strikes the reader dumb by provoking her to respond in her own voice as a way of
recoveringthe ordinary meaning of her words—that is, by becoming able to
understand the ordinary words in adifferent spirit. In fact, Cavell’s well-known
philosophical writings on Emerson and Thoreau are examples of the essay as his
own testing of himself (Cavell 1988 , 1990 ). We can always hear his voice, which is
triggered by some specific example and which is constantly engaged in a conver-
sation with itself (much as is realized by the presence in theInvestigationsof
Wittgenstein’s interlocutor)—sometimes in a self-confessing way, at other times in
a self-testing way, on the journey towards a kind of self-enlightenment in the face
of the familiar and everyday.
5.4 Conclusion: A Role for Philosophy in Teacher
Education
Going back to our question in the introduction, we may now need to ask ourselves
how the practice of ordinary language philosophy can contribute to teacher educa-
tion. That is, what is its relevance to the (professional) lives of (would-be) teachers?
Highlighting“the contested and often ambiguous nature of the work”in the delivery
of teaching as one of the conditions that may drive teachers to philosophical
abstraction, Hansen points out how philosophy canhumanizeteachers in such a way
as to be responsive to the contested and ambiguous nature of teaching (Hansen 2001 ,
p. 6). I think this view can be a good way of making sense of Cavell’s ordinary
language philosophy in regard to its contribution to the life of teachers.
Cavell points out that, unlike in other disciplines where a teacher of literature is a
professor of English and a professor of anthropology is an anthropologist, in phi-
losophy a professor of philosophy is not necessarily a philosopher. This impish
remark underscores the point that being a philosopher or being philosophical need
not require us to write philosophical works or to study serious philosophical lit-
erature. I think what is assumed here is the classical relation between philosophy
and life, which is implied in an expression such as:“since ancient times, what
theory (philosophy) was supposed to do was not to make life possible but to make it
happy”(Blumenberg 1983 , p. 232). Pierre Hadot, well-known French scholar of the
ancient philosophy, also says that for the ancient“theory is never considered an end
in itself; it is clearly and decidedly put in the service of practice”(Hadot 1995 ,
p. 60). When Cavell says,“If silence is always a threat in philosophy, it is also its
highest promise”(Cavell 1976 , p. xxi), he seems to express the wish to recover this
healthy relation between philosophy and life, a relation that has been jeopardized by
the narrow professionalization of academic philosophy, far away from the wider
problems of human culture or human life as classically understood.
On the other hand, Cavell agrees with Socrates and Nietzsche who thought that
good old men have no need of philosophy, not necessarily because they are old but
because their passion for their lives is at one with their lives through theexperience
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