In addition to the classical mode of classroom philosophy education that focuses on the history of philosophical thinking, methods of “doing” and “using” philosophy, including philosophical practice and philosophical drama can also form part of philosophy education. Such thinking and language exercises are introduced into activities of the academic philosophy cafe, Inner Mongolia University’s 1957 Coffee. Based on core activities of the philosophy cafe as well as the concept of “ (...) class='Hi'>language game”, an additional language training project is being designed for bilingual participants and language learners, especially for students in secondary education. A two-pronged approach of linguistic and philosophical foci encourages learners to sharpen their minds to the use of languages in the academic world. (shrink)

In Practical Philosophy Education, besides the learning of conceptual knowledge and working with an introspective method, students are actively engaged whereby they are played in a new form as a language game. The negative attitudes and the pretending performances were revised from the exercise of answering questions to asking question, and then to continue asking. 1957 Coffee proposes the “cross-questioning” model of using knowledge to play the “game” of philosophy. This playing experience is passed down intellectually (...) in the form of language game, which is to be replayed sentimentally in a theater game. As a pedagogic, the previous philosophical activities are exemplified in the younger generation’s way of learning and “replaying”. As a lifestyle, the historical classical thinking is continued, while the old games of philosophers are played with new and refreshing rules. (shrink)

Wittgenstein explores learning through practice in the Philosophical Investigations by means of an extended analogy with games. However, does this concern with learning also necessarily extend to education, in our institutional understanding of the word? While Wittgenstein's examples of language learning and use are always shared or social, he does not discuss formal educational institutions as such. He does not wish to found a ‘school of thought’, and is suspicious of philosophy acting as a theory that can (...) be applied to other areas of life. While Wittgenstein's focus on developing independent thinking was neither individualistic nor anti-institutional, it did, however, focus on developing the thinking of his students rather than theorising about how this could be applied on a large scale. An analysis of Hermann Hesse's novel, The Glass Bead Game will help us to pick up where Wittgenstein deliberately left off—thinking about how (or if) one can institutionalise learning methods that encourage thinking for oneself. These differences in the writers’ treatment of education will become evident in the differences between their game analogies. While language-games combat our ‘craving for generality’ in Philosophical Investigations, the Glass Bead Game represents this craving, and how it manifests itself throughout history in disciplines other than logic and philosophy of language. It also represents the potential for institutions to become insular, exclusive communities. (shrink)

This paper discusses how a Platform for Philosophy Education can help to alleviate issues of alienation in the lives of university students. This is done through various personal cultivation and community building activities in the Academic Philosophy Café. The activities draw from philosophical traditions, including traditions with religious or “spiritual” elements. These encourage reflection on one’s place in the world. In addition, students and teachers cooperate to ensure the smooth running of the café and activities, (...) which strengthens the community bond. There is thus a “spiritual contract” formed between participants. In contrast to a written contract that binds parties by means of explicit rewards or sanctions, a “spiritual contract” is built on mutual understanding that higher-level needs will be met through the process of cooperation. Based upon this, a community is established that nourishes the lives of those on campus, benefits their wellbeing and strengthens their capacity to learn effectively. (shrink)

Photo ID 279661800 © Sidewaypics|Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT Decolonization is complex, vast, and the subject of an ongoing academic debate. While the many efforts to decolonize or dismantle the vestiges of colonialism that remain are laudable, they can also reinforce what they seek to end. For decolonization to be impactful, it must be done with epistemic and cultural humility, requiring decolonial scholars, project leaders, and well-meaning people to be more sensitive to those impacted by colonization and not regularly included in the (...) discourse. INTRODUCTION Decolonization is complex. To successfully achieve decolonization, projects should incorporate the voices of those subjugated or silenced. Including such voices requires sincerely exploring who has been affected by colonialism or neocolonialism and how, as well as cultural sensitivity. In its basic use, decolonization refers to countries under colonial rule gaining independence or freedom from forms of subjugation. Additionally, scholars use the term to refer to efforts to dismantle neocolonialism and vestiges of colonialism. The process includes de-silencing subjugated voices.[1] I use decolonization in the latter way to refer to countries with technical independence. While arguably colonization ended formally with independence from colonizing powers, neocolonialism is the indirect, informal, and sometimes subtle control of the people, their economy, and political life despite formal independence from colonizing authorities. I conceptualize neocolonialism as a system that involves direct and involuntary control of another’s political, economic, or social life, impacting their worldview and ways of encountering the world. Decolonization may target actions, places, or systems like health care or AI to overcome the ills of colonialism and neocolonialism. It also may target knowledge and require rethinking how people develop their knowledge base. For example, if people grew up seeing an outside colonizer as superior, they would need to change their knowledge of superiority. Decolonization may target power, for example, changing who owns and distributes COVID-19 vaccines and who distributors exclude in the distribution of vaccines. Decolonization could require looking at those disempowered in the distribution process. Additionally, decolonization may target autonomy of persons by freeing people, ensuring human and individual rights, and respecting cultural traditions. Decolonization projects that try to de-silence by including the voices of those affected by colonialism and neocolonialism must examine inclusiveness in the context of the culture of the subrogated individuals. Examples of decolonization projects include making datasets inclusive of diverse peoples and places, returning to traditional food and eating practices, making sure hospitals in developing countries are led by locals and respectful of cultural traditions, returning unethically obtained artefacts or objects. Another project would be laying the groundwork for equality in formerly colonized countries to ensure that business ownership, education, and financial success will flow fairly to those previously victimized by colonization. Summarily, there are many strategies for decolonizing. However, it is worth asking whether the strategies have risks that undermine the goal of decolonization. I. Understanding Decolonization Discourses Many fields, from AI to politics, economics, health care, aviation, and academia, discuss decolonization. The content of the discourse on decolonization depends on the region and field discussing it. Rather than just reporting on decolonization, the discussions may be calls to action. For example, decolonization discourses reflect activism for cognitive justice, such as equal consideration of Indian or African knowledge systems in global health discourses.[2] In politics and political science, some scholars frame decolonization as an anti-western, anti-colonial movement by Africans to emancipate Africa/ns from subjugation or shift the continent to postcolonialism and post-neo-colonialism. This framing walls off non-African participants and may undermine their capacity to benefit the conversation.[3] There are other political scientists who actively support decolonization and see it as a field of activism in support of anyone and countries where colonization harmed people and development.[4] The point is that two ways of conceptualizing decolonization in politics and political science are discernible. One conceptualization is less inclusive since it alienates scholars and professionals from Western, high-income, or developed countries. The other is more inclusive. In humanitarian studies, including philosophy, some decolonization articles and conversations are efforts to end the destructive force of colonization. They focus on either the form, such as ecocide, genocide, and many others, or the geographic location, such as Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania.[5] Finally, the feelings one brings into this conversation can adversely impact how one engages in them and who they listen to or are willing to hear from. For example, anger, rage, bitterness, and hatred are emotions that are not uncommon in spaces of decolonization conversations. Decolonization conversations that originate from a place of negativity risk deepening the psychological state of victimhood and prevent people from disrupting constructively or critically engaging in the conversation.[6] II. Understanding Decolonization Strategies Decolonization strategies mainly aim to de-silence victims of domination or subjugation. People have proposed many strategies for decolonizing. These strategies may be informed by what the target is for decolonization. Decolonization can target power relations in global health. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health organizations noted the power imbalance in vaccine distribution. Decolonization could involve de-silencing those affected by neocolonialism to bring about a more balanced distribution of power and a more fair distribution of the vaccine. By analyzing who was adversely impacted by the distribution and who ought to wield power, those engaged in decolonizing advocated for positive change and equitable power relations. Equally, when being is the target of decolonization, the language of unlearning or relearning and mental decolonization take centre stage in the decolonization discourse. For example, the quest to decolonize colonized minds aims to demythologize African inferiority and Western superiority. Demythologizing African inferiority enables those engaged in the decolonization discourse to cultivate and foster African agency.[7] Finally, when knowledge production is the target of decolonization, scholars use inclusion and cognitive justice. For example, they try to alter the knowledge that underlies global health ethics.[8] “[D]decolonizing researchers aim to respectfully understand and integrate theory from Other(ed) perspectives, while also critically examining the underlying assumptions that inform their Western research framework.”[9] One common strategy that scholars use in decolonization is inclusion. It is worth asking, does including people who have been subrogated foster decolonization? Whether that is effective depends on whether included people are more heard or whether the strategies to include them create new forms of silencing. III. Inclusion and the Quest to Decolonize Evaluating how effective inclusion is in the quest to de-silence subjugated voices is important. First, inclusive strategies are not neutral. They are epistemically situated. This situatedness constrains meaning-making in different ways: how and what questions are asked, how social roles are constructed, organized or assigned, and who is admitted to the room where these conversations occur.[10] Inclusion strategies may reinforce (unchallenged) assumptions. For example, to address prejudices and stereotypes in global health images, Arsenii Alenichev and his colleagues[11] successfully inverted “one stereotypical global health image” by prompting a generative AI to produce “an image of a traditional Indian or African healer healing a White Child.” Although there were some problems with the image of the White child, this innovation is a significant, useful effort to de-embed or strip global health images of problematic pictures that mythologize White superiority and Black inferiority. Yet it is possible that using categories like traditional Indian or African reinforces unchallenged assumptions, raising key questions regarding how language and words create new stereotypes. It is common to define traditional as non-conventional, unorthodox, and informal. Yet studies continue to reveal that non-scientifically appraised healing approaches in India or Africa are not only effective but also real, meaningful, fundamental, and primary care-seeking behaviours in many communities in these regions.[12] Suppose inclusive strategies are not un-situated. These conversations may be had within the structures, language, and spaces built by or connected to colonialism. The spaces, language, places, and structures in which these conversations occur can limit who can participate and how they participate. Importantly, some conditions are not conducive to participation as equals. The allocated time for the discussion could also constrain how individuals express themselves. It is unclear who is ultimately heard. Furthermore, epistemic situatedness of inclusion can impact decolonization conversations when participants are beneficiaries of, products of, and trained by structures and systems they seek to dismantle. To enhance the decolonization project and its goals, a pressing task is to unveil and question how the circumstances may inhibit activism. If the vestiges of colonialism continue to structure the decolonization discourse invisibly, the vestiges may undermine decolonization. For example, a public health discussion that includes white Western doctors and Western pharmaceutical executives in Africa may have many local Africans at the table but could still effectively devalue their input based on built-in assumptions and biases that are vestiges of colonialism. Second, exclusion and inclusion are also not binary. Individuals may experience exclusion, even while included (the phenomenon called internal exclusion). In other words, inclusion can fail to be substantial or become a means of enhancing optics, “a way of (un)consciously weakening the radical claims being pursued.”[13] For example, in South Africa, many institutions have made significant efforts to diversify their faculties due to the promulgation of the Employment Equity Act 55.[14] The act requires South African institutions to implement employment equity that redresses the history of harmful discrimination in the country. The act further requires transforming departments and institutional administrations. Although many recognize and support the need to transform departments in South Africa, the rhetoric of transformation departs sharply from the lived experiences.[15] This misalignment between the plan and practice is evident in the underrepresentation of black people and females in senior management teams, professorships in many universities and health departments, and positions of power in some South African institutions. Those selected in the transformation of the departments have also complained of being overworked. The burden of extra work undermines their ability to develop agency and voice in the space they now occupy or fulfil key requirements that have implications for their career trajectory.[16] This is called the minority tax. Notably, "the minority tax… is the burden of extra responsibilities [placed] on faculty of colour to achieve diversity and inclusion and contributes to attrition and impedes academic promotion."[17] One challenge for decolonializing projects will be for decolonial scholars and those selected for decolonization objectives to have the humility to decline invitations, requests, roles, and platforms for which they are either unqualified or lack the capacity to fulfil. At its heart, decolonization strategies must empower those included rather than weaken them. Finally, inclusion can lead to a phenomenon known as elite capture.[18] Elite capture occurs when socially advantaged individuals in a group monopolize or exploit activism to their own benefit at the expense of the larger, struggling group. Elite capture weakens decolonization efforts from within, revealing that those likely to benefit from global inclusive efforts are those who fulfil globally constructed standards, those “already present in the room.” There is no better strategy to weaken decolonial movements than weakening the project from within by strategically positioning individuals who share physical properties with the victims of exclusion and silencing but intellectually, behaviourally, psychologically, and emotionally share more common ground with the colonizer. Such insiders may be unaware they are furthering neocolonial conditions rather than decolonizing. In relation to decolonization, particularly in global health, elite capture reveals that those whose voices are loudest in the room are not necessarily those more impacted by colonialism. They may benefit more from reinforcing colonialism. Opportunism weakens meaningful activism from within, preventing good initiatives and strategies from having their intended impact or taking substantive root.[19] This paper cannot do justice to elite capture, but it is worth noting its negative impacts. IV. Improving the Impact of Decolonization To end neo-colonialism, it is important to understand how it manifests and what to do at each level. Beyond the academic discourse, many tangible efforts exist to decolonize through de-silencing. Examples of these efforts include the ME2 movement that seeks to centre the concerns and experiences of sexually abused or harassed victims in the public discourse. At the funding level, many grant-awarding agencies like Wellcome Trust have dedicated huge budgets to studies that help them understand how they may have perpetrated colonialism or neocolonialism and what they can do differently going forward.[20] In South Africa, promulgating the Employment Equity Act 55 was a tangible attempt to entrench decolonization concerns in a country's regulatory framework. Yet, these decolonization efforts could fail to be substantive if they do not reflect cultural sensitivity. Two key components of cultural sensitivity are worth highlighting here: epistemic and cultural humility. Epistemic humility is an intellectual virtue described as knowing one’s limitations and the limitations of the learning methods employed. At its simplest, it is the ability to admit when one is wrong. Cultural humility includes genuine attempts to learn about and embrace other cultures. Epistemic and cultural humility are signs of academic excellence and strength. Epistemic and cultural humility seriously acknowledge how the state of our knowledge, cognitive limitations, experiences, and backgrounds, while constraining us, also invite us to listen, learn, grow, and change. The limitations-owing account of epistemic and cultural humility suggests that “a person who is aware of her cognitive limitations and owns them is much better positioned to achieve such epistemic goods as true beliefs and understanding than someone who… simply has insight into the epistemic status of her beliefs.”[21] Epistemic and cultural humility may help prevent decolonization projects that unintentionally reinforce what they seek to dismantle. Epistemic humility calls on decolonizers to defer tasks for which they are not qualified to suitably qualified persons. Beyond this, humility supports brave scholarship that imagines and reimagines how featuring the same voices, faces, and perspectives possibly introduces new forms of domination or silencing. Cultural knowledge can lead to a more intentional way of seeking out the right people or a more diverse group than those frequently featured in decolonization conversations. This would give others more opportunities to navigate these spaces and should do so in ways that are familiar to them. One ought to be more sensitive to those who would ordinarily not be included in these conversations. Unless we radically and boldly reimagine these discussions, we risk alienating those most negatively impacted by neocolonialism. CONCLUSION Decolonization conversations are complex and the subject of academic debate. The strategies employed to decolonize can harm or help the victims of neo-colonialism. Inclusion of previously silenced individuals may not be enough to overcome the vestiges of colonialism, leading to a false inclusion, where those included feel excluded or contribute in ways reflecting their own biases and circumstances. Inclusion of an elite or people who do not truly represent the subjugated can lead to elite capture. For decolonization strategies to be impactful, for example, in the context of global health, project leaders and participants must engage in conversations employing epistemic and cultural humility. In many ways, epistemic and cultural humility can help us demythologize our assumptions of any cultural superiority or cognitive authority, allowing for diverse voices, cultures, and perspectives to emerge without domination. - [1] Caesar Atuire & Olivia Rutazibwa. 2021. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization [Online]. Available from: https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/african-reading-covid-19-pandemic-and-stakes-decolonization [Accessed July 29, 2021 2021]. [2] Bridget Pratt & Jantina De Vries 2023. Where is knowledge from the Global South? An account of epistemic justice for a global bioethics. Journal of Medical Ethics, medethics-2022-108291. [3] Anye-Nkwenti Nyamnjoh 2023. Is decolonisation Africanisation? The politics of belonging in the truly African university. Social Dynamics, 1-20. [4] Rianna Oelofsen 2015. Decolonisation of the African mind and intellectual landscape. Phronimon, 16, 130-146. [5] Caesar Atuire & Olivia Rutazibwa. 2021. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization [Online]. Available from: https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/african-reading-covid-19-pandemic-and-stakes-decolonization [Accessed July 29, 2021 2021]. [6] Pedro Alexis Tabensky 2008. The Postcolonial Heart of African Philosophy. South African Journal of Philosophy, 27, 285-295. [7] Nicholas M. Creary 2012. African Intellectuals and Decolonization, Ohio, Ohio University Press. [8] Bridget Pratt & Jantina De Vries 2023. Where is knowledge from the Global South? An account of epistemic justice for a global bioethics. Journal of Medical Ethics, medethics-2022-108291. [9] Vivetha Thambinathan & Elizabeth Anne Kinsella 2021. Decolonizing Methodologies in Qualitative Research: Creating Spaces for Transformative Praxis. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 20, 16094069211014766. [10] Abimbola Seye 2023. Knowledge from the global South is in the global South. Journal of Medical Ethics, 49, 337. [11] A. Alenichev, P. Kingori & K. P. Grietens 2023. Reflections before the storm: the AI reproduction of biased imagery in global health visuals. Lancet Glob Health. [12] Jonathan K. Burns & Andrew Tomita 2015. Traditional and religious healers in the pathway to care for people with mental disorders in Africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 50, 867-877. [13] Anye-Nkwenti Nyamnjoh & Cornelius Ewuoso 2023. What type of inclusion does epistemic injustice require? Journal of Medical Ethics, jme-2023-109091. [14] 1998. Employment Equity Act. In: GOVERNMENT, S. A. (ed.) 19370. [15] Dina Zoe Belluigi & Gladman Thondhlana 2019. ‘Why mouth all the pieties?’ Black and women academics’ revelations about discourses of ‘transformation’ at an historically white South African university. Higher Education, 78, 947-963. [16] Juliet Ramohai & Khomotso Marumo 2016. Women in Senior Positions in South African Higher Education: A Reflection on Voice and Agency. 231, 135-157. [17] J. Trejo 2020. The burden of service for faculty of color to achieve diversity and inclusion: the minority tax. Mol Biol Cell, 31, 2752-2754. [18] Olufemi Taiwo 2020. Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference. The Philosopher, 108, 7. [19] Margarita Kurbatova & Elena Kagan 2016. Opportunism of University Lecturers As a Way to Adaptate the External Control Activities Strengthening. Journal of Institutional Studies, 8, 116-136. [20] Jeremy Farrar. 2022. An update on Wellcome's anti-racist programme. An update on Wellcome's anti-racist programme [Online]. Available from: https://wellcome.org/news/update-wellcomes-anti-racism-programme [Accessed August 10, 2022 2022]. [21] Katherine Dormandy 2018. Does Epistemic Humility Threaten Religious Beliefs? Journal of Psychology and Theology, 46, 292-304. (shrink)

