Stud Philos Educ (2008) 27:185–195
DOI 10.1007/s11217-007-9089-4
Teaching and Doing Philosophy of Education:
The Question of Style
Judith Suissa
Published online: 16 January 2008
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract This paper explores the practice of teaching philosophy, and particularly
philosophy of education, in a higher education context. Starting from a critical discussion
of some of the literature on teaching and learning in higher education, I introduce the
notions of philosophical style and temperament and suggest that exploring these notions,
the problems they raise, and their implications for issues to do with our own identity as
philosophers and as teachers, can enrich our understanding of the practice of teaching
philosophy in higher education and our ability to reflect on and possibly improve our own
teaching practice.
Keywords
Teaching Higher education Philosophical style Temperament
‘It seems very pretty,’ Alice said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s rather hard to
understand! ... Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don’t exactly
know what they are!’
Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking-Glass
Introduction
It often seems to me that, as philosophers of education working and teaching in universities, we are in the unique and rather peculiar position of doing what we are
philosophising about and philosophising about what we are doing. Does this particular
reflexivity entail any special demands on us as philosophers, or as teachers?
Several contemporary philosophers of education, drawing on the work of MacIntyre and
others in the Aristotelian tradition, have explored the complex relationship between theory
and practice and its implications for our field. Notably, Wilfred Carr has developed at some
J. Suissa (&)
Department of Educational Foundations and Policy Studies, Institute of Education, Room 562a,
University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK
e-mail: gert.biesta@stir.ac.uk
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length the claim that we are mistaken in construing philosophy of education as being
concerned with theoretical knowledge as distinct from practice, arguing that questions
about the logic of educational theory cannot be discussed in isolation from questions about
the logic of practice. In effect, he suggests, ‘all educational theories are theories of theory
and theories of practice’ (Carr 1995, p. 41).
There is, surely, a sense in which, as teachers of philosophy, our practice is intertwined
with theory and with ‘theory of theory’. In the following discussion, however, I want to
suggest that these debates can be enriched by considering some of the more personal,
perhaps affective, dimensions of doing and teaching philosophy. I shall explore some
issues connected to the teaching of philosophy in a higher education context, drawing on
the idea that this practice creates a reflective (and reflexive) space in which to question
assumptions about the nature of philosophy and, crucially, our own identities as philosophers and teachers of philosophy. Specifically, I shall suggest that looking at what I shall
refer to as the question of philosophical style, can enrich our practice and contribute to our
understanding of these issues.
Teaching in Higher Education—Critiquing the Literature
One obvious way in which our position as philosophers of education who also teach
philosophy of education places special demands on us is, surely, that we stand in a
uniquely critical position towards the literature on teaching in higher education. There has
been a proliferation of such literature in recent years, especially in the UK, where it goes
hand in hand with the trend to formalize the practice and accreditation of university
lecturers and the requirement that they think of their teaching in terms of standards, aims
and outcomes. Hence we now have courses such as the Professional Certificate in Teaching
and Learning in Higher and Professional Education, which, from 2007, will be a required
qualification for all new university lecturers. The Higher Education Academy, which
accredits these courses, is concerned to ‘develop national professional standards in
teaching and learning in higher education’ (see http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/), and the
required modules for this certificate focus on areas such as ‘Improving Lecturing’,
‘Designing Courses and Curricula’ and ‘Assessment’ and lay great emphasis on improving
students’ learning experience by articulating clear aims and outcomes for classes, planning
sessions, developing presentation skills and designing evaluation processes. The literature
which supports this approach and the managerial language which underpins it—and which
is evident at all levels of higher education—has already been criticized by several theorists
(see for example Standish 1997; Smith 1999, 2001). As these critiques illustrate, for
philosophers of education, the literature on teaching in higher education cannot be simply a
tool to use in our professional practice, but is inevitably part of the subject matter of our
own research interests.
The managerial culture and language, and the way it has infiltrated higher education, has
been justly criticized for its tendency to focus on controllable outcomes which leave little
room for spontaneity and the excitement of the educational encounter (see Standish 1997).
