ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to elucidate ‘life after death’ for philosophy of education. It argues that there are good grounds both, in general, for considering the later Ludwig Wittgenstein a ‘philosopher of culture’ in the continental tradition rather than a place-holder in the analytic tradition, and for accepting Jean-Francois Lyotard’s reading over Richard Rorty’s. A Lyotardian reading provides a direction for post-analytic philosophy of education. Histories and critical accounts of philosophy of education have been marked by the historiographic codes of ‘periods’, ‘revolutions’, ‘ruptures’ and ‘paradigms’ familiar to the history of philosophy proper. Richard Rorty uses the notion of ethnocentrism as a link between his antirepresentationalism and his political liberalism. Richard Rorty divides liberal social theorists into ‘Kantians’ and ‘Hegelians’, where the latter understand ‘humanity’ as a biological rather than a moral notion and dignity as something that is conferred by a community.
