psychiatric examination of Wittgenstein, a report that has gone missing. The so-called ‘Haibauer incident’ constitutes a central and smouldering episode in Wittgenstein’s own psychological make-up and ethical self-development—one that he returns to many years later as the basis for his ‘confession’. The effect of this historicist approach is to relativize Wittgenstein’s teaching and his ‘discipline’ to the cultural context of his time—1920s Austria dominated by the Glöckel educational reforms that introduced pedagogy based on social democratic principles. We then examine some of the boundaries Wittgenstein drew between empirical studies, including pedagogy, and conceptual ones. In Wittgenstein’s later writings, he occasionally notes (parenthetically) that his remarks pertain to grammatical problems instead of psychological or causal ones (Z §§318 and 419). Finally, following Josè Medina, we bring home a point of particular significance to analytic philosophy of education concerning adept initiation into practices: what Wittgenstein refers to as ‘mastery of techniques’ (PI §199) requires facility and autonomy within the rules not explicable on causal terms, nor diminished by its origins in normative training. Realizing this avenue through training does not however undermine the rational elements of teaching and learning—the space of reasons—sought by the analytic school. Etiological problems connected to teaching and learning are then distinguished from philosophical issues surrounding ranges of meaningful use and degrees of arbitrariness in relation to rule-following. The conclusion earlier articulated by Standish (Philosophy and education: Accepting Wittgenstein’s challenge. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp 143–158, 1995) is that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy draws a sharp distinction between any possible ‘science’ of education and his therapeutic concept of philosophy as the dissolution of grammatical problems. Pulling from work developed over the last two decades, we then present Peter’s signature theme of Wittgenstein as a ‘pedagogical philosopher’, a picture he developed along with James Marshall, Paul Smeyers and Nicholas Burbules.

Here, we examine two caricatures of Wittgenstein in order to show in relief a more accurate portrait of his later philosophy and its significance for education. Curry’s attempt to appropriate Wittgenstein to Philosophy of Geography backfires but gives occasion to explore his geographic metaphors in relation to his ambling method of philosophical investigation. Learning is shown to be the gradual absorption of rich cultural surroundings or background for going on as others do, knowing one’s way about but also sharing in the genius loci of one’s place. Friesen’s attempt to portray Wittgenstein as a ‘tragic Philosopher of Education’ based on a ‘German-first reading’ of his use of the word Abrichtung (training) also dissembles under closer scrutiny. Friesen’s apparent tribunal of Wittgenstein makes it seem like philosophers drawing on him for progressive purposes in education are somehow naïve or duped in overlooking the dictionary definition of Abrichtung. Exonerating colleagues from disparagement, we show how closer reading of Wittgenstein’s remarks on training, teaching and learning take us not into pedagogy but into deeper aspects of post-foundational epistemology, where meaning no longer hinges on correspondence with an external reality.

In this chapter, we introduce Ludwig Wittgenstein, initially providing background on his life and education in Austria and his relocation to England to study engineering and then philosophy. Addressing issues of interpretation and significance within the domain of philosophical biography, we reflect on the difficult path by which he came to hold positions of prominence in the philosophical community: first within the Vienna Circle of logical positivism, and later in holding a chair in philosophy at Cambridge University. Throughout this discussion, we mark the transition from his early work in the Tractatus and ‘Lecture on Ethics’, to his later work in the Investigations. The intervening period, in which he trained and taught as an elementary school teacher, is taken up in the subsequent chapters (Ch 2 & 3), along with discussion of his more developed thought on language and its relationship to training and learning. Here we set the stage for his appearance on the scene in Philosophy of Education.

In closing, we look at some ways Wittgenstein has been received in the philosophy of education, not portraying the entire community but focusing primarily on some of our own works. First, by contrast we survey the early use of Wittgenstein in analytic philosophy of education (c. 1960s–70s), where concept mapping of educational terminology was all the rage. We then step back and look at how Wittgenstein employed his many ‘scenes of instruction’ within his later philosophy, showing from another angle the significance of teaching and training within Wittgenstein’s ‘method’ of philosophical investigation. Two examples are then provided: one looking at expert judgment as it applies to assessing the soundness of teacher’s practices or curricula; the other, building on Wittgenstein’s remarks on the arbitrariness of mathematics and grammar, looks at rule-drift in top-down curriculum reforms, where educators often deviate from stipulated rules due to variant interpretation or improvisation within the rules. The multiplicity of language-games of educational reform often results in an archipelago of variant usage instead of the uniformity or alignment envisioned by administrators and Ministries of Education. Finally, we look at entrenchment within deeply rooted bedrock or world-pictures that often go unnoticed as we attend from these ‘pictures’ when looking outward. One of the higher aims of education, supported by Wittgenstein’s genealogical perspective, is to reveal through an ethnographic lens (the view from the margins), otherwise taken-for-granted practices and ways of seeing the world.

This chapter provides a set of reflections on lying in public life to underline the central significance of truth and truth-telling to questions of self, politics, and society. From Augustine through to Montaigne, lying has been viewed as a sin that admits no reservations, and accordingly, it has become the basis for jurisprudence in the Anglo-American tradition. In general, lying is considered a deformation of meaning and language, and that it is harmful to society. Truth and truthfulness are considered a precondition for society. This chapter reviews Foucault on the history of truth-telling by reference to parrhesia (free speech) that has a precise relation to truth in Euripides and Plato, arguing that his account must be supplemented with an anthropology of the “culture of lying”. This chapter concludes by considering Arendt’s perceptive assessment on the history of the lie in political culture holding that “the lie did not creep into politics by some accident of human sinfulness; moral outrage, for this reason alone, is not likely to make it disappear.”

