This book is a collection of essays motivated by a "cultural" and biographical reading of Wittgenstein. It includes some new essays and some that were originally published in Educational Philosophy and Theory. The book focuses on the concept of “technoscience”, and the relevance of Wittgenstein’s work for philosophy of technology which amplifies Lyotard’s reading and provides a critique of education as an increasingly technology-led enterprise. It includes a distinctive view on the ethics of reading Wittgenstein and the ethics of suicide that shaped him. It also examines the reception and engagement with Wittgenstein’s work in French philosophy with a chapter on post-analytic philosophy of education as a choice between Richard Rorty and Jean-François Lyotard. Peters examines Wittgenstein’s academic life at Cambridge University and his involvement as a student and faculty member in the Moral Sciences Club. Finally, the book provides an understanding of Wittgensteinian styles of reasoning and the concept of worldview. Is it possible to escape the picture that holds us captive? This constitutes a challenging introduction to Wittgenstein’s work for academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of education, technology and philosophy.

This book is a collection of essays curated by Michael Peters and motivated by a 'cultural' reading of Wittgenstein.

This multi-authored collection covers the methodology and philosophy of collective writing. It is based on a series of articles written by the authors in Educational Philosophy and Theory, Open Review of Educational Research and Knowledge Cultures to explore the concept of collective writing. This tenth volume in the Editor's Choice series provides insights into the philosophy of academic writing and peer review, peer production, collective intelligence, knowledge socialism, openness, open science and intellectual commons. This collection represents the development of the philosophy, methodology and philosophy of collective writing developed in the last few years by members of the Editors’ Collective (EC), who also edit, review and contribute to Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT), as well as to PESA Agora, edited by Tina Besley, and Access, edited by Nina Hood, two PESA ‘journals’ recently developed by EC members. This book develops the philosophy, methodology and pedagogy of collective writing as a new mode of academic writing as an alternative to the normal academic article. The philosophy of collective writing draws on a new mode of academic publishing that emphasises the metaphysics of peer production and open review along with the main characteristics of openness, collaboration, co-creation and co-social innovation, peer review and collegiality that have become a praxis for the self-reflection emphasising the subjectivity of writing, sometimes called self-writing. This collection, under the EPAT series Editor’s Choice, draws on a group of members of the Editors’ Collective,who constitute a network of editors, reviewers and authors who established the organisation to further the aims of innovation in academic writing and publishing. It provides discussion and examples of the philosophy, methodology and pedagogy of collective writing. Split into three sections: Introduction, Openness and Projects, this volume offers an introduction to the philosophy and methodology of collective writing. It will be of interest to scholars in philosophy of education and those interested in the process of collective writing.

Viral modernity is a concept based upon the nature of viruses, the ancient and critical role they play in evolution and culture, and their basic application to understanding the role of information and forms of bioinformation in the social world. The concept draws a close association between viral biology on the one hand and information science on the other to understand ‘viral’ technologies, conspiracy theories and the nature of post-truth. The COVID-19 pandemic is a major occurrence and momentous tragedy in world history, with millions of infections and many deaths worldwide. It has disrupted society and caused massive unemployment and hardship in the global economy. Michael A. Peters and Tina Besley explore human resilience and the collective response to catastrophe, and the philosophy and literature of pandemics, including ‘love and social distancing in the time of COVID-19’. These essays, a collection from Educational Philosophy and Theory, also explore the politicization of COVID-19, the growth of conspiracy theories, its origins and the ways it became a ‘viral’ narrative in the future of world politics.

The book presents a cross-disciplinary overview of critical issues at the intersections of biology, information, and society. Based on theories of bioinformationalism, viral modernity, the postdigital condition, and others, this book explores two inter-related questions: Which new knowledge ecologies are emerging? Which philosophies and research approaches do they require? The book argues that the 20th century focus on machinery needs to be replaced, at least partially, by a focus on a better understanding of living systems and their interactions with technology at all scales – from viruses, through to human beings, to the Earth’s ecosystem. This change of direction cannot be made by a simple relocation of focus and/or funding from one discipline to another. In our age of the Anthropocene, (human and planetary) biology cannot be thought of without (digital) technology and society. Today’s curious bioinformational mix of blurred and messy relationships between physics and biology, old and new media, humanism and posthumanism, knowledge capitalism and bio-informational capitalism defines the postdigital condition and creates new knowledge ecologies. The book presents scholarly research defining new knowledge ecologies built upon emerging forms of scientific communication, big data deluge, and opacity of algorithmic operations. Many of these developments can be approached using the concept of viral modernity, which applies to viral technologies, codes and ecosystems in information, publishing, education, and emerging knowledge (journal) systems. It is within these overlapping theories and contexts, that this book explores new bioinformational philosophies and postdigital knowledge ecologies.

Educational philosophies of self-cultivation as the cultural foundation and philosophical ethos for education have strong and historically effective traditions stretching back to antiquity in the classical ‘cradle’ civilizations of China and East Asia, India and Pakistan, Greece and Anatolia, focused on the cultural traditions in Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism in the East and Hellenistic philosophy in the West. This volume in East-West dialogues in philosophy of education examines both Confucian and Western classical traditions revealing that although each provides its own distinct figure of the virtuous person, they are remarkably similar in their conception and emphasis on moral self-cultivation as a practical answer to how humans become virtuous. The collection also examines self-cultivation in Japanese traditions and also the nature of Michel Foucault’s work in relation to ethical and aesthetic ideals of Hellenistic self-cultivation.

In the last decade the far-right, associated with white nationalism, identitarian politics, and nativist ideologies, has established itself as a major political force in the West, making substantial electoral gains across Europe, the USA, and Latin America, and coalescing with the populist movements of Trump, Brexit, and Boris Johnson’s 2019 election in the UK. This political shift represents a major new political force in the West that has rolled back the liberal internationalism that developed after WWI and shaped world institutions, globalization, and neoliberalism. It has also impacted upon the democracies of the West. Its historical origins date from the rise of fascism in Italy, Germany, and Austria from the 1920s. In broad philosophical terms, the movement can be conceived as a reaction against the rationalism and individualism of liberal democratic societies, and a political revolt based on the philosophies of Nietzsche, Darwin, and Bergson that purportedly embraced irrationalism, subjectivism, and vitalism. This edited collection of essays by Michael A Peters and Tina Besley, taken from the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory, provides a philosophical discussion of the rise of the far-right and uses it as a canvas to understand the return of fascism, white supremacism, acts of terrorism, and related events, including the refugee crisis, the rise of authoritarian populism, the crisis of international education, and Trump’s ‘end of globalism’.