Wittgenstein: Philosophy, Postmodernism, Pedagogy

by Michael A. Peters, James D. Marshall

Peters and Marshall examine the parallels between the later Wittgenstein and French poststructuralism and investigate the direct appropriation of Wittgenstein's work by poststructuralists. They discuss the most pressing problems facing philosophy and education in the postmodern condition: ethico-political lines of inquiry after the collapse of the grand narrative, other cultures in the curriculum, and the notion of postmodern science.

Wittgenstein is a central figure in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. His writings serve as a fulcrum in both modern philosophy and philosophy of education, charting the shift away from the formalist approach of logical atomism to the more anthropological emphasis on language games in the analysis of ordinary language. Wittgenstein's work served as a springboard for a range of today's leading intellectuals: Peter Winch, Thomas Kuhn, Richard Rorty, Stephen Toulmin, and Stanley Cavell.

Wittgenstein is the source and authority for legitimating analytic philosophy of education--the so-called London school--as a distinctive field of intellectual endeavor based on the method of conceptual analysis and the search for necessary and sufficient conditions.

248 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 1999

About the author

Michael A Peters is Distinguished Professor at Beijing Normal University, China, and Emritus Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He remains attached to the University of Waikato as a research professor affiliate in the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research. He was professor of Education at the University of Waikato for seven years (2011-2018).

He is the executive editor of the journal, Educational Philosophy and Theory, and editor of three international ejournals, Policy Futures in Education, E-Learning and Digital Media, and Knowledge Cultures.

His interests are in education, philosophy and social policy and is a lifelong Fellow of the New Zealand Academy of Humanities. His research interests are in educational philosophy, theory and policy studies with a focus on the significance of both contemporary philosophers (Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger) and the movements of poststructuralism, critical theory and analytic philosophy to the framing of educational theory and practice.

He is also interested in philosophical and political economy questions of knowledge production and consumption. His major current projects include work on distributed knowledge, learning and publishing systems, and ‘open education’.

He has written over eighty books, including The Global Financial Crisis and the Restructuring of Education (2015), Paulo Freire: The Global Legacy (2015) both with Tina Besley, Education Philosophy and Politics: Selected Works (2011); Education, Cognitive Capitalism and Digital Labour (2011), with Ergin Bulut; and Neoliberalism and After? Education, Social Policy and the Crisis of Capitalism (2011).

He has acted as an advisor to governments on these and related matters in Scotland, NZ, South Africa and the EU. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of NZ in 2010 and awarded honorary doctorates by State University of New York (SUNY) in 2012 and University of Aalborg in 2015.