This short chapter provides an account of “post-truth” by reference to the Oxford Dictionaries “Word of the Year” for 2016 and a description of politics in our time. It notes the close affiliation with the concept “Alt-right”, a synonym for the emergence of the Far-Right in American and European politics. The chapter focuses on Donald Trump, and the “big lies” he told as one of his main media techniques in his campaign to become the US President. The chapter investigates whether the new social media undermines our ability to recognize truth.

Ludwig Wittgenstein suggests that ‘A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes’. The idea for this dialogue comes from a conversation that Michael Peters and Morwenna Griffiths had at the Philosophy of Education of Great Britain annual meeting at the University of Oxford, 2011. It was sparked by an account of an assessment of a piece of work where one of the external examiners unexpectedly exclaimed ‘I knew Jean-Paul Sartre’, trying to trump the discussion. This conversation is a dialogue about comedy and humor as a basis for philosophy, education and pedagogy that provides an introduction to recent works and a context for ongoing research. The concluding section provides further reflection on some of the main themes, drawing attention to the significance of humor in dialogues within philosophy and education, and suggesting that it has a particular role in resisting managerialism at all levels of educational institutions.

This collective paper on radicalization and violent extremism part of the ‘Philosophy of education in a new key’ initiative by Educational Philosophy and Theory brings together some of the leading contemporary scholars writing on the most pressing epistemological, ethical, political and educational issues facing post-9/11 scholarship on radicalization and violent extremism. Its overall aim is to move beyond the ‘conventional wisdom’ associated with this area of scholarly research best represented by its many slogans, metaphors and other thought-terminating clichés. By providing conceptual lenses on issues previously compartmentalized primarily [or even exclusively] in security and intelligence studies or at the fringes of scholarly interest, radicalization and violent extremism turn out to be much more complex than ‘radicalization studies’ has been eager to acknowledge.

This collective article discusses the philosophy of modern higher education in Iran, which in this case, optimistically, its history dates back to the founding of Dār al-fonūn —if we consider Dār al-fonūn as a university. Otherwise, its origin can be traced back to the University of Tehran. Central to this article is the emphasis on the lack of philosophy of higher education in Iran. Therefore, most of the criticisms in front of us are related to the internal inconsistency in the Iranian higher education system due to the lack of a national-indigenized-official philosophy of higher education in Iran. Furthermore, The Islamic Revolution of 1979 brought about fundamental changes in higher education. Accordingly, several controversial issues including the rapid growth of higher education, the Islamization of universities, cultural narratives in higher education, the increase in students, especially women and the low-income class of the country were also explored. Therefore, in this collection, the political, economic, social, cultural, moral, technological and historical dimensions of Iranian higher education were examined.

Human beings as imperfect rational beings face continuous challenges, one of them has to do with the lack of recognizing and respecting our inner dignity in present times. In this collective paper, we address the overall theme—Philosophy of Education in a New Key from various perspectives related to dignity. We address in particular some of the constraints and possibilities with regard to this issue in various settings such as education and society at large. Klas Roth discusses, for example, that it is not uncommon that the value of human beings has to do with their price in, inter alia, their social, cultural, political and economic settings throughout the world. He argues that such a focus does not necessarily draw attention to the inner dignity of human beings, but that human beings ought to do so in education and society at large. Lia Mollvik discusses views of inner and outer dignity, and argues that there needs to be a balance in between them, and that the balance ought to be acknowledged in education. Rama Alshoufani discusses the classification of human beings in terms of various diagnoses related to the asserted dysfunction of the brain, and she argues that such classification does paradoxically not necessarily respect people with such diagnoses as ends in themselves. On the contrary, she argues that their inner dignity is not respected, but that it should be. Other such failures are due to the lack of inner dignity when it comes to Children’s rights as discussed by Rebecca Adami, and to the lack of recognition of human beings’ vulnerability as discussed by Katy Dineen. Fariba Majlesi criticizes a too strong emphasis on substantive notions of humanist education, which seem to hinder new ways of thinking; she argues that it is necessary to acknowledge the latter in and through education in order to preserve the dignity of human beings. Dignity, it is argued throughout the paper, has an inner moral worth, and is beyond price.

In an interview a year before his death, Foucault confessed that his real quarry was not an investigation of power but rather the history of the ways in which human beings are constituted as subjects; a process that involved power relations as an integral aspect of the production of discourses involving truths. His work dealt with three modes of objectification in our culture that transform human beings into subjects: modes of inquiry which try to give themselves the status of the sciences; the objectivisation of the subject in ‘dividing practices’; and the way a human being turns him or herself into a subject. For Foucault, ‘games of truth’ are sets of procedures that lead to certain results which, on the basis of the principles and rules of procedures, may be considered valid or invalid. And he asks, ‘How did it come about that all of Western culture began to revolve around this obligation of truth?’ In this paper, I begin by examining Foucault’s approach to truth-telling in relation to the changing practice of educational research. Foucault’s notion of ‘games of truth’ is applied to educational research, and used to investigate the politics of knowledge and the ethics of the researcher’s identity.