Philosophy is the making of theories, badly or occasionally better, with sets of concepts.It resembles fiction, poetry and literature and theology in certain ways in so far as the author uses his imagination and intuition to produce a set of ideas that may or may not attempt to refer to and/or represent or reflect and create a certain reality or life-world.It differs from fiction and is relatively unique in so far as it employs reasoning, argumentation and other (...) class='Hi'>philosophical tools.It seems as if philosophy is self-incestuous, conceptual games with and about concepts using propositions, reasoning and argumentation to make assertions about other concepts, and thereby produce insular, enclosed, self-referential, circular systems of ideas. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's Folly: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Language Games presents a dialogue between the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the author Françoise Davoine, and Davoine's patients with extreme lived experience. The book begins with Davoine's seminar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, which is attended by Wittgenstein. He then accompanies Davoine on visits to colleagues at the Austen Riggs Center in Massachusetts, in California, on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, and at Freud's house in Vienna. The (...) dialogic form of the book allows a performance centered on the psychotherapy of madness and trauma, in which Wittgenstein takes the floor. Davoine introduces us to a contemporary Feast of Fools and creates new language games with madness, enlarging the scope of psychoanalytic approaches to authors like Wittgenstein. The chapters of this book closely resemble short plays in which a conversation with living human beings or with characters from philosophy, literature, science, and the arts encounter one another and begin to open new ways of speaking that can render the "mad" more familiar and more manageable. Wittgenstein's Folly: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Language Games will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and to academics and students engaged in psychoanalytic studies, philosophy and trauma-related studies. (shrink)

This paper examines the conceptual matrix of philosophical counseling, and philosophical practice generally, which distinguishes philosophical practice from mainstream theoretical philosophy. I argue that the essence of philosophical practice is the realization and radicalization of Pierre Hadot’s paradigmshifting view of ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life,’ through the projection of philosophical concepts and methods to the goal of attainment of the good life by moral education and character-building. The base-line concept of (...) the good life that the paper works with is the relatively uncontroversial concept of a life based on sustained reflected pleasures that are both socially desirable and individually fulfilling. I argue that this type of concept of the good life as qualified pleasure is inherent in any doctrinal account of what it is to lead a good life, including the ones that emphasise asceticism, such as Christian philosophy of life and ethics. Finally the paper concludes that projections of the good life by philosophical counselors are reflective on philosophical counselor themselves: philosophical counseling is a way of ‘the good life’ that aims to use the resources of philosophy as a whole to help others build the moral qualities and character required to reach their own good lives. By projecting philosophical concepts and methods to the applied conceptual matrix of moral education and the good life, philosophical counseling emancipates philosophy as a whole from its current remoteness and isolation into an active, and reflective, role in the real lives of ordinary people. This heralds a paradigm shift in philosophy, from the pseudo-science that much of mainstream philosophy painstakingly pretends to be to an intellectual powerhouse for the enhancement of the quality, clarity and integrity of life, which was the reason philosophy initially emerged for, both in the Western and in the Eastern philosophical traditions. (shrink)

This article aims to introduce the recent movements regarding philosophical practice in Japan. In order to understand them in a better way, the historical development and background of philosophical practice shall be shown briefly in the first part. In the second part, three cases of relatively popular philosophical practices in Japan, that is, philosophy cafe, philosophy for/with children and philosophical consulting in the business settings are described as successful practices.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 11.2 (2003) 141-156 [Access article in PDF] Music Education as Critical PracticeA Naturalist View Lauri Väkevä University Of Oulu, Finland I This essay defends naturalism as a framework for philosophy of music education. I have three general reasons for supporting naturalism. First, by taking naturalism seriously we can keep our philosophies up-to-date with scientific inquiry. Second, naturalism can emancipate us from transcendental (...) pseudo-questions and instead help us to deal with the empirical problems of everyday life. Third, with naturalism, we can free ourselves from a priori theories of morals and aesthetics and thus view the active part that normative and aesthetic concerns play in human praxis. Even if I endorse naturalism, I do not subscribe to scientism. 1 Rather, I submit to a pragmatist view that stresses the role of philosophy (and science) in dealing with the questions of our life practices. Of the recent perspectives in the philosophy of music education my approach comes closest to the critical praxialism discussed in the MayDay group. 2All in all, I find a lot in common with the praxialist discussion (within or outside the MayDay group) and the kind of pragmatism that follows John Dewey's mature philosophy. 3 However, it seems to me that the naturalist bent of Deweyan pragmatism has not been thoroughly analyzed in our field. 4 One reason for this [End Page 141] might be the bad report that 'hard' or reductive naturalism has been given in connection with the experimental paradigm of music education research. 5 I want to argue that the critical potential of Deweyan pragmatism should not (and cannot) be separated from a naturalist approach. Taken together, critical and naturalist views can contribute to any philosophy, especially in fields that have a long tradition of leaning on otherworldly explanations.In what follows, I begin by outlining (in broad brushstrokes) the historical position of pragmatism and its status in present day philosophy. Next, I focus on the implications of Deweyan naturalist pragmatism and the possibility of maintaining a critical pragmatist attitude with naturalist presumptions in a pedagogical context. In the final part of the essay, I outline an interpretative framework for a critical pragmatism of music education that takes advantage of the naturalizing tendencies in contemporary philosophy without losing its grasp on the things that matter musically. II For a while, pragmatism had a bad name in academic philosophy. This was especially true after the linguistic turn in the first half of the last century. 6 By making the linguistic turn, many philosophers hoped to disassociate themselves from the speculative tradition(s) once and for all. Logical analysts also made it more difficult for philosophers to ignore the findings of scientists. Thus they paved the way for contemporary reductive naturalism that takes science as the measure of what can be known. 7However, analytic philosophers were not alone in their attempt to provide philosophy with scientific rigor. Classical pragmatists, too, had integrated a naturalist penchant in their output. Embracing naturalism with an open-ended experimental spirit, they wanted to focus on "the problems of men" as the chief subject matter of philosophy. 8 To many analytic philosophers, this seemed like a return to armchair speculation with an ingredient of sentimental ethics thrown in for good measure. Worse still, it looked as though the classical pragmatists were giving in to the spirit of the corporate West: speaking of the truth as "cash-value" surely seemed like a blasphemy to intellectuals who sought from formal logic and mathematics a purity of mind to clear up the messiness of everyday experience. 9Logical analysis also had its shortcomings. While many mainstream philosophers turned to logical analysis for clarity and certainty, at the same time they submitted to Cartesian-Kantian mind-body dualism with its problematic epistemology. Thus, they kept supporting the tensions between the rationalist and empiricist or analytic and synthetic domains of knowledge that haunted modernist neo-Kantian arguments.These distinctions turned out to be easy targets for postanalytic critics. 10 [End Page 142]Classical pragmatists anticipated this... (shrink)