Many philosophers would argue that this culture is particularly ill-suited to the study of
philosophy, which is not primarily about acquiring knowledge, skills, or even understanding, but has to do with experiencing a certain way of doing and thinking. Although
writers in the field of teaching in higher education constantly emphasize the point that ‘the
most important point in evaluating the educational process is not what teachers try to teach,
but what learners actually succeed in learning’ (Gooday 2002, p. 144), philosophers may
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feel that the focus on ‘what students will/should learn’ obscures the point that in fact we are
more concerned with enabling students to experience what it is like to think philosophically
about a certain issue, or, ideally, to ‘do’ philosophy.
The conception of education implied by much of the literature on teaching and learning
in higher education seems to exemplify the kind of attitude in which, as Standish says
(1997, p. 453), ‘spontaneity, imagination and the encounter with the unknown are suppressed for both teacher and learner.’ The very focus on formulating aims and outcomes,
such as those suggested by Ramsden (2003) and other writers in the field, is indeed one
which seeks to minimize an ‘encounter with the unknown’.
In short, as critics of the current trend for formalising the process of higher education
teaching have pointed out, those who argue, with Ramsden, that ‘in the foreground is what
students are expected to learn and how they go about learning it…’ (Ramsden 2003, p.
120) are likely to overlook critical aspects of the educational encounter. Joseph Dunne
expresses the alternative, richer, concept of education when he states:
When two people join together in the mutual questioning and answering of a conversation what emerges is not a product which can be ascribed to either—or even to
both of them—as producers; it is always something other and more than they could
have envisaged. (Dunne 2001, p. 136).
Dunne’s work, like that of Standish, Smith and others, serves as an important antidote to
the managerialism implied by a lot of the literature and training courses in higher education
teaching. Yet important as these criticisms are, there are other issues relevant to the
teaching of philosophy that I believe are not generally addressed by them, and that, I argue,
can enrich our understanding of what is involved in teaching philosophy in higher
education
My own critical stance towards the discourse on teaching in higher education has
developed out of a sense of unease and dissatisfaction with some aspects of it which I
encountered while studying for the Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Firstly, I felt that the lecturer as an individual, with emotional attitudes, desires,
sensibilities and temperament, was absent from this discourse. The catch-phrase of the
standard works recommended as core readings for the above Certificate, such as Ramsden’s Learning to Teach in Higher Education (Ramsden 2003), which is typical of this
genre, is that our central concern as teachers in higher education should be with ‘what
people are expected to learn’. This, we are told, is what should guide us in formulating the
‘aims’ and ‘outcomes’ of the courses we design, and this is what is, clearly, behind, the
culture of performativity that, as Standish and others have warned, is permeating much of
the education system. Biggs, too, argues that: ‘The central question in course design is:
what is most important for these students to know and what might be the best ways for
them to learn it.’ (Biggs 1999, p.25)
My own sense of being not just a teacher but a learner, and the sense that my own
relationship to and feelings about the content-matter is crucial to my ability to engage with
it and, thus, to engage with my students, is not addressed at all in this literature. A typical
example of this tendency is the fact that all references to the issue of ‘motivation’ in
Ramsden (2003), Biggs (1999), and other contemporary books on teaching in higher
education, refer solely to the students. There is no sense of the teacher as an individual
equally engaged in a process of educational discovery and growth, equally susceptible to
problems of ‘motivation’, and equally grappling with issues of affective engagement with
the subject matter, rather than being just a neutral channel for conveying it.
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This is not simply a consequence of the point, noted above, that there is something in
the nature of philosophy as a discipline which does not readily lend itself to a language of
learning outcomes and quantifiable achievements, and which inevitably involves an element of personal engagement in questions of meaning and normativity. It is important to
note that the approach advocated in the literature on teaching in higher education, in
reflecting the managerial stance described above, implies that there is such thing as generic
teaching skills, and thus often overlooks the substantive nature of the subject matter. Yet
this line of critique often takes us into discussions about the nature of the discipline in
question, which, so I argue, fail to capture some important, personal aspects of doing and
teaching philosophy.
