Wittgenstein, Anti-foundationalism, Technoscience and Philosophy of Education

Wittgenstein, Anti-foundationalism, Technoscience and Philosophy of Education
Author: Michael A. Peters
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2020-02-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000028003

This book is a collection of essays motivated by a "cultural" and biographical reading of Wittgenstein. It includes some new essays and some that were originally published in Educational Philosophy and Theory. The book focuses on the concept of “technoscience”, and the relevance of Wittgenstein’s work for philosophy of technology which amplifies Lyotard’s reading and provides a critique of education as an increasingly technology-led enterprise. It includes a distinctive view on the ethics of reading Wittgenstein and the ethics of suicide that shaped him. It also examines the reception and engagement with Wittgenstein’s work in French philosophy with a chapter on post-analytic philosophy of education as a choice between Richard Rorty and Jean-François Lyotard. Peters examines Wittgenstein’s academic life at Cambridge University and his involvement as a student and faculty member in the Moral Sciences Club. Finally, the book provides an understanding of Wittgensteinian styles of reasoning and the concept of worldview. Is it possible to escape the picture that holds us captive? This constitutes a challenging introduction to Wittgenstein’s work for academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of education, technology and philosophy.

The Far-Right, Education and Violence

The Far-Right, Education and Violence
Author: Michael A. Peters
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 98
Release: 2020-10-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000200280

In the last decade the far-right, associated with white nationalism, identitarian politics, and nativist ideologies, has established itself as a major political force in the West, making substantial electoral gains across Europe, the USA, and Latin America, and coalescing with the populist movements of Trump, Brexit, and Boris Johnson’s 2019 election in the UK. This political shift represents a major new political force in the West that has rolled back the liberal internationalism that developed after WWI and shaped world institutions, globalization, and neoliberalism. It has also impacted upon the democracies of the West. Its historical origins date from the rise of fascism in Italy, Germany, and Austria from the 1920s. In broad philosophical terms, the movement can be conceived as a reaction against the rationalism and individualism of liberal democratic societies, and a political revolt based on the philosophies of Nietzsche, Darwin, and Bergson that purportedly embraced irrationalism, subjectivism, and vitalism. This edited collection of essays by Michael A Peters and Tina Besley, taken from the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory, provides a philosophical discussion of the rise of the far-right and uses it as a canvas to understand the return of fascism, white supremacism, acts of terrorism, and related events, including the refugee crisis, the rise of authoritarian populism, the crisis of international education, and Trump’s ‘end of globalism’.

What Comes After Postmodernism in Educational Theory?

What Comes After Postmodernism in Educational Theory?
Author: Michael A. Peters
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 677
Release: 2020-06-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000051064

Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Educational Philosophy and Theory journal, this book brings together the work of over 200 international scholars, who seek to address the question: ‘What happened to postmodernism in educational theory after its alleged demise?’. Declarations of the death knell of postmodernism are now quite commonplace. Scholars in various disciples have suggested that, if anything, postmodernism is at an end and has been dead and buried for some time. An age dominated by playfulness, hybridity, relativism and the fragmentary self has given way to something else—as yet undefined. The lifecycle of postmodernism started with Derrida’s 1966 seminal paper ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’; its peak years were 1973–1989; followed by uncertainty and reorientation in the 1990s; and the aftermath and beyond (McHale, 2015). What happened after 2001? This collection provides responses by over 200 scholars to this question who also focus on what comes after postmodernism in educational theory. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Pandemic Education and Viral Politics

Pandemic Education and Viral Politics
Author: Michael A. Peters
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2020-10-07
Genre: Education
ISBN: 100028235X

Viral modernity is a concept based upon the nature of viruses, the ancient and critical role they play in evolution and culture, and their basic application to understanding the role of information and forms of bioinformation in the social world. The concept draws a close association between viral biology on the one hand and information science on the other to understand ‘viral’ technologies, conspiracy theories and the nature of post-truth. The COVID-19 pandemic is a major occurrence and momentous tragedy in world history, with millions of infections and many deaths worldwide. It has disrupted society and caused massive unemployment and hardship in the global economy. Michael A. Peters and Tina Besley explore human resilience and the collective response to catastrophe, and the philosophy and literature of pandemics, including ‘love and social distancing in the time of COVID-19’. These essays, a collection from Educational Philosophy and Theory, also explore the politicization of COVID-19, the growth of conspiracy theories, its origins and the ways it became a ‘viral’ narrative in the future of world politics.

Moral Education and the Ethics of Self-Cultivation

Moral Education and the Ethics of Self-Cultivation
Author: Michael A. Peters
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2021-07-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9811380279

Educational philosophies of self-cultivation as the cultural foundation and philosophical ethos for education have strong and historically effective traditions stretching back to antiquity in the classical ‘cradle’ civilizations of China and East Asia, India and Pakistan, Greece and Anatolia, focused on the cultural traditions in Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism in the East and Hellenistic philosophy in the West. This volume in East-West dialogues in philosophy of education examines both Confucian and Western classical traditions revealing that although each provides its own distinct figure of the virtuous person, they are remarkably similar in their conception and emphasis on moral self-cultivation as a practical answer to how humans become virtuous. The collection also examines self-cultivation in Japanese traditions and also the nature of Michel Foucault’s work in relation to ethical and aesthetic ideals of Hellenistic self-cultivation.

