Meditation on Wittgenstein and Education

Abstract

This chapter is composed of a series of writing fragments that functions as personal meditations on various themes in Wittgenstein’s work as they find resonance in this author’s professional and personal life: as educational philosopher, educator, and psychotherapist. These themes focus on human suffering induced by being captured in reification of discursive thoughts and propositional knowledge claims, including knowledge claims based on seeing ourselves as predominantly causality bound . In commenting on numerous passages from Wittgenstein’s works, possibilities of human liberation are sought through seeing ourselves anew as beings capable of exercising human freedom and responsibility . Along the way, nuanced and critical clarifications are made about the distinction between desire and craving, and between fulfillment and satisfaction; instrumental reason serving causality-bound thinking; learning that cultivates sensibility and judgment; Wittgensteinian’s pedagogy that resists objectification of students; critical importance of ethics and aesthetics to human liberation and flourishing; and interconnectedness, or unity, of philosophy, therapy, and education when seen through Wittgensteinian’s lens.