Abstract

Learning Practical Philosophy is a manuscript that identifies and critically examines elements of a learning context conducive to challenging abstractions for their applicability in daily living. Accounts from the author's extensive voyages on the sea are interwoven with the analysis as an exposition of the learning context elements in the author's personal experience. ;The work discusses the unfortunate propensity of current teaching in philosophy to often abstract without adequate connection to personal experience and the learning's consequent action. Questions are asked: If principles are universally prevailing and manifest in our every action, why, in philosophy, are they taught as disconnected from the experience of our daily lives? Is philosophy rightfully abstract, theoretical, and impractical, or is philosophy disassociated from practical application due to the way it has been taught to most learners? ;Learning Practical Philosophy seeks to enhance the effectiveness of learning philosophy toward a far more fundamental role in education than they are awarded today. To accomplish this, "Practical Philosophy" employs specific learning context elements to challenge abstractions for their validity in human experience. ;The advocated specific elements of the learning context that constitute Practical Philosophy are entitled: The Joy of Learning, which refers to learning connected to our natural growth: Humility of Our Knowledge, where we align with our relation to nature; Supposing Order, which examines the consequences of the order we impose upon nature, Sensible Knowing, which is exploring our potential to know by operating as a complete organism, Learning In Relation With Others, which refers to learning founded in our expressed differences, and Awareness of the Learning Process, where the learner connects to their learning process. These learning context elements are exhibited as the bases of authentic learning that, in turn, is the natural way we participate, as human beings, in reconstituting our world. ;Learning Practical Philosophy is described as essential to education reform as it is learning that emphasizes authentic individual contributions rather than compliance to expectation. It is learning designed to disclose impeding presuppositions that inhibit authentic knowledge so that any consequent action becomes a naturally unrestrained influence upon human progress. The work contends that when our presuppositions are challenged for their validity to our experience, and then connected directly to our actions, we are at our full, flourishing potential as humans. ;Specific educational reforms that are the natural derived action from the learning context of Practical Philosophy we examined. ;Learning is recognized as the highest realization of a full flourishing human and the greatest substantiation of individual self-worth. By connecting learning to personal growth within the natural human process, Learning Practical Philosophy constructively dissolves any supposition that disassociates learning from daily experience and consequent action