of a long life; their private passion is well spent, and spent without rancor (Cavell
1976 , p. xxviii). Cavell holds that philosophymustbe useful to life, for otherwise it
will be harmful; this is why, where philosophy is not needed for life, it should be
silent. Thus, we may need philosophy only as a way of recovering and enlivening
our everyday life that has beenflattened and alienated from us, and this is exactly
the role that Cavell thinks his ordinary language philosophy is committed to: by
making us more attentive to the familiar and everyday, so that we develop an
existential and esthetic sense of life that allows us to relish what exists in all its
particularity and complexity, in its excellence, in the depth of things.
This relation between philosophy and life has a number of practical implications
for teacher education and education in general. First, when the ordinary language
philosopher as teacher-educator attempts to invite student-teachers to participate in
doing philosophy, she does it as an ordinary person without any privileged position.
She knows that she cannot have for her students the self-knowledge they need for
themselves, and we are all placed equally in relation to it. Thus, Cavell says,“No
man is in any better position for knowing it than any other man unlesswantingto
know is a special position,”and he goes on to conclude:“this discovery about
oneself is the same as the discovery of philosophy”(Cavell 1976 , p. xxviii). I think
this tells us how humble we should be not only as teacher educators but also
teachers in regard to what wecan(andcannot) do for the growth of our students as
persons. What is educationally significant about this self-discovery is that it can be a
source of our genuine respect for our studentsaspersonswiththe possibility of
their own inner depth, no matter how young they would be.
Second, while teachers and students stand equal in the quest for self-knowledge,
the awakened desire of teachers for self-knowledge puts them in a special position,
that is, the position of being able to see the point of philosophical enterprise for
their students, and thereby being obliged to take up an educational responsibility to
awaken the students’ desire to know themselves. However, the kind of
self-knowledge at stake here is distinct from what is emphasized in the current
educational discourse of“emotional intelligence”or“emotional literacy”that is
directed to the cultivation of students’ability to understand their own as well as
others’emotions and desires.^11 The latter psychological approach has its own merit
in giving teachers and students technical prescriptions on what we should do in
order to understand better their emotions, heighten their self-esteem, and attain
balanced emotional control. But Cavell’s philosophical practice aspires after a
different kind of self-understanding for both teachers and students. It is the kind that
is accompanied by a long-lastingethicalorspiritualeffect on us, derived from our
deepened self-understanding of what is true about ourselves.
(^11) The recent discourse of‘emotional intelligence’or‘emotional literacy’in the practice of teaching
and learning tends to highlight interpersonal sensitivity and emotional responsiveness not only as
an effective pedagogical virtue but also as an educational aim. The term‘emotional literacy’was
coined and popularized in the 1990’s in thefield of positive psychology, especially in the UK,
whereas the term‘emotional intelligence’became popularized in the US by Daniel Goleman’s
bookEmotional Intelligence( 1995 ).
84 D.-J. Kwak