Third, it is the case that, in this sense, everybody is in need of philosophy; it is
almost inescapable because it is about our lives and about happiness, in a deep
sense. Thus, Cavell adds:“If philosophy is esoteric, that is not because a few men
guard its knowledge, but because most men guard themselves against it”(Cavell
1976 , p. xxvii). This means that what makes philosophy look so irrelevant to
student-teachers in thefirst place is not so much philosophy itself as the students
themselves, who tend sweepingly to dismiss wonder and hope, confusion and pain,
caused by philosophical questions, as irrelevant to their lives. Thus, what teachers
as ordinary language philosophers should do is to lead students to take seriously the
complex and ambiguous nature of their pain, wonder, confusion and hope they
encounter in their everyday lives as a way of understanding themselves. This
requires teachers to have courage to question their own teaching-and-learning
experiences in company with their students. This aspect of Cavell’s philosophical
practice leads teachers to build up a kind of friendship with their students, at least in
the sense that they are helping each other for the others to take a step into their own
inner journey into self-knowledge.
Fourth and lastly, it was said that Cavell’s philosophical practice can be best
delivered and expressed in the essay-form of writing as“trying-oneself-out.”For
Cavell, philosophy is a form of writing (or reading) of someone else’s work, such as
a philosophical or literary text, or a works of art includingfilm or painting. This
means that philosophy as writing about (or reading) someone else’work is a way to
self-understanding. What kind of constitutional features does this philosophical
writing imply? And what sort of text or works of art are more appropriate for this
kind of practice? These are the key questions we need to pursue for the future to
make Cavell’s ordinary language philosophy more employable for teacher educa-
tion or education in general.
Unlike“philosophical reflection as a form of action research,”philosophical
reflection as a form of essay is not concerned directly with educational practi-
tioners’practical knowledge; it tends to view student-teachers primarily as free
learners rather than as would-be professionals. While philosophical reflection as
action research is interested in promoting self-knowledge as historical conscious-
ness—that is, in coming to recognize our educational beliefs as historically con-
strained and culturally embedded—philosophical reflection as the essay-form is
directed to self-knowledge as philosophical consciousness, that is, to a knowledge
of ourselves as human subjects obliged tofind and speak in our own voices. In
addition, philosophical reflection as action research is understood to be the practice
ofpublicdiscourse in which dialogical inquiry among practitioners is promoted,
whereas philosophical reflection as the essay-form must be apersonally engaged
practice in which an inner conversation with oneself is stimulated. The former is
focused on the formation of professional identity, the latter on the cultivation of
one’s humanistic sensibility as a human being. No matter how different the two
forms of philosophical reflection may be, I think that they can contribute to
improving would-be teachers’practical knowledge in a complementary way. But,
providing student-teachers with a more intense and focused experience of being
free learners themselves is something that has been widely neglected in teacher
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