Since the late 1960s, philosophy for children has become a global, multi-disciplinary movement involving innovations in curriculum, pedagogy, educational theory, and teacher education; in moral, social and political philosophy; and in discourse and literary theory. And it has generated the new academic field of philosophy of childhood. Gareth B. Matthews (1929-2011) traced contemporary disrespect for children to Aristotle, for whom the child is essentially a pre-intellectual and pre-moral precursor to the fully realized human adult. Matthews Matthews (...) dubbed this the “deficit conception of childhood” and wrote extensive critiques of its perpetuation in Jean Piaget’s stage model of cognitive development and in Lawrence Kholberg’s stage model of moral development. He published the first book (1994) in the field of philosophy of childhood and wrote a column of reviews of philosophically-oriented children’s books. He argued that even academic philosophers can benefit from the freshness and directness of children’s thinking. For Matthew Lipman (1923-2010) and Ann Margaret Sharp (1942-2010), the child is only potentially a philosophical agent and grows into becoming such by means of a philosophical education. Lipman invented the literary genre of children’s philosophical fiction, which systematically reconstructs key philosophical issues and positions in language accessible by children, attempts to help children recognize philosophical dimensions of their own experience, and models philosophical dialogue. Lipman and Sharp developed a protocol for a “community of philosophical inquiry,” in which people with diverse experiences, ideas and concerns dialogue together around a shared philosophical question, with the aim of forming reasonable, meaningful judgments about the matter. The early success of philosophy for children was due in part to its coincidence with the critical thinking movement in education, in which Lipman was an important figure. Its emphasis on ethics has justified its use as a program of ethics, character, and even religious education. It has also been used for civics education, because of how it instantiates democratic deliberation and power-sharing. At the same time, philosophy for children has been criticized by religious and social conservatives, developmental psychologists, and philosophers. Today, the diversity of approaches, aims, materials, and grounding theories of philosophy for children signifies different understandings of philosophy, childhood and education, which have become “essentially contested concepts” within the movement. Philosophy for children is no longer unified by an identifiable theory, purpose, pedagogy, method or curriculum, but is now used to further a number of disparate educational agendas. Shaun Gallagher’s (1992) heuristic of four schools of hermeneutics is helpful in understanding these competing agendas. Conservative hermeneutics is the attempt to devise methods of interpretation that uncover and preserve truth or original meaning without distortion or bias. This is consonant with the use of philosophy for children to help young people appropriate the fundamental questions, ideas and skills of (Western) philosophy as a resource for understanding the world and managing their own experience, and with the understanding critical thinking as a way of avoiding prejudice and approaching truth. Critical hermeneutics approaches interpretation—including teaching and learning—as a method of liberating the interpreter from the racist, sexist, homophobic, capitalist, religiously fanatical, and other kinds of ideologies that commonly distort thinking, feeling and behavior. This is consonant with those who argue that the attributes of mutual criticism, inclusion, solidarity, self-regulation, and distributed power make the community of philosophical inquiry an ideal site for recognizing and overcoming ideology. Others find philosophy for children politically ineffectual due to the limited role of students and teachers in co-constructing the curriculum and its lack of an explicit component of political critique and action. Radical hermeneutics suggests that because every text is open to a plurality of meanings, the purpose of interpretation is not to artificially constrain that plurality but to play with the signs that constitute the text in order to achieve fresh insights. A radical hermeneutical strand is identifiable in the philosophy for children literature when scholars resist the idea that the aim of philosophical dialogue is to find consensus or to narrow down on the most reasonable conclusions. Moderate hermeneutics holds that the work of interpretation is the attempt to reach meaning or shared understanding in a process modeled on dialogue between the familiar and the strange. This is consonant with those who argue that philosophical traditions can still give meaning to (young) people’s lives, but that those traditions must be continually reinterpreted (including by children) in order to survive and flourish. Fifty-odd years since its inception, philosophy for children has deepened and diversified, both theoretically and as a field of practice. Perhaps the only point of agreement among (most) everyone in the movement is that children’s philosophical thinking, variously understood, is necessary for the realization of the intellectual, moral, and political agency the movement attributes to them. (shrink)

Derrida’s autobiographical and philosophical text Monolingualism of the Other; or, the Prosthesis of Origin is a partial recounting of his own childhood and upbringing in Algeria at a time when it was a colony of France. It is on one level a reflection on matters related to colonialism, and especially on the effects of the imposition of colonial language upon schooling and wider practices of education and coming into the world. Yet Derrida’s text also opens onto structural questions (...) about estrangement, unsettledness and Unheimlichkeit such as they pertain to and characterise life in language more generally. This paper puts Derrida’s Monolingualism of the Other into relation with contemporary discussions of multilingualism and language learning in the context of the global education agenda. The result, as we shall see, is the destabilising of assumptions that underpin multilingualism and the global education agenda and foreclose their democratic and ethical aims. At the same time, as we shall also see, Derrida’s text opens ways in which the education of language subjects can be reconstructed in relation to a new conception of ethics and the humanities. (shrink)

Teacher education has sought to combine the practice of teaching with the practice of thinking and most popularly through reflective practice. This refers to reflection on and in action that leads to thoughtful practical doing; praxis. In spite of its intention to develop teachers’ practical wisdom, reflective practice has become instrumentalised for the efficient achievement of educational ends without questioning whether the means of achieving them are conducive to living a good, meaningful life. Standardised modes of thinking (...) have all the more estranged teachers from thinking Being and from exploring meanings of who they are as teachers. To address this issue, this paper explores possibilities offered by poetic thinking and metaphorical thinking with reference to the thoughts of Heidegger and Arendt. The analysis of the problem of the abandonment of thinking Being by philosophical traditions as well as Aristotle’s notion of praxis and poesis have been originally addressed by Heidegger. Poesis, the act of making and bringing something forth has also been discussed by Arendt in her thoughts about metaphorical thinking and its potential for becoming something new. I argue that poetic forms of thinking enrich the debate about the relation between philosophy and teaching and are insightful for doing philosophy for teachers. They encourage teachers to make use of language in an original way to bring themselves forth as unique Beings. To practically explore the poetic possibilities in teachers’ quests for meaning, I refer to a student teacher’s writing as an example of how Being teacher can be poetically revealed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Problems with a Weakly Pluralist Approach to Democratic EducationSheron Fraser-BurgessIntroductionPluralism embodies wide acknowledgement of various forms of difference. Appeals to pluralism involve arguments for the proliferating of differences as a social and moral ideal. Rather than being a formal political regime such as with democracy or social liberalism, in the extant political philosophy literature, pluralism brings considerations of diversity and equality to bear in philosophical analysis of (...) traditional systems of government.As a critique, pluralism falls along a continuum, which can be conceived of as iterations of the standing of particular ways of life, with respect to constraints of both equality and justice. At one end of the spectrum, all conceptions of the human good share a prima facie equality that belie overarching moral norms as a criterion of ranking. Questions about the incumbency of individual liberty motivate movement toward the opposing end, as allowing for the most just society warrants giving precedence to such values. The source of pluralism’s critical role is its inherent demand of a cogent resolution of the moral and, at times, political tension between equality and freedom.This article considers two forms of pluralism that lie near opposing extremes of the continuum and their implication for education. According to Horace Kallen’s and John Gray’s strong pluralism, the claim to the fact of differing values, cultures, etc., has primacy. As a corollary, maintaining the integrity of the social groups as holders of those values becomes central. In conflict with liberal democratic principles, however, protecting group values may occur at the expense of individual detractors within the group or may pose a threat of harm to others outside of the group who do not share these values.On the other hand, one form of weak pluralism, Amy Gutmann’s deliberative democracy, constrains pluralism on political grounds of individual [End Page 1] freedom. Deliberative democracy subsumes the holding of all values, including those shared with a social group, to the requirements of democracy. Both theories are considered as attempts to reconcile principles of treating everyone equally with not unjustly limiting individual freedom in a democracy. I raise principled and practical issues from education that call into question whether each theory satisfactorily resolves the conflicting demands of both equality and liberty. A third alternative is proposed as a salient consideration for democratic education. I begin with the pluralism of Horace Kallen and its relationship to that of John Gray.Strong PluralismHorace Kallen’s Cultural PluralismIn this section, I discuss Horace Kallen’s seminal account of cultural pluralism from the early twentieth century, classifying it with the strong value pluralism articulated by John Gray. Gray’s and Kallen’s pluralism have in common both the sanctioning of the fullest expression of difference and difficulties with making sense of the intuitive pull toward a criterion for the ranking of values that democracy dictates. I then consider the educational implications of Kallen’s view, particularly with respect to its actual influence upon multi-cultural initiatives of the 1970s and 1980s.Kallen coined the term “cultural pluralism” in the early twentieth century (Kallen 73). At this time, America was experiencing a great deal of social upheaval because of the huge influx of European and Asian immigrants. Movements such as nativism and Americanization fueled xenophobic sentiment. In this milieu, the full acculturation of new immigrants became a priority. In education, schooling policies penalized immigrant expressions of cultural identity, such as speaking one’s native language and practicing cultural traditions (Kallen 4).Kallen was one of the voices advocating not only that new immigrants should be allowed to maintain their cultural identity but also that a formal political solution be initiated which accommodated the predilection to do so. Nathan Glazer explains that there was at that time a general blindness to the possibility that “these groups or elements within them would not want to acculturate and assimilate but would want to preserve their corporate characters and distinctiveness even if prejudice and discrimination disappeared.” According to Glazer, such was the doctrine of assimilation for the first forty years of the twentieth century (7). [End Page 2]Kallen’s pluralism is a departure from the prevailing view in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities ed. by Steven Burik, Robert Smid and Ralph WeberDouglas L. Berger (bio)Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities. Edited by Steven Burik, Robert Smid and Ralph Weber. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. Pp. vi + 272. Paperback $40.28, isbn 978-1-350-29704-3.The editors Steven Burik, Robert Smid and Ralph Weber, who have all made (...) important revisions to the theory of comparative philosophical method, have pulled together the contributions of ten other influential scholars in the field and their own work into this much-needed collection of essays. There has been much written about the methodology of comparative philosophy in the last hundred years. More recent reflections in this field have been strongly fueled by post-colonial evaluations as well as a proliferation of methodological approaches. Nonetheless, some consensus on what methods the field should adopt and to what ends still needs overt discussion. The editors argue in an Introduction and Epilogue to the volume that, now faced with the "obstacles" of often conflicting principles and aims of different methodological approaches which leads to their frequent mutual rejection, there is need for a wide acceptance of pluralism in the methodology of comparative philosophy (pp. 4–5). This methodological pluralism, for the editors, should be understood in two senses. Firstly, there should be a broad-based "methodological commitment to pluralism," which amounts to an acceptance that there is an existing plurality of philosophical traditions in the world which have very different foundational insights and worldviews (p. 254). Secondly, the fact that the plurality of philosophical traditions actually exhibits quite different approaches ought, despite any individual comparativist's preferred method, compel us to accept that this diversity is best dealt with by a plurality of research approaches (pp. 254–55). That is to say that, while the editors both acknowledge and endorse the particular specializations of any and all scholars engaged in intercultural philosophy, they urge each scholar to accept that both a descriptive and prescriptive pluralism of philosophical methodologies are necessary for the continued flourishing of the field. In order to demonstrate this descriptive and prescriptive pluralism, the editors organize the volume into what they call five "constellations" of discussion (p. 8).In the first "constellation" labeled "Necessary Conditions," Robert Neville, Jaap [End Page 1] van Brakel and Lin Ma offer general and detailed frameworks for what sorts of assumptions are needed for any comparative philosophical research to proceed fruitfully. Neville, while happily admitting that we need to be vigilant about biases and other limitations when crossing into other traditions, insists that philosophers need to at once be searching for the truth in any given comparison of ideas, while simultaneously always reflectively constructing the right categories on the basis of which the comparison may be justified and sound (pp. 22–27). Van Brakel and Ma present in their co-authored essay an elaborate blueprint for comparative research. This blueprint, while also conceding that there can never be "any one right interpretation" of any individual text, much less whole traditions, posit a basic "family resemblance principle" which highlights "mutually recognizable human practices" as the basic condition enabling comparative reflection in the first place (pp. 34–39).In the second "constellation," entitled "Generalization and Essentialization," Roger Ames and François Jullien insist in various ways that, while the essentialism that bedeviled previous eras of philosophy in general and comparative philosophy in particular should be rejected, generalizations are still fundamentally necessary to crystalize the most important ways in which traditions are distinct from one another. Ames, defending himself against recent allegations of essentialism in his approach, insists that the field needs to be supported by both a "self-reflective hermeneutical sensitivity" which acknowledges the positionality of the inquirer as well as a commitment to "search within the soil" of, in his case, the Chinese philosophical tradition for its own models of meaning (p. 58). To the latter end, Ames defends accurate generalizations which can help us understand "the language, the customs and the life-forms of a living tradition" since these, contrary to suspicions, aid us in preventing essentialization in comparative work (p. 63). Jullien... (shrink)