Thus, while the special nature of philosophy and the implications of the complexities
of the discipline for the trend to standardise higher education teaching has not been
ignored by theorists and teachers of philosophy, such analyses generally focus on different conceptions of ‘what philosophy is.’ For example, Wolf Mays, in a well-known
article quoted on the philosophy section of the Higher Education Academy website,
argues that
…the teacher’s actual conception of philosophy will affect his mode of teaching it. If
he believes philosophy to be largely an analytical and critical enquiry, he will no
doubt spend much time analyzing the meaning of words, making tidy verbal distinctions, and trying to clear up verbal confusions. On the other hand, if he is of a
more speculative case of mind, he may be interested in following out general themes
as they are exhibited in different aspects of our experience, and in this way bringing
out elements they may have in common. A student’s performance in a particular
philosophy course, may then depend a good deal upon whether his natural intellectual attitudes, i.e. whether he is analytical or speculative in his approach to
philosophical questions, fit in with those of his teacher. (Mays 1965)
The implication seems to be that if we can just get clear in our minds about what
philosophy is, this will lead logically to operative conclusions about how best to teach it.
My reservation about this approach, however, is that it too easily slips into the same
division between theory and practice of which Dunne and others, following Aristotle, warn
us. Furthermore, distinctions such as those between analytic/speculative or analytic/
continental philosophy are notoriously inadequate and fraught with tensions.
The above discussion shows how critics of the literature and training for teaching in
higher education have attacked it either from an external, political perspective—focusing
on what they see as the pernicious reduction of students to clients, and the managerial
obsession with predictable and quantifiable aims and outcomes—or from the perspective of
the nature of the discipline in question. I wish to suggest that we enrich this critique by
starting from our own personal, perhaps subjective, perspective as teachers and
philosophers.
In fact, I wish to argue, issues about how we teach cannot be regarded as mere
methods to be deduced from a substantive characterization of the subject matter; rather
they are centrally tied up with our own emotional and psychological make-up and thus
with our identity as philosophers and teachers. I want to develop this point through a
discussion of the question of style, arguing that issues of philosophical style cannot be
neatly separated out from content, nor reduced to pedagogic tools, and, further, that they
may be more basic to our identity and hence to the quality of our practice as teachers
than questions about what we understand philosophy to be and how we think we should
teach it.
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Philosophical Style
Michael Peters has argued, in ‘Philosophy as Pedagogy: Wittgenstein’s Styles of Thinking’
(Peters 2001) that ‘the question of style is a question inseparable from the reality of
Wittgenstein’s life and the corpus of his work.’ (p. 2). The relevance and importance of
Wittgenstein’s work to philosophers of education is, Peters argues, not in that he provides
us with any method or system for the analysis of educational concepts, but that he
‘approaches philosophical questions from a pedagogical point of view[...] His style of
doing philosophy is pedagogical’. I would like to take Peters’ important insights into the
question of style in philosophy a little further and draw on them in arguing for the place of
style in our own identity as teachers of philosophy of education.
As a way into this discussion—which I offer less as a thesis and more as a suggestion
for further enquiry—I would like to look at an interesting distinction suggested by Avishai
Margalit.
Margalit argues that
There are two styles of philosophers—illustrators and explicators. Illustrators trust,
first and foremost, striking examples, in contrast with explicators, who trust, first and
foremost, definitions and general principles. Explicators may use examples, but their
examples are stylized and are more like those that appear after i.e. than the genuine
examples that follow e.g. The illustrators, for their part, run the risk of using
examples as little anecdotes that serve no philosophical purpose. The dangers of each
style are clear and almost unavoidable; yet, I believe that style in philosophy matters
greatly. When examples are apt, they are illuminations, not just didactic illustrations.
When definitions are good, they are explications, not mere stipulations. I see merit in
both styles, but by temperament if not by conviction I subscribe to e.g. philosophy.
