Philosophy for Children: Aesthetics

Following neo-Aristotelians Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha Nussbaum, we claim that humans are story-telling animals who learn from the stories of diverse others. Moral agents use rational emotions, such as compassion which is our focus here, to imaginatively reconstruct others’ thoughts, feelings and goals. In turn, this imaginative reconstruction plays a crucial role in deliberating and discerning how to act. A body of literature has developed in support of the role narrative artworks (i.e. novels and films) can play in allowing us (...) the opportunity to engage imaginatively and sympathetically with diverse characters and scenarios in a safe protected space that is created by the fictional world. By practising what Nussbaum calls a ‘loving attitude’, her version of ethical attention, we can form virtuous habits that lead to phronesis (practical wisdom). In this paper, and taking compassion as an illustrative focus, we examine the ways that students’ moral education might usefully develop from engaging with narrative artworks through Philosophy for Children (P4C), where philosophy is a praxis, conducted in a classroom setting using a Community of Inquiry (CoI). We argue that narrative artworks provide useful stimulus material to engage students, generate student questions, and motivate philosophical dialogue and the formation of good habits which, in turn, supports the argument for philosophy to be taught in schools. (shrink)

This article explores the meeting of two approaches towards philosophy and education: the philosophy for children approach advocated by Lipman and others, and Schmid’s philosophical concept of Lebenskunst. Schmid explores the concept of the beautiful or good life by asking what is necessary for each individual to be able to develop their own art of living and which aspects of life are significant when shaping a good and beautiful life. One element of Schmid’s theory is the practical application of philosophy (...) through the notions of Bildung, reflection, prudence and practical wisdom, as well as the requirement for each individual to take responsibility for actively shaping their life as an artwork. In this sense, each person is the artist responsible for living their own beautiful life. We argue that there are useful parallels between Schmid’s concept of the art of living and P4C, such as the ideal of a holistic philosophy that is “lived.” The pragmatic approach of P4C focuses on the embodied learner who practices critical, caring and creative thinking. Both P4C and Schmid’s theory are reminiscent of the Aristotelian notion of practical wisdom, which allows for an approach to an education for life that prepares students to develop their own art of living. (shrink)

We lead off this issue of Childhood and Philosophy with a collection of testimonies, homages, and brief memoirs offered from around the world in response to the death of the founder of Philosophy for Children, Matthew Lipman on December 26, 2010, at the age of 87. To characterize Lipman as “founder” is completely accurate, but barely evokes the role he played in conceiving, giving birth to, and nurturing this curriculum cum pedagogy that became a movement, and which has taken root (...) in over 40 countries, from Iceland to Nigeria to Taiwan to Chile and everywhere in between. The movement itself is broader than the program, which has in fact experienced multiple transformations in multiple contexts over its half-century of life. In fact, as many of the testimonies below either state outright or imply, the movement is an emancipatory one and thus implicitly political, infused with all the long-suffering hope for our species inspired in us by the fact of natality, and by our own intuitive faith in the transformative power of reason—or as Lipman came to call it, “reasonableness.” For those seized by its educational possibilities, it presents a sudden influx of sunlight and fresh air into an institution long stultified by its own rigid habitus, and promises the reconstruction of schooling in the image of authentic democratic practice that recognizes and honors the unique capacities of children. As Philosophy in the Classroom—Lipman’s first and now classic statement of educational philosophy--puts it, the movement promises a re-orientation of the goal of education from information (or “learning”) to meaning, and inaugurates the dialogue with childhood and children that follows from that. Lipman was not just founder of this movement but creator, inventor, developer, convener, organizer, faithful soldier, ambassador, apologist, polemicist, propagandist, and, finally, undying optimist. (shrink)