_Philosophy and Theory in Educational Research: Writing in the Margin_ explores the practise of reading and writing in philosophy of education and education theory. Showing that there is no ‘right way’ to approach research in educational philosophy, but illustrating its possibilities, this text invites an engagement with philosophy as a possibility for educational research. Drawing on their own research, theoretical and philosophical sources, the authors investigate the important issue of what it means to read and write (...) when there is no prescribed structure. Innovative in its contribution to the literature, this edited volume enlightens readers in three ways. The volume focuses on the practices of reading and writing that are central to research in educational philosophy, suggesting that these practices constitute the research, rather than that they simply support the research. It is not a prescriptive guide and should not be read procedurally. Rather, it is intended to illustrate the possibilities for this kind of research, and to suggest starting points for those interested in pursuing research projects. Finally, attention is given to the ways in which conducting educational philosophy can be educative in itself, both to the researcher in writing it, and to its audience in reading it. With contributions from international scholars in the field of philosophy of education, this book forms a valuable guide for practitioner-researchers, taught postgraduate and doctoral students, and early career researchers in university education departments. Academic staff seeking to introduce their students to philosophy-as-research without wishing to offer a prescriptive ‘how to’ guide will also find this book of particular interest. (shrink)

She has always existed and is more than a citizen of multiverses,‭ ‬most likely the ground of all.‭ ‬In the West she was introduced around C.570‭ ‬and since then many individuals have searched for her,‭ ‬tried to become familiar with her and created all sorts of,‭ ‬frequently ridiculous,‭ ‬things in her name. Once someone has a passion for her it cannot be extinguished but increases.‭ ‬Objectively this need for her is referred to as‭ ‘‬love of wisdom‭’‬,‭ ‬the need for wisdom,‭ (...) ‬while personally it is a need of some individuals. -/- This passion and need has become institutionalized and it has developed a discourse and became a socio-cultural practice of its own.‭ ‬Fairly recently it has even become a discipline at,‭ ‬mostly higher,‭ ‬institutions of learning.‭ ‬Previously those searching for and attempting to interact with her came from many walks of life and all kinds of professions,‭ ‬while in the last century or so many people began to live off her as they are remunerated for talking about,‭ ‬about the history of searching for and investigating her and saying all sorts of things about her. -/- Many things are done in her name and all sorts of neologisms are fabricated to label them,‭ ‬such as analytic,‭ ‬continental,‭ ‬idealism,‭ ‬rationalism,‭ ‬empiricism,‭ ‬and all these labels are again specified and specified ad infinitum with terms such as materialism,‭ ‬physicalism,‭ ‬weak naturalism,‭ ‬speculative and new realism,‭ ‬etc. -/- Individuals from many other disciplines and areas of life,‭ ‬such as sociology,‭ ‬the arts,‭ ‬humanities,‭ ‬cognitive sciences,‭ ‬sport,‭ ‬etc got on the bandwagon so that we now have a philosophy or love of wisdom,‭ ‬epistemologies,‭ ‬ontologies etc of everything under the sun.‭ ‬Even if you were to write some theses or do some study you will stipulate your epistemology,‭ ‬ontology,‭ ‬methodology,‭ ‬etc.‭ ‬Just as those who live off philosophy become involved in every area of humanity and all its socio-cultural practices produce so-called peer reviewed publications,‭ ‬articles,‭ ‬essays and books on philosophy of art,‭ ‬sport,‭ ‬humanities,‭ ‬cognitive sciences,‭ ‬religion,‭ ‬gods,‭ ‬sex,‭ ‬rock‭ ‘‬n roll,‭ ‬language,‭ ‬words,‭ ‬ideas,‭ ‬how words and ideas and concepts do their thing,‭ ‬etc,‭ ‬etc.‭ -/- The way these subject-matter are treated will usually consists of some form of reasoning,‭ ‬the use of arguments or argumentation and some kind of logic and a process that resembles the features,‭ ‬steps,‭ ‬stages and processes of theorizing,‭ ‬the construction and development of models,‭ ‬short term,‭ ‬medium or large theories.‭ ‬The latter is often presented in the form of entire‭ ‘‬metaphysical‭’ ‬and speculative systems such as those of Plato,‭ ‬Aristotle,‭ ‬Kant,‭ ‬Hegel,‭ ‬Marx,‭ ‬Husserl,‭ ‬Habermas et al.‭ ‬While Socrates and to some extent the later Wittgenstein attempted to be more authentic to the original principles of trying to follow and developed the ideal of identifying,‭ ‬capturing by verbal interaction‭ (‬be it discourse,‭ ‬or dialogue‭) ‬and becoming one‭ (‬like mystics of all religions who are passionate about‭ ‘‬the one‭’‬,‭ ‬the Beloved,‭ ‬the one Real Self,‭ ‬etc and attempt to become one,‭ ‬united with or‭ ‘‬oned‭’ ‬with their object or subject of desire‭) ‬with Sophos‭ – ‬by exploring and investigating or applying and executing practical use of language,‭ ‬and thereby to uncover and capture her. -/- The effects of the institutionalization of the discipline are far-reaching and the professionalization of the role of philosopher as a‭ ‘‬profession‭’‬,‭ ‬an employee of an institution and a representative of the status quo are discussed in a number of articles being cited. -/- The methods of the philosophical discourse vary,‭ ‬first of all between the so-called Continental and Anglophone Analytic philosophies,‭ ‬its movements,‭ ‬schools and institutions,‭ ‬such as research universities,‭ ‬journals,‭ ‬communities and book publishers.‭ ‬It seems as if increasingly philosophizing employs some of the stages and steps of the processes of theorizing.‭ ‬Other aspects of her methods are heuristic devices,‭ ‬the use of metaphors and analogies,‭ ‬philosophical logic,‭ ‬informal and other types of logic,‭ ‬arguments and argumentation.‭ ‬This involves the creation of fallacies in thinking and reasoning and the causing of all sorts of fallacies or crooked thinking. -/- The nature and changes of philosophical subject-matter are discussed as the socio-cultural practice lost most of its traditional‭ ‘‬objects‭’ ‬with the social and cultural differentiation of other,‭ ‬specialized disciplines.‭ ‬In turn the discourse attempts to fabricate other subject-matter,‭ ‬for example the development of so-called Experimental Philosophy,‭ ‬inter-disciplinary studies such as cognitive sciences and philosophies or meta-level explorations of and speculations about other disciplines,‭ ‬professions and domains‭ (‬for example normative,‭ ‬instrumental and subjective aesthetic‭ – ‬this the terminology and distinctions according to the working class obsessive Critical Theory of the so-called Frankfurt Schule.‭ ‬One always wonders what degree of personal experience their educated,‭ ‬middle class academics have of‭ ‘‬the working class‭’‬,‭ ‬whatever that is meant to be‭?)) ‬of human activity.‭ ‬Such as philosophy of medicine,‭ ‬sport,‭ ‬art,‭ ‬religion,‭ ‬just name it and it is bound to exist.‭ -/- Another‭ ‘‬extension‭’ ‬of or interest in‭ ‘‬philosophy‭’ ‬is that of certain individuals,‭ ‬schools or movements in other disciplines,‭ ‬for example social‭ ‘‬sciences‭’ ‬such as sociology and supporters of the above mentioned‭ ‘‬Schule‭’‬.‭ ‬They frequently use philosophical words such as ontology,‭ ‬epistemology,‭ ‬multi-dimensional,‭ ‬many-levels,‭ ‬contexts assumptions,‭ ‬pre-suppositions,‭ ‬immanent,‭ ‬transcendent,‭ ‬etc.‭ ‬Is this intended to be an extension of philosophy and the doing of philosophizing or merely cognitive bias of the form‭ ‘‬authority bias‭’‬.‭ ‬In this case the authority being‭ ‘‬the discipline of philosophy‭’‬,‭ ‬as well as the‭ ’‬use of the word philosophy‭ ‬and terms from the philosophical discourse‭’‬.‭. 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Guarding against reliance on his own biography and romantic tendencies in Bildungsroman literature, I draw parallels to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s use of the journey trope and place-based inquiry in the Philosophical Investigations, as an exploration of concept development and confusion that exhorts and guides readers in traversing the borderlands of their own cultural–linguistic practices. l recall Wittgenstein’s journey in search of himself: his retreat from Cambridge to a remote hut in Norway, leading him on a philosophical search for meaning. (...) This self-transformative (Bildung) process of writing the Philosophical Investigations offers new ways for thinking the concept of ‘place’: not the bounding limit of things/beings; rather, working through the linguistic turn in philosophy, as potentially meaningful ‘sites’ in conceptually familiar/unfamiliar landscapes of native languages. The Investigations also carries ancient Heraclitian and Homeric tropes of homecoming and authenticity: ‘searching ourselves’ and ‘becoming who we are’, as found in Wittgenstein’s call to ‘know our way about’—rediscovering the grammatical order operating out of view but pervading the world as we see and know it, as well as setting its limits. Awareness of different languages of place is crucial to appreciating Indigenous discourses of Land-based education—a topic central to discussions of incorporating Indigenous knowledge while decolonizing education. Rethinking Bildungsroman literature in postcolonial terms—through the lens of reconciliation, renaissance, and resurgence —I call for careful listening to Indigenous peoples’ storied landscapes instead of fact-checking them: recognizing their sovereign right to self-govern their own education and resources. The goal is not to assess the truths of Land-based education, as in some epistemological inquiries, nor to make them accessible as pedagogical resources or instruments for non-Indigenous educators. The aim rather is to promote respect for its deep, nearly inaccessible context within Indigenous grammars and ways of life. (shrink)

