Robert Darnton's 1997 Essay George Washington's False Teeth points out two problems of homogenizing the Enlightenment. The first is a geographical homogenizing of the discussions in the eighteenth century to the idea of the Enlightenment, and the second the historic homogenizing by assuming the twentieth century as the heir of the Enlightenment. Both problems stem from a scientific point of view that essentially disregards historical contexts. In my paper I would like to talk about the problems that can result when we disregard historical contexts in the field of philosophy and education. I will choose one or two examples connected to the Anglo- Saxon tradition of philosophy of education, which has traditionally been tidily separated from research in the history of education. Philosophers of education, obviously, use past sources. With "past" I am talking about the works of dead, Western, white men, like Socrates, Plato, Hume, and Kant. What is stupendous is that statements of former times seem to be used easily to build either a straight line to our present time - sometimes of decline or of advancement - or to compose a homogenous forum - an "original situation" (John Rawls) - where 'true' arguments are exchanged. There are so many texts where you as a reader get the impression that, let's say, Plato, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Karl Marx are talking together at the same time in the same place - and we don't know whether to imagine Plato's academy, the Dutch exile of Locke, the village of Motiers, the remoteness of Konigsberg, or the British Library. Would Plato think the same way in the nineteenth century as he did almost 400 years before Christ? In other words: How can we imagine that a philosopher at the end of the Peloponnesian War living in a hectic and complex political situation is talking about the same thing when discussing "truth" or "idea" or "justice" or "liberty" as a late eighteenth- century Pietist living in remote East Prussia? Cambridge historian Quentin Skinner said, while arguing in favor of research of contexts rather than of "pure" ideas, that a historiographical concept like this "leaves the traditional figure of the author in extremely poor health". Now, first of all, it leaves at first glance those authors in extremely poor health that try to formulate a theory of education, understanding that theory of education has to embed normative statements as well. If "pure" arguments of our historic heroes or enemies may not be cited anymore and history furthermore just reconstructs contexts rather than the dignity of single arguments, the theorist does not know where to take arguments from - unless he engages in what Richard Smith is complaining about: empiricism. But there is an important difference between empiricism and empiry. To abandon the idea of the existence of pure arguments of any philosopher - an idea that results from the "Quest of Certainty" as Dewey made clear in his Gifford Lectures 1929 - does not mean that we have to be thrown into blindly counting sacks of pepper in the harbors of India or registering tobacco bales in Virginia. How can we, on this basis, formulate any theory at all? How can we do philosophy and history? This ist the question that is going to be outlined at the end of my paper based on the theoretical consequences of the linguistic turn.