(Margalit 2002, p. ix)
Margalit’s use of terms like ‘trust’ and ‘temperament’ indicates that this characterization of
ways of doing philosophy is something far deeper and more personal than questions of
‘technique’ or ‘pedagogic method’. Furthermore, his point that such styles may have more
to do with ‘temperament’ than ‘conviction’ suggests that this distinction may cut across the
analytic/synthetic divide. While this analysis is obviously not clear-cut and requires further
exploration, I do think that the ‘e.g.’/‘i.e.’ distinction adds a useful dimension to this
discussion in that it is not simply a reflection of what one believes philosophy to be about,
or what one regards as the definitive philosophical method or tradition. Thus Margalit’s
own work is, by his own admission, more in the ‘e.g.’ style, although he works within the
analytic tradition. Similarly, there are philosophers working within the so-called continental tradition who are, stylistically, ‘i.e.’ philosophers, and so on. I do not want to deny
that there are important connections between how one does philosophy and what one
believes philosophy to be. But I do want to suggest that there may be something about
philosophical style, in the above sense, that is somehow part of our identity and thus highly
relevant to our teaching practice.
I think Margalit’s idea can be developed further in the context of teaching in higher
education, by exploring our own relationship with the subject matter. For example, one
point about ‘e.g. philosophers’ seems to me that they may intuitively respond to an
example without being able to say why exactly it is illuminating, or indeed what precisely it
is an example of. This is not to say that they fail to grasp the philosophical significance of
the example employed, but, rather, that in explaining what the example is intended to
show, they may feel that something intangible is lost.
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Questions of style are rarely more evident than in Wittgenstein’s own work, which
vividly illustrates Margalit’s contrast, as in the following discussion of games in Philosophical Investigations:
66. Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games’. I mean board-games,
card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?—
Don’t say: ‘There must be something common, or they would not be called
‘games’’—but look and see whether there is anything common to all. —For if you
look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities,
relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!—
(Wittgenstein 1967, #66)
It seems pretty clear here that Wittgenstein is not using this example to illustrate a point he
wants to elaborate, or a system he is developing; in fact, one could almost say that, in an
important sense, the example is the philosophy.
How can we connect these insights to our own teaching experience? If I begin from my
own subjective experience, it is tempting to say, on reflecting on occasions when I have
offered examples for discussion in philosophy classes, that students either seem to ‘get it’
or they don’t. As an incorrigible ‘e.g. philosopher’ myself, I find that my intuitions as a
teacher are sharper in this regard, and enable me to be more confident in my abilities to
communicate with my students, than they are when I am engaged in the attempt to explain
a philosophical idea by means of an ‘i.e.’ approach. Of course, even when using an ‘e.g.’
approach, there will be students who seem not to grasp what I am trying to get across, often
obliging me to resort to alternative forms of explanation, or indeed to desperately offer yet
another example. But if Margalit is right in suggesting that philosophical style has to do
with temperament, then it could well be that whether or not one ‘gets’ a philosophical point
is not so much a matter of intellectual comprehension, but of temperamental, or one may
even say emotional, response.
I believe that if we think carefully about the kind of things that have excited us,
philosophically, in our own development as philosophers, we will find that it is often less
the content of ideas than the way they are expressed that we intuitively respond to (or
don’t). Thus people with ‘e.g.’ temperament may often, even when faced with well crafted
explications or definitions, appreciate them intellectually, but only respond deeply, emotionally to them, if they are presented in the form of an example.
Of course, all of us, even the ‘e.g. philosophers’ among us, will often be called upon, at
various points in our careers as researchers or teachers, to be ‘i.e. philosophers’. In
teaching, writing or discussing philosophy, there is no avoiding the need to explain our
ideas and to spell out their significance and implications. Similarly, ‘i.e. philosophers’ are
often required to furnish examples which capture their ideas. But what interests me here is
the question of the locus of ‘doing philosophy’. To put this more sharply, one could even
say that the important question is where the excitement lies. Some people seem to get
excited by the very contemplation of a philosophical idea expressed through an example,
whereas others seem to get excited about the construction of a definition or a system of
ideas.
In the context of teaching philosophy, it seems highly important that we address the
issues of the immediate, almost emotional response one has to philosophical ideas, and the
role of style or temperament in this response. Reflecting on our own responses, as students
of philosophy, may help us become aware of how matters of temperament and style have
played a part in our own formation as philosophers, and this, surely, must play a role in our
teaching.