In this wide ranging volume of philosophical essays John Haldane explores some central areas of social life and issues of intense academic and public debate. These include the question of ethical relativism, fundamental issues in bioethics, the nature of individuals in relation to society, the common good, public judgement of prominent individuals, the nature and aims of education, cultural theory and the relation of philosophy to art and architecture. John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy, and (...) Director of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs in the University of St Andrews. He is also a former Royden Davis Professor of Humanities at Georgetown University and is currently a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, Princeton. As well as being a prominent academic philosopher he is well known in Britain, in North America and elsewhere in the English-speaking world as a public intellectual and social commentator. 'In Practical Philosophy, John Haldane eloquently makes the case for an approach to ethics that is distinctively practical — thought with a view to action. Taking his inspiration from a tradition that includes Aristotle, Aquinas, and Elizabeth Anscombe, Haldane argues that an orthodox dichotomy has long dominated both philosophical and everyday thinking: we must be either dualists or material reductionists. Both of these alternatives, however, neglect a subtle approach to intentionality and agency offered by the Aristotelian tradition. Haldane uses his illuminating approach to advance arguments on a number of controversial moral and political issues: the status of the foetus, the importance of the family, compensation for victims of crime, the basis of human solidarity across national boundaries. Although his conclusions are frequently controversial, Haldane always avoids polemics and the ideological parti pris, thus giving a welcome example of respectful and civil public argument.' — Martha Nussbaum 'What resources can philosophy bring to bear, when its enquiries are not theoretical, but practical? In Practical Philosophy John Haldane answers this question in a brilliant survey of key issues, showing us how a variety of theories can obscure or distort our view of the practical realities of life, family, and society. With admirable clarity he also shows us how philosophy can rescue us from such theorizing.' — Alasdair MacIntyre. (shrink)

Philosophising the Dialogos Way towards Wisdom in Education proposes the innovative and holistic Dialogos approach to practical philosophy as a way of facilitating wisdom-oriented pedagogy. The book encourages individual and collective development through dialectical interplays between personal life, philosophical concepts and subject matter. Philosophising the Dialogos Way towards Wisdom in Education will be of great interest to academics, researchers and students in the fields of teacher education, philosophy of education and higher education. It will also (...) appeal to teachers and teacher educators in secondary and higher education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Masao Abe: D. T. Suzuki’s Legacies and an “Academic Dharma Lineage” in North AmericaMichiko YusaProfessor Abe is generally regarded as the torch bearer of D. T. Suzuki. But how did that come about? This essay sheds light on the relationship between Suzuki and Abe.Abe’s professor, Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, had come to know Suzuki through his mentor Nishida Kitarō. Suzuki was one of Nishida’s closest friends. It appears that Hisamatsu’s (...) and Suzuki’s cordial relationship became closer after Nishida’s death in 1945. Hisamatsu in turn was the link for Abe to come to know Suzuki. Abe recalls his first encounter with Suzuki, which took place in the winter of 1947, when Suzuki was in bed with a bad cold and Abe was sent by Hisamatsu to make a sick call on his behalf. Abe was then Hisamatsu’s teaching assistant ( joshu). Seeing Suzuki in person for the first time, Abe could not help but feel the unique spiritual presence of this man. At that time, Abe, though a committed follower of Pure Land Buddhism, was deeply troubled with his spiritual quest. Perhaps sensing Abe’s agony, Suzuki gave him a copy of his imperial lecture The Essence of Buddhism, in which he had treated Zen and Pure Land thought as sharing the same Mahayana roots.1Abe’s second visit to Suzuki came in the spring of 1949, when Suzuki was preparing to leave for the United States to spend “the rest of his life in order to bring the message of Zen Buddhism” to the West. At that time Abe was to convey Hisamatsu’s concern that Suzuki ought to remain in Japan and contribute to internationalizing Zen by translating Zen texts into English, for, in Hisamatsu’s mind, there was no one better qualified than Suzuki to carry out that task.2Suzuki was ready to make a bold move, however. Having witnessed Hiroshima-Nagasaki, he was convinced that the message of wisdom and compassion based on the awakening to the “true self” that Zen speaks of was an effective and necessary antidote to the egocentric mindset, which manifested also as national ego-centrism, rampant in the post–World War II world. He was convinced that the message of awakening and compassion would give the humanity a better chance at peace. In fact, by the early 1950s, with the intensification of the Cold War and the turmoil in Korea, there was a palpable fear that World War III might break out any day, and Suzuki certainly shared that ominous sense.3 [End Page 111]Zen Must Adopt New ExpressionsSuzuki left for the United States on June 16, 1949, to attend the Second East-West Philosopher’s Conference and to teach at the University of Hawai‘i in the summer and the fall semesters. Through his interaction with Western and Asian thinkers at the conference as well as with his students at the university, he came to feel strongly that (1) it was important to emphasize compassion (hi) in the face of an excessive Zen emphasis on the koan practice, (2) Zen Buddhists must develop their “logical” expression to articulate Zen teaching in language understandable to Westerners, and, in this connection, (3) it was incumbent on him to introduce the thought of Nishida Kitarō to the West. In Suzuki’s own words, “Contemporary Zen is short of compassion (hi). Therefore, it lacks the momentum to engage society and work from within it. Again, it lacks a logical discourse (riron). This is something Nishida always used to say. In order to make Western thinkers understand Zen teaching, one must have a logical system (ronri).” 4These three points are clearly present and developed in Abe’s works. In his introduction to Zen and Western Thought (1985), Abe wrote that (1) Zen embraces a profound philosophy (echoing Suzuki’s concern for the necessity for logical articulation), (2) the ultimate in Zen and in Buddhism is “absolute Nothingness” or “Emptiness” (echoing Nishida’s philosophy), (3) Buddhism is a radical realism and a compassionate way of life (echoing Suzuki’s concern for compassion), and (4) a new cosmology, not a new humanism, is needed in... (shrink)

This paper attempts to explore a pedagogical form of writing in which students are allowed to have more room to converse with themselves, such that their own being is reflected in their work. The attempt is made as a response to the poverty of educationally orientated assessment methods for students' academic performance in the predominant evidence-based assessment culture of schooling today. Taking Lukács' Soul and Form as a good source for this exploration, especially his commitment to essay form as (...) a first-person, soul-searching journey to the truth, the paper tries to reconstruct the way he conceptually connects philosophical practice, our life-form and the essay form of writing. It attempts to provide insight into the ways in which a certain form of philosophical writing can in itself be an educational practice that provides students with a unique way of addressing their life-problems. (shrink)

The present paper entitled "Subaltern Language Games and Political Conditions: A Perspective on Applied Philosophy" attempts to streamline Wittgensteinian language games and political conditions. The expression `subaltern ` stands for the meaning as given in the concise oxford dictionary, that is, `of inferior rank`. Subaltern language game is the game of marginalized people. Language game is meaningful in the context of social and political relationship. My contention is that technical or symbolic language is an (...) instrument to serve the end of the affluent class. I think that any social and political change requires change in languagegame. By applied philosophy, I mean that philosophical theories are applicable in concrete human situation. In this sense, I have considered Wittgenstein as an applied philosopher because he holds that words are dead but assume life when it is used or applied in the concrete life situation. In order to make society free from exploitation and reduce inequality, we have to change the prevailing language game. The language game which I am proposing may be called as the "Subaltern Language Game". I have tried to understand Wittgenstein's language game in the light of Derrida's theory of deconstruction. The ordinary languagephilosophy as expounded in` Philosophical Investigation` deconstructs `technical language philosophy' of `Tractatus` because technical language gives an abstract system of symbols and lacks blood and flesh of lifeworld. My contention is that language game is inseparable from socio-political structure. As a matter of fact language game is the expression of forms of life. The language game of the affluent and the ruling class is different from the language game of the poor and downtrodden. The language game of one ethnic group is different from the language game of another ethnic group. The language game of the white people is different from the language game of the black. In Indian context, the language game of the upper caste is different from the language game of the lower caste. The possibility of inequality due to linguistic advantages of privileged class is a fact and not a fantasy. In order to develop linguistic capacity, it requires socio-political and socio-cultural mechanism. The social inequality due to linguistic handicap of individual can be lessened by a process of change in values. This process of change in value system is called culturalisation or sanskritisation. It can be helpful in changing the use of language and its meaning. Thus, in moving from theory to practice, philosophers work to change these words and rules for those philosophers who are trying to do applied philosophy. The language game of the applied philosopher should be fashioned in accordance with socio-political realities. It is not plausible to do applied philosophy with outdated mode of philosophising. (shrink)

Liberty Fund recognises the significance of George Turnbull, one of the earliest of the authors in the Scottish tradition, with the publication of new editions of his 'Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy', his 'Observations upon Liberal Education', and his translation of Heineccius. These major works testify to Turnbull's distinctive voice in presenting natural-law theory on a scientific model, in harnessing the arts to promote the principles of moral and civil virtue, and in extolling reason as the foundation of (...) liberty. The short pieces in EDUCATION FOR LIFE supplement Turnbull's larger and more sprawling works and give a more concentrated presentation of his ideas. These extremely rare works include two Aberdeen graduation theses, three tracts on religion, various writings on education and art, and, for the first time in print, the correspondence of Turnbull. (shrink)

The development of interest among academic philosophers in the aesthetics of everyday life is somewhat analogous to the broader development in moral philosophy of ‘applied’ or practical ethics. This fact is sometimes mentioned but rarely examined and it may be useful, therefore, to explore something of the course and causes of these two developments, in part better to understand them, but also to note blindspots and limitations in certain ways of thinking. In each case these limitations (...) are related to ignorance of past theory and practice. Exploring the parallels will also serve as a basis for suggesting how the two lines may now be brought together in a form of practical philosophy. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the applicability of Wittgenstein’s following the rule in the context of his philosophy of mathematics to real mathematical practice. It is noted that in «Philosophical Investigations» and «Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics» Wittgenstein resorted to the analysis of rather elementary mathematical concepts, accompanied also by the inherent ambiguity and ambiguity of his presentation. In particular, against this background, his radical conventionalism, the substitution of logical necessity with the «form of life» of (...) the community, as well as the inadequacy of the representation of arithmetic rules by a language game are criticized. It is shown that the reconstruction of the Wittgenstein concept of understanding based on the Fregian division of meaning and referent goes beyond the conceptual framework of Wittgenstein language games. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Philosophy may be accused of being an exclusive theoretical enterprise. Although it is concerned with the important issues of life it may appear to be a purely academic matter pursued by few educated scholars and therefore somehow detached from everyday way of being of people uneducated in philosophy. In the field of the philosophy of sport, the essential ambition is to provide relevant insights into a vast area of sport that will promote our (...) class='Hi'>philosophical understanding and knowledge of the relevant topics. This paper offers another perspective on the role of philosophy in sport. I argue that philosophy is not just about reflecting from an academic distance, but the process of philosophizing could be situated within the sporting practices. This type of relationship between philosophy and sport is already apparent in ancient Greece where philosophers (such as Pythagoras or Socrates) liked to be engaged in physical exercises and to combine them with philosophical discussions with athletes. The article explores a practical role of philosophy in sport, namely the process of philosophical thinking and dialogue with athletes and their coaches. It offers insights into methodology, goals, benefits, and limits of using philosophy in practice. I reflect on my personal experience of being a mental coach and philosophical consultant in sport in the Czech Republic. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the relevance of using philosophy (philosophical practice) in the sporting environment. In doing so, I reflect on the nature and purpose of philosophical thinking and its possible relation to sport psychology and mental coaching. (shrink)

This collection of inspiring and simple-to-use activities will jumpstart students' understanding of philosophy, and is a treasure trove of ideas for building philosophical enquiry into the curriculum. It offers teachers a range of quick, easy and effective ways for developing children's comprehension of and engagement with philosophy, and will help them 'learn how to learn'. With a wealth of activities, including puzzles, class discussion techniques and group tasks, Jumpstart! Philosophy in the Classroom covers the following topics: (...) curiosity and imagination language for thinking critical thinking creating a community of enquiry. Practical and immersive methods will encourage children to think, analyse, evaluate, discuss, judge and arrive at reasoned conclusions across all areas of the curriculum, stimulating philosophical conversation and changing the way that content is processed and understood in the classroom. This book will be a vital resource for all those who want to develop thinking skills and philosophical enquiry in their school. (shrink)

