EPS 408: Epistemology and Education
Theme: Wittgenstein and Education
Fall 1998
Instructors: Nicholas Burbules and Michael Peters
There is a reflector list for the class. Messages and announcements sent to EPS408@mail.ed.uiuc.edu will reach the whole group.
The theme of this semester’s course will be Ludwig Wittgenstein’s views on knowledge and language and their implications for teaching. Working from primary readings, as well as biographical texts and correspondence, we will place Wittgenstein’s views about pedagogy, and his own experiences as a teacher, against the background of his philosophical views.
Relying mostly on primary texts, we will be exploring Wittgenstein not as a philosopher who provides a method for analyzing educational concepts but rather as one who approaches philosophical questions from a pedagogical point of view. We believe that the analytic impulse to want to extract a theory or method from Wittgenstein is wrong-headed. His styles are essentially pedagogical: he provides pictures, drawings, analogies, similes, jokes, equations, dialogues with himself, questions and wrong answers, experiments and so on, as a means to shift our thinking, to help us escape the picture that holds us captive. In terms of this reading it is also possible to see connections between other aspects of Wittgenstein’s life, his cultural orientation and his styles of philosophizing (for example, his interest in architecture and his preference for certain musical and poetic styles and forms).
General Wittgenstein Web pages
Brief Wittgenstein Biographies
Wittgenstein Photo Galleries
Wittgenstein Quotations
Documents
Student papers
Schedule of Readings
August 26 Overview of the course
August 31 Wittgenstein’s biography (Monk 1-7)
September 2 Wittgenstein’s biography (Monk 8, 10-17)
September 9 Wittgenstein’s biography (Monk 18-end)
September 14 Wittgenstein’s Vienna (Janik & Toulmin)
September 16 Representing Wittgenstein (Eagleton/Jarman)
September 21 Wittgenstein’s style (Tractatus §1.0-3.5)
September 23 Wittgenstein’s style (Tractatus §4.0-5.557)
September 28 Wittgenstein’s style (Tractatus §5.5571-7.0)
September 30 Wittgenstein and self (Culture & Value 1-25)
October 5 Wittgenstein and self (Culture & Value 26-56)
October 7 Wittgenstein and self (Culture & Value 56-81)
October 12 Wittgenstein’s style (Investigations I)
October 14
October 19 Wittgenstein’s style (Investigations II)
October 21
October 26 Wittgenstein’s style (Investigations III)
October 28
November 2 The last Wittgenstein (On Certainty §1-299)
November 4 The last Wittgenstein (On Certainty §300-676)
November 9 Wittgenstein as teacher (Monk, 9, and others)
November 11 A Wittgensteinian pedagogy (Peters/Burbules)
November 16 A Wittgensteinian pedagogy (Peters/Burbules)
November 18 A Wittgensteinian pedagogy (Peters/Burbules)
November 23 A Wittgensteinian pedagogy (Peters/Burbules)
November 30 A Wittgensteinian pedagogy (Peters/Burbules)
December 2 A Wittgensteinian pedagogy (Peters/Burbules)
December 7 Summary and conclusions
December 9