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Consider, for example, the following passage from MacIntyre’s After Virtue where he
quotes John Maynard Keynes’ own account of his feelings on encountering G.E. Moore’s
Principia Ethica for the first time:
I went up to Cambridge at Michaelmas 1902, and Moore’s Principia Ethica came out
at the end of my first year...it was exciting, exhilarating, the beginning of a renaissance, the opening of a new heaven on a new earth (MacIntyre 2004, p. 14).
What is interesting here is the emotional tone and force of Keynes’ words. I am sure we
can all recall similar moments of exhilaration on encountering philosophical ideas. But as
Margalit’s discussion suggests—and indeed this point is in keeping with MacIntyre’s own
account—reflection on these moments may reveal that the degree of excitement has at least
as much to do with temperament and philosophical style as with content.
Of course, similar insights can be applied to literature, and there is a great deal more
that can be said, in this context, about the relationship between philosophy and literature.
At present, however, I would like merely to consider one example which helps to illustrate
the above points. As the widely disparate reviews of Kazuo Ishiguru’s The Unconsoled
(1995) revealed, there were many readers who disliked and were frustrated by this book
because they could not get a clear sense of ‘what it was about’. Others, however, loved it
precisely because it seemed to be a metaphor for, or a picture of, something, which
resonated with them, although what that something was is not always apparent. The second
group ‘understood’ the book in some way, even though, as reflected in reviews of the book,
they differed in the ways in which they explained this understanding. Examples like this, of
course, only reinforce the point that concepts such as ‘learning’ and ‘understanding’ as
employed in the literature on teaching in higher education are far more complex and
slippery than this literature would have us believe.
To critique the literature and prevailing discourse on teaching in higher education by
emphasizing matters of style and temperament is, of course, to introduce to the discussion
notions which are anathema to it as they suggest something which cannot be quantified or
translated into aims and outcomes. In this context, one needs to be wary of any inclination
to allow talk of style, in the sense I have been using it, to slide into talk of ‘cognitive
style’—for, as the research and critique of writers such as Coffield et al (2004) and White
(1998) strongly suggest, the theoretical basis for attempts to define learning in terms of
‘cognitive style’ is shaky, to say the least.
Similarly, although I have used the term ‘style’ throughout this discussion for want of
a better alternative, I do not see this as connected to the tradition of research and
theoretical work into the question of ‘teaching styles’. While not wishing to dismiss this
important line of enquiry, I think the point made by Bennett in assessing roughly twenty
years of research focused on teaching style, namely that ‘teaching style studies assume a
direct relationship between teacher behaviours and pupil learning which, paradoxically,
carries with it an implicit denial of the influence of pupils in their own learning’ (Bennett
1987), is surely even more pertinent in a higher education setting. In this context, I would
like to emphasize that ‘philosophical style’, in the sense in which I have been using it
here, does not map onto a particular type of behaviour, unlike in the case of most
research into teaching styles in primary school classrooms, where teachers were identified, on the basis of their observable behaviours, as situated somewhere along a
continuum of styles, ranging from progressive/informal to traditional/formal. ‘Style’, in
the sense in which I am using it here, refers more to our relationship to the subject matter
that we are engaged with, than to our behaviour in a classroom. In fact, it is a remarkable
feature of the literature on teaching styles (see Entwistle 1981, pp. 225–242) that barely
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no mention whatsoever is made of the subject being taught. In discussing accumulated
research into teaching styles by Bennett, Witkin and others, Entwistle makes the point
that ‘a teacher’s decision to adopt an extreme teaching style will be a reflection of his
own learning style’ (ibid, p. 238). This may well be so, to a point, but it seems highly
odd, even within a primary school context, to assume that teachers have one particular
‘style’ which applies across the board, irrespective of what they are teaching. In a higher
education context, where people generally teach one discipline, within which they have
been working for several years, it seems even more likely that ‘teaching style’—in
whatever sense one uses it—cannot be neatly cut off from subject matter and from the
affective factors involved both in the choice of subject matter, and in the choice of how
to teach it. There are reasons why we are teachers of philosophy and not teachers of
pharmacology; these reasons are not incidental to our teaching practice and, surely,
should form part of our reflection on it.