In an age of pressing global issues such as climate change, the necessity for countries to work together to resolve problems affecting multiple nations has never been more important. Interdisciplinarity in higher education is a key to meeting these challenges. Universities need to produce graduates, and leaders, who understand issues from different perspectives, and who can communicate with others outside the confines of their own disciplines. -/- Drawing on contributions from 37 scholars from Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the (...) Netherlands and the United Kingdom, this volume examines issues inherent in providing interdisciplinary education within the structures of universities and proposes ways in which these issues might be best managed. -/- The book has a dual focus on perspectives and practicalities. Themes covered include: the need for graduates who can work within and across multi-disciplinary and multi-professional teams; interdisciplinary leadership; the critical importance of interdisciplinary thinking to meet global challenges; collaboration in interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning; the role of institutional and other systems to support interdisciplinary endeavours; the centrality of disciplines; balancing disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity; and the place of interdisciplinarity in graduate outcomes and attributes. Definitional aspects of interdisciplinary higher education and current interdisciplinary practice across a range of contexts are also examined. -/- Contributors represent a wide range of discipline areas, including accounting, academic development, agriculture, food and wine science, biotechnology, employment relations, environmental science, the health sciences, higher education, land and environment, languages and cultures, occupational therapy, science communication, social work and social policy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 66.4 (2005) 483-506 [Access article in PDF] Lorenzo Valla and the Traditions and Transmissions of Philosophy C. S. Celenza Johns Hopkins University What is "philosophy"? Who is a "philosopher"? These questions underlay much of Salvatore Camporeale's work, and they are deeper than one might suppose. We can begin with one of Camporeale's favorite figures, Lorenzo Valla, and listen to one of (...) the ways he answered these questions. In the introduction to his work reforming Aristotelian logic, the Repastinatio totius dialectice, Valla situates the debate on wisdom by recalling the case of Pythagoras.1 "What a marvelous praise of modesty it was," Valla wrote, when Pythagoras, asked whether he considered himself wise, replied that he was not "wise," but was rather a "lover of wisdom"—not sophos, but philosophos.2 Valla uses here a humanistic trope, found also in Petrarch's advice to Luigi Marsili, to the effect that Marsili should shape the practice of his life in order to become a "verae sapientiae amator," a "lover of true wisdom."3These citations from Petrarch and Valla alert us to the well-studied fact that, in the view of some humanists, academic "philosophy" had usurped the name "philosophy" and the self-searching meaning behind it. Certain humanists were proposing an alternative notion of what wisdom signified and consequently of what philosophy itself—the "love of wisdom"—represented. It seemed that wisdom needed to be located in a more persuasive way in the world of human beings, history, and language, rather than in one of eternal [End Page 483] suprahuman essences; in short, "philosophy" had to be brought closer to rhetoric and philology.The goal of this paper is to examine this idea in a twofold manner: through the history of terms and concepts as these are refracted by and through the history of institutionalized learning; and through a brief foray into Valla's preface to his great critique of western logic. There has been a lot of challenging and interesting work on this topic in the last few decades. At the same time, there may be cause to wonder whether relatively recent historians have unwittingly become too bogged down in names, failing to see the real conflict. They have tended to assume that the modern, sharp separation of humanistic "disciplines," such as rhetoric and philosophy, existed in the same way and with the same force of conviction in the premodern era. True, there are famous ancient, medieval, and early modern examples of self-defined "philosophers" differentiating themselves from "philologists" and vice versa, most notably Seneca, who—lamenting the professionalization of education in his day—complained in a letter that "what was once philosophy, has become philology" (Ep. 108.23). Yet, the more one investigates this problem, and the more one peers beneath the surface of the seemingly stark divisions between "philosophy" and "philology," the more difficult this strong separation is to maintain.This notion of the possible interpenetrability of "philosophy," and "philology," and "rhetoric" as concepts was probably easier to understand in the Renaissance than it is now. The differences between the Renaissance and our own era lie in institutional context and personal approach, both of which have been, for about six or seven intellectual generations now (but no more than that), supported by a fourfold set of assumptions about what "real" or "professional" philosophy represents: first, that philosophy is primarily about metaphysics and ontology, or rather that there exists a hierarchy in which metaphysics and ontology stand at the top; other things, such as history, language, or rhetoric are "just not philosophy." Second, a retrospectively understood Cartesian split between mind and body is basically true (and that it is legitimate to project that dualistic split back onto thinkers who did not hold the same sort of dualism as axiomatic); and consequently third, that epistemology should be privileged, that is, that knowing and the study of how knowing happens are primarily what philosophy is about. Hence "philosophy" is regulative, a master-discipline that oversees the truth claims of all... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 66.4 (2005) 483-506 [Access article in PDF] Lorenzo Valla and the Traditions and Transmissions of Philosophy C. S. Celenza Johns Hopkins University What is "philosophy"? Who is a "philosopher"? These questions underlay much of Salvatore Camporeale's work, and they are deeper than one might suppose. We can begin with one of Camporeale's favorite figures, Lorenzo Valla, and listen to one of (...) the ways he answered these questions. In the introduction to his work reforming Aristotelian logic, the Repastinatio totius dialectice, Valla situates the debate on wisdom by recalling the case of Pythagoras.1 "What a marvelous praise of modesty it was," Valla wrote, when Pythagoras, asked whether he considered himself wise, replied that he was not "wise," but was rather a "lover of wisdom"—not sophos, but philosophos.2 Valla uses here a humanistic trope, found also in Petrarch's advice to Luigi Marsili, to the effect that Marsili should shape the practice of his life in order to become a "verae sapientiae amator," a "lover of true wisdom."3These citations from Petrarch and Valla alert us to the well-studied fact that, in the view of some humanists, academic "philosophy" had usurped the name "philosophy" and the self-searching meaning behind it. Certain humanists were proposing an alternative notion of what wisdom signified and consequently of what philosophy itself—the "love of wisdom"—represented. It seemed that wisdom needed to be located in a more persuasive way in the world of human beings, history, and language, rather than in one of eternal [End Page 483] suprahuman essences; in short, "philosophy" had to be brought closer to rhetoric and philology.The goal of this paper is to examine this idea in a twofold manner: through the history of terms and concepts as these are refracted by and through the history of institutionalized learning; and through a brief foray into Valla's preface to his great critique of western logic. There has been a lot of challenging and interesting work on this topic in the last few decades. At the same time, there may be cause to wonder whether relatively recent historians have unwittingly become too bogged down in names, failing to see the real conflict. They have tended to assume that the modern, sharp separation of humanistic "disciplines," such as rhetoric and philosophy, existed in the same way and with the same force of conviction in the premodern era. True, there are famous ancient, medieval, and early modern examples of self-defined "philosophers" differentiating themselves from "philologists" and vice versa, most notably Seneca, who—lamenting the professionalization of education in his day—complained in a letter that "what was once philosophy, has become philology" (Ep. 108.23). Yet, the more one investigates this problem, and the more one peers beneath the surface of the seemingly stark divisions between "philosophy" and "philology," the more difficult this strong separation is to maintain.This notion of the possible interpenetrability of "philosophy," and "philology," and "rhetoric" as concepts was probably easier to understand in the Renaissance than it is now. The differences between the Renaissance and our own era lie in institutional context and personal approach, both of which have been, for about six or seven intellectual generations now (but no more than that), supported by a fourfold set of assumptions about what "real" or "professional" philosophy represents: first, that philosophy is primarily about metaphysics and ontology, or rather that there exists a hierarchy in which metaphysics and ontology stand at the top; other things, such as history, language, or rhetoric are "just not philosophy." Second, a retrospectively understood Cartesian split between mind and body is basically true (and that it is legitimate to project that dualistic split back onto thinkers who did not hold the same sort of dualism as axiomatic); and consequently third, that epistemology should be privileged, that is, that knowing and the study of how knowing happens are primarily what philosophy is about. Hence "philosophy" is regulative, a master-discipline that oversees the truth claims of all... (shrink)

Doing philosophy for/with children and exposing students to multiple perspectives, exemplified within the Austrian Centre of Philosophy with Children’s implementation project of the Philosophical Enquiry Advancing Cosmopolitan Engagement (PEACE) curriculum in schooling, may offer a valuable written, taught, and tested curriculum for democratic citizenry. This paper provides an analysis that seeks to present, describe, critique, and make recommendations on the PEACE curriculum. The paper asks the question: In what ways does the Philosophical Enquiry Advancing Cosmopolitan Engagement (...) as a 21st century curriculum address education for democratic citizenry? In this evaluation the ways in which issues of culture and identity, human rights and democracy are perceived and addressed, along with issues of critical thinking and reasoning in verbal and non-verbal language are attended. Concepts of collaboration, cooperation, teacher support and development are also critiqued. This critique is based on a ten-day Austrian Center of Philosophy with Children conference and training course on the PEACE curriculum, and consists of open-ended interviews, personal observations, and published reports on pre- and post-test results of the PEACE curriculum. Exploring the integration of the Austrian Center of Philosophy with Children PEACE curriculum and the Philosophy for/with Children methodology, this paper utilizes Hansen’s (1995) five principles for guiding curriculum development practice as a framework for analysis. It is hoped that findings and recommendations from this study may stir further exploration and contribute to the work of Philosophy for/with Children in democratic education for 21st century citizenry worldwide. (shrink)

Higher education institutions play a pivotal role in knowledge creation and distribution. Teacher education is at the forefront of this engagement. The role of teacher educators is significant in engaging teacher knowledge for shaping and informing ways of being and doing in the world. In recent years higher education has undergone considerable transformation. In South Africa there is a call for real-world transformation in pedagogical practices to address academic, socio-economic, and cultural inclusion and emancipation. As a human right for (...) enabling student voices, a key issue for engaging relevant and fair pedagogical practices is critical thinking. Critical thinking is a rich concept and an attribute of consciousness required in all human activity. It is exercised through sound reasoning and dialogue. Critical thinking is also associated with understanding and engaging deep issues of socio–cultural and political domains of power and justice. However, engaging and enabling critical thinking pedagogy in education is complex and contradictory in nature. Conceptualizing critical thinking is expedient as an initial stage. The objective of this article, part of a larger study, is to provide a conceptualisation of critical thinking pedagogy toward addressing: In what ways is critical thinking pedagogy engaged in South African teacher education? Here, this article aims to address the question: what is critical thinking and critical thinking pedagogy? Methodologically, an interdisciplinary psycho–social philosophic educational documentary design is employed based on a selection of key critical thinking proponents. It further presents a conceptualisation of critical thinking pedagogy underpinned in critical theory especially those of Freire and Foucault. This article aims to spotlight the need for engaging critical thinking through a conceptualisation of critical thinking pedagogy in teacher education required for addressing new ways of teaching today. (shrink)

