Studies in Philosophy and Education, 14, 217-227, (1995); the journal reissued as P. Smeyers and J. Marshall (eds.) Philosophy and Education: Accepting Wittgenstein's Challenge, pp. 93-103; Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Education is a morally neutral value. Justification normally assumes identity of person across options. Parfit suggests a way of thinking that allows some choice as to one's boundaries, based on substantive characteristics. Education attempts to transform core attributes of a person so that the structure of standard justification no longer applies. This picture is more revealing than Wittgensteinian appeals to forms of life. The paper shows how other treatments are deformed through failure to recognize the breakdown of standard justification here; it also demonstrates the inability of "forms of life" to answer educational questions at the appropriate level of generality.
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