ABSTRACT
In all his educational writings, Abraham Edel avoids the shortcomings of narrow partisanship. Following earlier developments in pure philosophy, the 1950s became the boundary dividing philosophers of education wedded to metaphysical, speculative systems from those doing ordinary language or linguistic analysis. Edel’s method and contribution to educational philosophy are: First there is an examination of the components of Edel’s method; then this method is used to analyze one educational issue; and finally, Edel’s contribution to educational philosophy is evaluated. Edel’s interdisciplinary approach sheds a rather different light on educational problems than would be possible with ordinary language analysis. While other philosophers sketch pessimistic pictures of educational problems, Edel opens new doors and paints the same problem in colors of hope and optimism. How a problem is conceptualized affects which categories and concepts are chosen and how they are analyzed. When an educational problem is embedded within a philosophic system or doctrinaire view, the parameters of the problem are often narrowed.