Tranquillity’s Secret Presents A New Understanding Of The World And Ourselves, And A Forgotten Meditation Technique That Protects You From Traumatic Harm. There Is A Way Of Seeing The World Different. -/- My goal in this book is two-fold: to introduce a revolutionary paradigm for understanding ourselves and the world; and to explain an ancient meditation technique that brought me to the insights upon which it is founded. This technique appears in different forms in the extant spiritual and religious traditions (...) over millennia which have used it — and in which it has been acknowledged as the most efficacious way to reach a direct experience of mind, or the most direct path to a union with God. Unfortunately, the proper way to use it has been largely lost over the last few centuries along with a clear understanding of why it was claimed to be so highly efficient. The primary reason for this loss is the mechanical materialism that frames all our scientific knowledge today. Lady Anne Conway, an English philosopher and a contemporary of René Déscartes, the French Metaphysician of the Seventeenth Century, was the first to characterize his philosophy as the “Mechanical philosophy.” It was Déscartes’ fascination with garden automata (moving statues) that he saw throughout Paris during his time, that led to his idea that the bodies of animals are nothing more than machines of varying complexity – which could be replaced by metal cogs, axles, and wheels. This very contemporary idea is in fact his legacy to humanity — along with the mind-body split that it entails — as mechanism became the standard to which Nature and all life was compared, and still is. This was the genesis of the modern reductive scientific understanding of life as discovered mechanisms made up of dead matter. -/- Although Déscartes’ philosophy was not materialism proper, as he held mind to not be material in nature, his was the most significant move to a cognitive framing of all phenomena as the result of mechanical interactions, and he went so far as placing all non-human animals into the machine-only category, because, he argued, they didn’t have minds. While a full account of Déscartes’ thought is not useful in this work, I want to use Lady Conway’s term to make a distinction between a mechanical materialism, which materialism has evolved into, and a less severe understanding that is not so destructive of the primacy of two aspects of being alive — mind and cognizance — which today are asserted to be by-products or epiphenomena of material processes in the brain by strict adherents to the mechanical philosophy. -/- This frame allows nothing but dead matter, and all that is comprised of dead matter, to be entertained as real. Anything beyond that is either ignored, or considered to be nothing more than figments of someone’s imagination — and this both limits and structures our thoughts about everything. Even those who believe they have moved on from this limiting understanding continue to be fenced in by language, which is structured by it — so that there is no escaping its limitations via a simple substitution or redefinition of concepts. Rather, it will take a truly revolutionary new paradigm and a concomitant reframing of our understanding of ourselves, this world, and reality, and how they come together in the new paradigm. I characterize the difficulty of this change as being like that of meeting an alien race and trying to work out how they see reality before communication can begin — which is very difficult to do when one’s own view is so limited. -/- I call this revolutionary paradigm Responsive Naturing. -/- Responsive Naturing replaces the current paradigm and its concomitant idea of deterministic causality which is foundational in scientific practice today. It can do this because, as you will see, it better accounts for all categories of phenomena, and thus includes all the most important human experiences, such as that of being alive, of beauty, of love, and the ultimate unity of all things. Responsive Naturing provides a sound foundation for the sciences, without the imposed limitation of mechanical materialist explanations, so that both science and spirituality can be founded upon this single common understanding of how things work. -/- This novel paradigmatic understanding of reality intrinsically applies to all dimensions of mental phenomena — be it of perceptions, sensations, or thoughts — and from the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics to the stochastic nature of most physical phenomena, to the often accidental, sometimes fortunate, but never sure, character of all human activities. This makes this new paradigm immediately productive in a practical way — it simply works, as I will show. It empowers us in ways that our disjointed and parochial schools of thought lock us out of completely, opening up new possible methods of looking at problems and finding solutions across disciplines. However, understanding the repercussions of the new paradigm upon one’s cognitive frame and the concomitant structure of language is difficult to comprehend simply because it is alien to the existing frame and paradigm. The impetus to make the effort is becoming quite clear: -/- Today, the sciences are ruled by the limiting cognitive framing of mechanical materialism, and over the last century, the limitations of that frame and its associated scientific paradigm of physical causality have become obvious: science has become schizophrenic. On one hand, some scientists say everything is strictly determined by the laws of nature, and neither free will nor conscious intent have any involvement in what happens; but others say that the state of the underlying quanta that make-up everything is indeterminate until consciously observed with the intent to measure it. Mechanical materialism is why scientists say you have no free will, while you obviously experience that you do — and you are held responsible for your actions by society because you do. It is also why scientists cannot find a non-speculative explanation of consciousness on an evolutionary or biological level, even though being conscious is the most obvious aspect of being alive. And these contradictions have infected every aspect of our lives, and our world, by limiting our ability to see the world any other way. Even the formulation of spiritual doctrines is constrained today by this cognitive frame’s presence in our language. This is not an academic matter, as we see clearly in our failure, so-far, to change the path that has brought us to a global environmental collapse and the ecocide of life on Earth. -/- What is unique about the book’s approach is that it does not speculate about what might be the case, like so much of philosophy does. Instead, it relies upon meditative and contemplative insights that were gleaned directly from a dedicated advanced meditation practice over 60+ years of the author’s life. These insights were then confirmed by subsequent research into similar forms of this advanced meditation technique found across the world and throughout human history. In conjunction with my meditation practice, I have doctoral-level education in Philosophy and a 30-year career in Software Engineering. The latter was in part focused on automated software development, during which I was confronted with the unsolvable enigma — within the mechanical materialist understanding that I was enculturated into, and inculcated with — of Human Creativity. An enigma that set me on my path of discovery. -/- I have discovered, and continue to discover, just how productive this novel paradigm is in understanding ourselves and our world, by its ability to explain — in detail — so many of our experiences that are today either inexplicable, paradoxical, or ignored “for the present” by scientists until some hoped for mechanical description can be found. For the most part, scientists constrain themselves to describing mechanisms, but describing how is not explaining why — and that is why so much of our modern knowledge has a best-used-by-date. On the other side, seemingly all spiritual traditions accept this modern characterization of the world, ourselves, and reality that is manifest in our language, so that even spiritual phenomena and ideas are necessarily structured by it. We accept the ideas of separate beings, intentional entities, levels of consciousness, and attainment of enlightenment or unification with God, all of which are necessary because dead matter, and unconsciousness, are considered to be the starting point. It isn’t. Rather than just present this novel paradigm as a fait accompli, the book’s five sections bring the reader through stages of reconfiguration of our understanding: -/- Volume 1. The Way of Unsaying — The need for the articles in the first volume is not to tell the reader how things are, but to unsay the things that they have heard throughout their lives and have taken to heart. This is accomplished by exposing the logical and explanatory limitations of those ideas that usually go unnoticed. This is necessary to do in order to open the reader’s mind to other ways of accounting for phenomena, and navigating life, so that the reader will understand: first, why the meditation technique I will present is so effective; and second, why the novel paradigm that I propose will truly advance human knowledge and enable us to change our way of being in the world. In order to liberate oneself from seeing the world in a particular way I use skillful means to unseat all the understandings that we have all been inculcated with. This can be destabilizing, and you might find yourself getting annoyed, or even frightened. To paraphrase a Buddhist proverb: Better not to start; but if started, better to finish: -/- Volume 2. The Way of Contemplation — In this volume, the paradigm of Responsive Naturing is developed, building upon the dialogs in volume 1. This volume challenges the reader, since breaking free of one’s existing cognitive frame and paradigmatic understanding is not a trivial exercise, and neither is restructuring one’s thoughts to fit into a new paradigm. This section explains what Responsive Naturing means, how it works in both spiritual and scientific senses, my specific arguments for why it is the answer to our need for a better way to account for phenomena and experience, and how our way of being in the world can change because of it. I attempt to show, via a myriad of independent fields of study, just how powerful this paradigm is in explaining the various phenomena that until now, either had no scientific explanation, or had an incoherent and never proven one. -/- Volume 3. The Way of Tradition — This volume provides the reader with traditional descriptions of similar types of meditation to that which I am presenting. These techniques are related by the unusual support for meditation that they use: that of Inner Spontaneous Sound. This information is provided for two reasons: 1) to validate the technique I present in volume 4, The Way of Meditation, by showing the high esteem that these techniques have been held in by all spiritual traditions, and 2) to present a rational explanation for the technique’s effectiveness, based upon responsive naturing. Volume 4. The Way of Meditation — This volume describes the practice that I call “Great Responsiveness Meditation” which will allow the reader to: 1) engage in a long-term meditative and contemplative practice in order to attain the insights that are the foundation for the novel paradigm that I am presenting; and 2) to benefit from two unique side-effects of using inner spontaneous sound: one which protects the meditator during traumatic and extreme emotional experiences, especially of the kind now expected because of the current global environmental and societal crises; and the other — which is widely attested to — is an alchemical-like change in the meditator, who quickly displays compassion without self-centered concern. In Buddhism, this is known by the Sanskrit word “Mahākaruṇā,” which is the type of responsive compassion displayed by all enlightened beings. It is a permanent change in how we live our life, and it enables each of us to overcome our worst inculcated selfish behaviors. 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The definition of the lowest common denominator of philosophical practices is widely debated: what is the philosophical core that allows us to distinguish them from other activities? Also, is it possible to identify a methodical peculiarity in philosophical practices? Indeed, many philosophical practitioners refer to dialogue as the specific philosophical character marking their professional activity. This statement, which as such is rather naive, is obviously somewhat problematic. However, philosophical practitioners stress the λόγος of dialogue. (...) In addition to investigating how the dialogue is understood in the different philosophical practices, this contribution aims at enhancing the διά, the "between" of dialogue. This dimension, in fact, may be a possible theoretical framework within which to understand philosophical practices as a whole. (shrink)

Ethics education in post-graduate philosophy departments and professional schools involves disciplinary knowledge and textual analysis but is mostly unconcerned with the ethical lives of students. Ethics or values education below college aims at shaping students’ ethical beliefs and conduct but lacks philosophical depth and methods of value inquiry. The «values transmission» approach to values education does not provide the opportunity for students to express doubt or criticism of the proffered values, or to practice ethical inquiry. The «inquiry» approach (...) to values education recognizes the need and the capacity of young people to grapple with moral ambiguity and pluralism, to confront their own moral doubts, to criticize conventional norms and to engage in ethical inquiry. Values clarification, critical thinking and Philosophy for Children are inquiry approaches to values education, with important differences. Five wisdom practices common among early Greek and Roman philosophical schools should inform ethics education at all levels. First, philosophy was understood as the disciplined study and practice of living well. Second, knowledge and discursive thinking played a limited role in relation to the life worth living. Third, these schools taught certain contemplative or «spiritual» exercises, including meditation, examination of one’s conscience, fraternal correction, contemplation of the cosmos, practicing present-moment awareness and reflection on death. Fourth, many of these schools established philosophical communities that practiced collaborative research, dialogue, mutual correction, and the cultivation of philosophical friendship. Fifth, the primary aim of intellectual and contemplative practices in these schools was self-transformation, from states of confusion, restlessness, egotism, and craving, to states of temperance, compassion, and tranquility. (shrink)

Taking Wittgenstein's love of music as my impetus, I approach aporetic problems of epistemic relativity through a round of three overlapping (canonical) inquiries delivered in contrapuntal (higher and lower) registers. I first take up the question of scepticism surrounding ‘groundless knowledge’ and contending paradigms in On Certainty (physics versus oracular divination, or realism versus idealism) with attention given to the role of ‘bedrock’ certainties in providing stability amidst the Heraclitean flux. I then look into the formation of sedimented bedrock knowledge, (...) or practices of knowing, by comparing Wittgenstein's remarks on animal habituation and initiate training into human forms of life. In the latter case, mastery of techniques—our common education—secures agreement in judgment. Finally, I entertain Wittgenstein's obscure references to Einstein's Relativity in Zettel, showing initiate training as a way of ‘setting the clocks’ with variable degrees of certainty, relative to the language‐games played. Together, these three approaches help us to stop the ‘endless circling’ when philosophers try to address knowledge questions through the logic of object and designation, or verification of correspondence between propositions and things. Instead, attention moves to the way we educate our children and how we employ agreements and bedrock certainties in practices. (shrink)