Some Troubling Issues for Teachers
If it is true that questions of philosophical style and temperament are at least as important
to our teaching practice as are questions about the nature of the subject matter, pedagogic
technique, and group dynamics, this raises several troubling issues for teachers of philosophy in higher education.
Firstly, it seems reasonable to assume that if there are differences in style in philosophy
teachers then, obviously, there are differences in style in philosophy students, and that if I
happen to be an ‘e.g. philosopher’, I am likely to relate better to students who are ‘e.g.
students’ than those who are ‘i.e. students’. Although, as I have said, these distinctions
need to be developed further, it does seem, on the basis of my own teaching experience,
that there are similar differences in style amongst students.
Of course, if we care about our subject, we naturally want our students to be excited by
the same ideas that we are; we get impatient with the ones who don’t ‘get it’ and, I think,
intuitively relate better to those who seem to have the same stylistic sensitivities as we do.
What should we do, then, with students who do not ‘get it’?
In a typical undergraduate course, this may not pose a great problem, as students
studying philosophy are likely to be exposed to a range of teachers with different temperaments and styles. Individual students will probably respond better to certain teachers
than to others. We could, therefore, assume a sort of implicit division of labour amongst
ourselves when it comes to philosophic style, hoping that things will balance out in the end
for the students. But many of us who teach philosophy of education in Education
Departments are teaching students who have not had any systematic training in philosophy,
and often our course is the only philosophical one they attend.
Most of us would probably agree with Wolf Mays (1965, p. 144) that
No matter what philosophical position one takes up, the student not only has to
acquire modes of correct argument, but also a minimum of scholarly skills. Before
one can hope to do any worth-while thinking for oneself, one must have had
experience of philosophizing by others. One cannot as Wittgenstein once said philosophize on an empty stomach. As with other subjects, the student needs to master a
corpus of knowledge, in this case the classical writings of the great philosophers.
These may be looked upon as models of philosophizing which the student needs to
study critically…
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But many of our students do seem to be philosophizing on an empty stomach. And even if
we see our role as partly filling their stomach with enough philosophical sustenance to keep
them going, thus trying to introduce them to a range of philosophical approaches and
traditions, the preceding discussion suggests that our own temperamental relationship with
what we teach, our own style, will determine, at least partly, the degree of success with
which our students can engage with the material.
This point seems to be supported by my own reflections on my teaching practice. What I
am aware of here is not only my intuitive need to construct examples that get across a point
rather than to spell out the structure and implications of the point, but my own feelings
about the material I am teaching. Thus, to use a classic case, Plato’s simile of the cave,
which I often use with my education students, is an obvious candidate for an ‘e.g. philosopher’. But Plato, of course, had a complex philosophical system, only partly reflected
in the formulation of this simile. Yet when discussing the metaphor of the cave with
students, what strikes me is that, personally, I find discussing the actual metaphor—the
example—more interesting and exciting than spelling out the issues it involves. I could—
and often do—choose to discuss the epistemological, moral and metaphysical notions
implied and assumed by this example, but personally, I find this far less motivating than the
process of discussing the simile itself and drawing ideas out of it. There is a lot of
philosophical insight to be gained, to be sure, by the process of drawing ideas out of the
example, together with the students, and elaborating on these and on their connection with
other themes in epistemology or metaphysics. But the crucial point here is that I often have
the sense that some students ‘get it’ even before we have begun this process, from reading
the simile itself, and it is these students whom I find it easier to respond to.
The students I teach are doing research degrees in education, from a wide range of
disciplinary perspectives and professional backgrounds, and I always ask them at the
beginning of my course (which forms part of the core research training programme), if any
of them have studied any philosophy before. But whether or not students have any prior
philosophical experience, and the extent of this experience or knowledge, does not seem,
anecdotally, to make much difference to the quality of our discussion. There seem always
to be some people who, perhaps by temperament, will ‘get it’, while others do not. The
existence of any prior knowledge on their part will certainly make a difference to my
ability to explain things to them, but what I respond to most powerfully, as a teacher and as
a philosopher, is that initial spark.
