Stephen Toulmin argues that the potential for reason to improve our lives has been hampered by a serious imbalance in our pursuit of knowledge. The centuries-old dominance of rationality has diminished the value of reasonableness. Toulmin issues a powerful call to redress the balance between rationality and reasonableness.

Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education.

Starting from two passages of the autobiography of Lipman, which represent the description of a sort of ‘primary scene’ of P4C, the presented paper shows how the Deweyan notion of qualitative thought is pivotal for the entire Lipmanian undertaking. Dewey’s distinction between ‘situation’ and ‘object’ in thinking is read into the Lipman differentiation of schemata and concepts and used to analyze the reasons for which narrative comes to play a crucial role in the project of education for thinking. The mobilization (...) of narrative entails a movement of turning the history of philosophy inside out, which may be considered the major achievement of Lipman. This movement is opposite to that of mere historicization and can also be construed in terms of ‘dramatization,’ culminating in the Bildung. (shrink)

The philosophy for children curriculum was specially written by Matthew Lipman and colleagues for the teaching of philosophy by non-philosophically educated teachers from foundation phase to further education colleges. In this article I argue that such a curriculum is neither a necessary, not a sufficient condition for the teaching of philosophical thinking. The philosophical knowledge and pedagogical tact of the teacher remains salient, in that the open-ended and unpredictable nature of philosophical enquiry demands of teachers to think in the moment (...) and draw on their own knowledge and experience of academic philosophy. Providing specialist training or induction in the P4C curriculum cannot and should not replace undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in academic philosophy at universities. However, although for academic philosophers the use of the P4C curriculum could be beneficial, I will argue that its use poses the risk of wanting to form children into the ideal ‘abnormal’ child, the thinking child—the adult philosopher’s child positioned as such by the Lipman novels. The notion of narrativity is central in my argument. With the help of two picturebooks—The Three Pigs by David Weisner and Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne—I illustrate my claim that philosophy as ‘side-shadowing’ or meta-thinking can only be generated in the space ‘in between’ text, child and educator, thereby foregrounding a ‘pedagogy of exposure’ rather than ‘teacher proof’ texts. (shrink)

Tout commentateur ne dit-il pas les choses autrement que l'auteur qu'il explique ? Sans cela, il devrait se borner à renvoyer au texte, et n'y rien ajouter. Mais nous ne rejoignons pas, en cela, ceux des critiques contemporains qui cherchent la signification profonde d'une doctrine en des idées auxquelles l'auteur n'a jamais pensé. S'il est vrai que Descartes n'a pas séparé, en son vocabulaire, ce que nous appelons être et ce que nous appelons objet, il demeure que, par sa théorie (...) de la création des vérités, par son doute, par son projet de fonder la science sur la métaphysique, il les a distingués, et a pris, de leur rapport, la conscience la plus claire. En traduisant parfois les pensées cartésiennes en un langage plus adapté à notre temps, en déclarant que Descartes a découvert métaphysiquement l'homme comme pouvoir de dépasser l'objet vers l'Etre, et comme signe de l'Être en ce monde, nous n'avons pas voulu moderniser Descartes, mais seulement dégager ce qui, dans sa philosophie, est éternel. (shrink)

Originally published in 1916, John Dewey’s seminal book Democracy and Education was not translated into French until 1975, thanks to the work accomplished by Gérard Deledalle. Welcomed by a relative indifference on the part of French philosophers, the book only received attention from a few intellectuals, working in the field of educational sciences. But this has not always been the case. The main purpose of this paper is so to study the various ways according to which Dewey’s work has been (...) read and used over the last century. Based on a comprehensive review of French literature concerning Dewey, it underlines two mains moments proposing divergent interpretations and uses of his ideas, with the decade following its original publication; and, its translation into French. The relevance and the topicality of such a historical work appears to be all the more important as the beginning of the 21st century is marked by a rediscovery of Deweyan thought by the French audience, with the noticeable reprinting of Democracy and Education. In so doing, we shall thus point out the moving and transactional character of a book still to be read, pragmatically. (shrink)

This article explicates a valuable but undernoticed point of contact between John Dewey and Michel Foucault. Both agreed that thinking arose in the context of problems such that the work of thought for both proceeds by way of working through and working over problems. Both affirmed that thinking arose in problematic situations; that it was about clarifying those situations, and that ultimately it was directed towards achieving a degree of resolution of what was problematic in the situation. Both agreed that (...) thinking—or inquiry—was not fundamentally about the representations of a situation; either those produced by a contemporary thinker or as an exercise directed at historical materials. Both agreed that a history of ideas as autonomous entities, distorted not only the process of thinking as a practice, but also the reasons for which it had been engaged in, often with a certain seriousness and urgency, the first place: that is to say, such approaches covered over the stakes. Both agreed that the stakes involved something experiential and entailed a form of logic (or in Foucault’s later vocabulary a mode of ‘veridiction’), in which the thinker could not help but be involved. (shrink)

The problem reduced to its lowest terms is whether inquiry can develop in its own ongoing course the logical standards and forms to which further inquiry shall submit.Gilles Deleuze, in his book What Is Philosophy? asks: "What is the best way to follow the great philosophers? Is it to repeat what they said or to do what they did, that is, create concepts for problems that necessarily change?" (Deleuze and Guattari 28). I imagine few in this audience would disagree with (...) that claim. The changing, historically situated, interplay of concepts and problems is a register that those inspired by the work of John Dewey can readily acknowledge as pertinent even if what Dewey meant by each of the terms and what Deleuze meant .. (shrink)