Towards an Ontology of Teaching

Towards an Ontology of Teaching
Author: Joris Vlieghe
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2019-07-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3030160033

This book opens an original and timely perspective on why it is we teach and want to pass on our world to the new generation. Teaching is presented in this book as a way of being, rather than as a matter of expertise, which is driven by love for a subject matter. With the help of philosophical thinkers such as Arendt, Badiou and Agamben, the authors articulate a fully positive account of education that goes beyond the critical approach, which has become prevailing in much contemporary educational theory, and which testifies to a hate of the world and to a confusion of what politics and education are about. Therefore, the authors develop the idea of a thing-centred pedagogy, as opposed to both teacher-centred and student-centred approaches. The authors furthermore illustrate their purely educational account of teaching by looking at the writing and the television performance of Leonard Bernstein who embodies what teaching out of love and care for a subject is all about. This book is of interest to all those concerned with fundamental and philosophical questions about education and to those interested in (music) education.

Wittgenstein, Education and the Problem of Rationality

Wittgenstein, Education and the Problem of Rationality
Author: Michael A. Peters
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2021-01-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9811599726

This book develops an argument for a historicist and non-foundationalist notion of rationality based on an interpretation of Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty. The book examines two notions of rationality—a universal versus a constitutive conception – and their significance for educational theory. The former advanced by analytic philosophy of education as a form of conceptual analysis is based on a mistaken reading of Wittgenstein. Analytic philosophy of education used a reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language to set up and justify an absolute, universal and ahistorical notion of rationality. By contrast, the book examines the underlying influence of the later Wittgenstein on the historicist turn in philosophy of science as a basis for a non-foundationalist and constitutive notion of rationality which is both historical and cultural, and remains consistent with wider developments in philosophy, hermeneutics and social theory. This book aims to understand the philosophical motivation behind this view, to examine its intellectual underpinnings and to substitute this universal conception of rationality by reference to a Hegelian interpretation of the later Wittgenstein that emphasizes his status as an anti-foundational thinker.

Bioinformational Philosophy and Postdigital Knowledge Ecologies

Bioinformational Philosophy and Postdigital Knowledge Ecologies
Author: Michael A. Peters
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2022-04-22
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3030950069

The book presents a cross-disciplinary overview of critical issues at the intersections of biology, information, and society. Based on theories of bioinformationalism, viral modernity, the postdigital condition, and others, this book explores two inter-related questions: Which new knowledge ecologies are emerging? Which philosophies and research approaches do they require? The book argues that the 20th century focus on machinery needs to be replaced, at least partially, by a focus on a better understanding of living systems and their interactions with technology at all scales – from viruses, through to human beings, to the Earth’s ecosystem. This change of direction cannot be made by a simple relocation of focus and/or funding from one discipline to another. In our age of the Anthropocene, (human and planetary) biology cannot be thought of without (digital) technology and society. Today’s curious bioinformational mix of blurred and messy relationships between physics and biology, old and new media, humanism and posthumanism, knowledge capitalism and bio-informational capitalism defines the postdigital condition and creates new knowledge ecologies. The book presents scholarly research defining new knowledge ecologies built upon emerging forms of scientific communication, big data deluge, and opacity of algorithmic operations. Many of these developments can be approached using the concept of viral modernity, which applies to viral technologies, codes and ecosystems in information, publishing, education, and emerging knowledge (journal) systems. It is within these overlapping theories and contexts, that this book explores new bioinformational philosophies and postdigital knowledge ecologies.

Philosophy and Education:

Philosophy and Education:
Author: Paul Smeyers
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1995-08-31
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0792337158

Many books have been written about Wittgenstein's philosophy, but this collection of articles on Wittgenstein and education is the first study in book form in this area. There have been several articles in scholarly education journals, but the special cachet of this collection is that the contributors come from six countries. The collection has been edited by Paul Smeyers and Jim Marshall, philosophers of education who live in Belgium and New Zealand, respectively. Each of the chapters represents an original study of Wittgenstein, commissioned by the editors from colleagues they know to have written well on Wittgenstein and the implications of his ideas for education. Audience: Teachers, students and academics in the field of philosophy and education. Especially interesting to advanced students in these areas.

The Methodology and Philosophy of Collective Writing

The Methodology and Philosophy of Collective Writing
Author: Michael A. Peters
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2021-07-12
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000404048

This multi-authored collection covers the methodology and philosophy of collective writing. It is based on a series of articles written by the authors in Educational Philosophy and Theory, Open Review of Educational Research and Knowledge Cultures to explore the concept of collective writing. This tenth volume in the Editor's Choice series provides insights into the philosophy of academic writing and peer review, peer production, collective intelligence, knowledge socialism, openness, open science and intellectual commons. This collection represents the development of the philosophy, methodology and philosophy of collective writing developed in the last few years by members of the Editors’ Collective (EC), who also edit, review and contribute to Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT), as well as to PESA Agora, edited by Tina Besley, and Access, edited by Nina Hood, two PESA ‘journals’ recently developed by EC members. This book develops the philosophy, methodology and pedagogy of collective writing as a new mode of academic writing as an alternative to the normal academic article. The philosophy of collective writing draws on a new mode of academic publishing that emphasises the metaphysics of peer production and open review along with the main characteristics of openness, collaboration, co-creation and co-social innovation, peer review and collegiality that have become a praxis for the self-reflection emphasising the subjectivity of writing, sometimes called self-writing. This collection, under the EPAT series Editor’s Choice, draws on a group of members of the Editors’ Collective,who constitute a network of editors, reviewers and authors who established the organisation to further the aims of innovation in academic writing and publishing. It provides discussion and examples of the philosophy, methodology and pedagogy of collective writing. Split into three sections: Introduction, Openness and Projects, this volume offers an introduction to the philosophy and methodology of collective writing. It will be of interest to scholars in philosophy of education and those interested in the process of collective writing.