Similarly, my own experience suggests that even before being inducted into one or other
of the ‘analytic’ or ‘continental’ approaches and tradition, or even being aware of the
tensions between them, many students seem to exhibit instinctive temperamental differences in relating to philosophy. Although, as I said, the relationship between
temperamental factors and different philosophical traditions probably merits further
exploration, what interests me here is the role of philosophical temperament and style in
teaching.
Thus, for example, we can have endless philosophical arguments about whether or not
Wittgenstein’s philosophy should be read as a complete system. But a more fruitful
question for us as teachers of philosophy is that of why and how we relate to certain
philosophical ideas and certain writers. It therefore seems to me that Michael Peters’ very
argument that ‘the analytic impulse to want to extract a theory or method from Wittgenstein is wrong-headed and that to interpret him as offering a systematic philosophy is to
miss the point of his philosophizing entirely’ (Peters 2001, p.1) is less interesting for its
contribution to the endless debate about how to interpret Wittgenstein, than for its
revealing use of the word ‘impulse’. Of course, Peters’ choice of the phrase ‘analytic’
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clearly has the (probably intentional) effect of associating this tendency with a particular
philosophical tradition and a particular position about what philosophy is or should be.
However, as the preceding discussion suggests, I believe that this is at least as much a
matter of temperament and style as of intellectual positions. Thus while it may be of
considerable scholarly interest to pursue questions of ‘what Wittgenstein meant’, we surely
have to acknowledge that we are unlikely ever to resolve these questions - for what could
possibly count as conclusive evidence that we have finally ‘got the point’ of his philosophy? In an educational context, the question of whether one interpretation is ‘right’ or
‘wrong’ is less relevant than the question of why and how different people relate to
different aspects of his philosophy, why it means something important for them. The sheer
volume of literature on Wittgenstein, and his appropriation by both ‘continental’ and
‘analytic’ philosophers, reflects the ways in which people with a range of different
philosophical styles (in which the ‘e.g.’/ ‘i.e.’ distinction may be only one axis) have found
themselves able to relate to, be inspired by, and get excited about different aspects of his
thought. There seems no getting away from the fact that there are people who seem to be
inclined to think more in terms of theories and systems, and those who are more inclined to
think in terms of mental pictures or examples. The fact that Wittgenstein’s philosophical
writing may at times lend itself to both of these approaches merely adds another layer of
complexity to the task of teaching students to appreciate and understand it.
One positive suggestion arising from this discussion is that we need to be aware of our
own philosophical temperament and style, and to reflect on why and how we relate to
certain philosophical ideas and how we communicate them in our teaching. But if, as I
suggest, this is not merely a question of pedagogic technique, but is intimately connected to
our sense of who we are, there may be little we can—or should—do to change it. Of course
we can, as mentioned above, make the effort to provide definitions even if we are ‘e.g.
philosophers’, and search for appropriate examples even if we are ‘i.e. philosophers’. But
this does not change the fact that there may be basic differences of temperament which run
far deeper than questions of methodology.
We need to take account of issues like these—deeply personal and often uncomfortable
issues—in our teaching, but also, crucially, to accept that while they may not necessarily
follow from a clearly articulated conception of what philosophy is, they cannot be separated from issues to do with the content and nature of what we teach. For one worrying
implication of the trend that, as Standish and others warn us, runs the risk of reducing
teaching in higher education to a technique, is that the teacher becomes a technician. As
such, questions about her identity, her temperament, and her feelings about the subject
matter—are excluded from the picture. Yet our sense of who we are and how we feel about
philosophy is not an irrelevant and possibly damaging part of our personal lives which can
be written out of theories about pedagogic technique and generic teaching skills, or
‘managed’ like other parts of the educational process. It is a central aspect of our identity as
philosophers and as teachers of philosophy, and awareness of it in our practice may be at
least as important to improving this practice as learning about group dynamics, lessonplanning, target-setting and evaluation.
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