Ex interiore ipso exeas. Preface. This book reconstructs the history of a still open dialectics between several ethoi, that is, shared codes of unwritten rules, moral traditions, or self-aware attempts at reforming such codes, and ethical theories discussing the nature and justification of such codes and doctrines. Its main claim is that this history neither amounts to a triumphal march of reason dispelling the mist of myth and bigotry nor to some other one-way process heading to some pre-established goal, but (...) instead to a chain of controversies where the partners’ will to win unintentionally yields a wealth of insights on human existence that has still something to teach us. -/- 1. The Hellenic moral tradition. -/- Two different traditions of morality in vi-v century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. -/- 2. Plato and the Good. -/- Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates rejoinder to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 3. Aristotle and practical philosophy. -/- Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistency in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater families, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics, is illustrated. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexes, or ‘dispositions’. Prudence, or better, practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with boùleusis or deliberation is discussed, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 4. Cynics and Stoics: ethics as therapy. -/- The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place that was given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of the science of well-being aiming, more than pleasure understood as in the popular view, the reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Roman and Imperial Moralists. -/- The chapter is dedicated to the reconstruction of a particular kind of literature, whose specific features have long been under-stressed, namely the Roman and Imperial moral literature. Cicero is treated at some length, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is given pride of place, stressing the novelty of his approach to ethics as cognitive therapy, in this case just following an already existing new wave of interest after nineteenth-century oblivion justified by alleged lack of authentic ‘philosophical’ character. -/- 6. The Hebrew moral tradition. -/- A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torah (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Levitic is stressed as the turning point when the stress on mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, starts being combined with legal tradition yielding the change in the sensibility of the Second Temple time. -/- 7. Second Temple Judaism. -/- This chapter describes the Long March leading from the post-exile Zadokite restoration to the first-century aevi vulgaris. The first topic reconstructed is the Zadokite theology of the double retribution. The second is the alternative Enochic tradition consistently rejecting the central role of the Temple, the Priesthood and worship as atonement for sins and offering as an alternative God’s unlimited mercy and preaching mercy, not sacrifice as the way of behaving requested by God. Wisdom literature, the third subject discusses, is a kind of third way, on the one hand increasingly critical towards the double retribution and ruling theology’s optimism facing the world as it is and on the other mocking at the Enochic current as a band of dreamers and visionaries. The third way consists in disenchantment facing the word as it is combined with a refusal of vain and childish hope of prizes for the righteous, suggesting instead the leading idea of right deeds for righteousness’s sake. Rabbi Hillel, Rabbi Yeshua and Philo of Alexandria are described as the three leading figures at the culminating point of such process of emergence of a new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This starting point consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, whose meaning is, arguably, more consistent than a long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine made us believe. And Christian morality, vis-à-vis allegedly legalist ‘Ancient Testament’ teachings, is less of a novelty than most early Christian writers announced. -/- 8. Talmudic moral doctrines and proto-Christian paraenesis. -/- The first three sections examine the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirke Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deot, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexes and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was "the tool by which the world was built"; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous, but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The last two sections examine first the various Christian currents and then Gnostic para-Christian or non-Christian currents as well as Manicheism. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure, purest Judaism. The last section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manicheism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. -/- 9. Christianity as “philosophy”. -/- The chapter reconstructs the stormy story of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and several rhetorical topics from the Stoic and Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua himself had been influenced by cynical preachers, is a proof of the necessity to translate the original Christian message in a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 10. Ethics in the Arabic-Islamic Philosophy. -/- The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on the retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince, had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries, a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with the disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 11. Ethics in the Jewish philosophy. -/- The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place for the first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed too a few traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Tora and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirke Avot could be translated. -/- 12. The practical philosophy revival in Latin Europe. -/- A reconstruction is carried out of a fresh start of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium rescuing a Platonic and Augustinian legacy, with Anselm and Peter Abelard. In this phase remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions, gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of a full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. -/- 13. Scholastic practical philosophy: Thomas Aquinas. -/- Aquinas’s ethics is theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to the repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave pure nature incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too ambitious, and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Prima Secundae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas was able to solve the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from the knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethics, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of the death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not the Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is no way an ethical ‘absolutism’, as both the traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularists tend to believe, but rather an ethic of prudential judgment on the individual case. Exceptions to this approach – or better the result of logical fallacies – are provided by the thesis of the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of so-called intrinsically evil acts, a thesis that would simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences that Thomas did not live long enough to draw. -/- 14. Scholastic practical philosophy: John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. A reconstruction is carried out of the ethical doctrines by both most authoritative Franciscan doctors. Their continuity with Aquinas is vindicated against prejudice carried by centuries of polemics within the Catholic Church and tendentious disparaging of both as forerunners of execrable Reformation. Besides aspects of continuity, also the important novelties are illustrated, first John’s abandonment of Aquinas’s and Augustine’s eudemonism, asserting righteousness for righteousness’s sake, and then William’s explicit defence of the philosopher’s virtues, that is, natural morality, and his solution to the dilemma of God’s omnipotence and the universal validity of natural law extending to God himself. -/- 15. Aristotelianism interpreted by the Magistri Artium. -/- A reconstruction of the until recently forgotten ethical doctrines by the Parisian Magistri Artium, falsely depicted as ‘Averroists’ and either deprecated as heretics or mistaken for predecessors of modern secularism. In fact, they illustrate a view of ‘natural’ virtue as may be understood by human reason without the assistance by Revelation. -/- Etiamsi daremus Deum non esse. Intermediate considerations. Three considerations may be suggested by the story told in the book. The first one is that intellectual histories have been mounted in the past with the same state of mind as one may mount a war chariot. Such constructions are not very helpful as tools for understanding the past. Wars waged in the past have left the field obstructed by ruins not easy to remove even by those historians who have animated by an impartial academic motivation. They have been influenced too by consequences of past emphasis on some authors and damnatio capitis suffered by others, by stratifications left on sources by secondary literature and translations, by allotment of originally close sources to different literary genres, by the monopolization of religious texts by churches with full cooperation by secular scholars who still fear contamination. The second one is that aware or unaware ethnocentrism has carried various calamities to our comprehension of the past. Their last vestiges have surfaced again in the semi-scholarly discussion on the idea of Europe occasioned by the debate on a project of a European Constitution. Mention of Europe’s Christian roots has been the clumsiest move. Proclamations of such roots were so obvious in what they affirmed as they were totally off-path concerning what they omitted, namely that he modern European moral tradition included legacies from Middle-Eastern wisdom, Hellenic philosophy, Roman Imperial legal literature, and, besides, a Jewish legacy in turn incorporating other more ancient Middle-Eastern legacies and which has been partly conveyed by Christianity. And the Islamic-Arabic philosophy too, in so far it made the Nicomachean Ethics available to Latin Christian scholars, is one more of Europe’s roots. The third is that religious traditionalists and secularist fundamentalists have gone hand in hand for a couple of centuries in either extolling or deprecating the allegedly Modern idea of Ethics without God, first formulated by Hugo Grotius with the claim that natural law would still be valid ‘etiamsi daremus – quod sine summo scelere dari potest – Deum non esse’. The facts are, firstly, that this is not an irreligious claim and Grotius was just a pious and meek Christian and, secondly, that it is not a ‘modern’ claim but rather one more formulation of the claim that there is a natural morality, independent of divine revelation, a claim shared by Moshe ben Maimon, Aquinas and William of Ockham. -/- . (shrink)

When asking fundamental questions about education, philosophers have not shied away from giving radical answers. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, who found himself disenchanted with the artificiality and pride that he encountered in 18th century Paris, advocated a laissez faire education in the countryside. Such an “education by nature,” Rousseau thought, would keep children at bay from morally corrupt society and would allow them to become authentic and sincere persons. Similarly concerned with moral education, in the early 20th century the American (...) pragmatist John Dewey argued that experiential learning in socially diverse settings would be crucial for nourishing democratic culture. Being a pragmatist, Dewey also maintained that educational philosophy should always concentrate on solving practical difficulties of contemporary social life, instead of dealing with idle intellectual puzzles. In this spirit, oriented towards educational practice, several philosophers of education and educational theorists have recently turned their attention to the ways in which education might help solving some of the pressing problems arising from globalization. This special issue of Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric assembles the latest scholarship of some these philosophers and theorists on the topic of “Global Justice and Education” – a topic which until recently has been curiously neglected within the academic literature on global justice. Alejandra Boni (Technical University of Valencia) and Diana Carolina Velasco (University of Ibagué) analyze how power asymmetries in global knowledge production can give rise to epistemic injustices and explored how academics can collaborate with civil society actors to fight such injustices. Johannes Drerup (Technical University of Dortmund and Free University Amsterdam) responds to the postcolonial critique that global citizenship education is Western-centric by arguing that the dichotomy of “the West vs. the Rest” is outdated and that the critical study of colonialism should be part of global citizenship education. Juan Espíndola (National Autonomous University of Mexico) criticizes that low fee private schools in many developing countries often times do not provide an adequate education, and that global philanthropists should therefore be more careful in their support for these schools. Lindsey Schwartz (University of Wisconsin-Madison) discusses a number of problems that students living abroad face because two central principles of educational justice that are usually taken for granted at the national level either systematically overlook or exacerbate their problems. These two principles are the principle of educational adequacy and the presumption of responsibility on the part of a host country for meeting children’s educational needs. Due to their inappropriateness under conditions of globalization and, in particular, transnational migration, Schwartz demands a cosmopolitan revision of the first and a replacement for the second with a focus on collective responsibility. Finally, Danielle Zwarthoed (Catholic University of Louvain) critically examines the proposal that education for autonomy could be conceived of as a global educational aim, and points out that not only do non-Western cultures endorse the ideal of autonomy, but also that autonomy increasingly gains practical value in a world in which mobility is ubiquitous. -/- All paper drafts except that of Lindsey Schwartz have been subject to intensive debate during the two-day international workshop on “Global Justice In and Through Education,” held at the American University of Paris (AUP) on November 29 and 30, 2018. The international workshop was hosted by the Center for Critical Democracy Studies (CCDS) and was generously funded not only from the CCDS but also from the German Research Foundation (DFG). (shrink)

This is a philosophical study by Lithuanian authors on issues related to how to teach philosophy, especially moral philosophy, through films, paintings, images, etc. The topics include multimodality as a synthesis; semiotics and language and image; cinema and philosophical education; postructuralism; film education; value education through spiritual cinema; Eastern Ethics for Western students through multimodal education; philosophy for children; sound and multimodality; Pedagogy of aesthetic to eco-pedagogy, etc.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Focusing on The Experience:Exploring Alternative Paths for ResearchEleanor Stubley, Anneli Arho, Päivi Järviö, and Tuomas MaliWriting and speaking are essential means of understanding, studying, and sharing music in the Western art music tradition. As a group of researchers, our story begins with the gap that seemingly exists between theoretical definitions or accounts of music and our experience of it as music makers—that is to say as composers, performers, conductors, (...) and teachers. Poignantly sensitive to the ways in which our musical experience and knowledge is embodied, we found ourselves one day four years ago sitting around an electrically-charged dinner table where ideas, questions, and the joy of having found someone like-minded seemed to be the main entrée. Since then, we have been working as a group, [End Page 39] experimenting with different ways of collaborating, using writing as a means of exploring and sharing our experiences across long distances. At first, the goal was simply to find a common ground, a platform for developing an extended dialogue that would draw on our unique backgrounds and divergent ways of our thinking. But, in the absence of a common language, both linguistic and theoretical, there were problems. We had, for example, to come to understand what each of us meant by the word experience and the role it could play as the ground of research, not as a series of defining moments or events but as the largely invisible flow of human life. We also had to deal with the inter-wovenness of mind and body, individual, and culture, not to mention our individual musical sensitivity and artistry. Confronted by these larger issues, our differences soon became the means to explore gaps or openings that could be entered to reveal the continuous becoming of music and language, the places where they intersect and diverge, and our own being in relationship to both.The papers presented in this symposium were the outgrowth of our dialogue during the summer of 2004. Each of us worked independently, yet each of us was also aware of the direction, the themes, and the ways of the others. The result is kaleidoscopic, each author starting from a different place, but seemingly working from the same palette of colors.Eleanor Stubley writes as a philosopher and conductor. Her work here is part of a larger on-going study that examines the way in which the body fills both language and our experience of music, with a particular focus on the way in which an interest in the body renews our understanding of music, language, and thought. Through a series of inter-connecting meditations inspired by the letter A, she challenges the practice of grounding research and practice in definitions of music as "organized sound." Her writing makes visible the habitual of a variety of educational practices, asking us to think anew about instructional technologies such as the alphabet, scale, and taxonomies of musical form, and to find in what we have traditionally thought of as practices of the mind, the omnipresence of the body. It also offers a new perspective on the hand, not as a tool or muscle to be trained as a skill, but as the very ground from which to develop an aesthetics of music that combines and recognizes the multiple ways in which we know and encounter music, through sight, sound, movement, and touch.Anneli Arho writes as a composer, educator, and philosopher/researcher. She explores the power of working from within the factical situation of a musician making music, focusing in particular on the embodiedness of music, questions of meaningfulness, and the ways in which phenomenological reflection on her own musical experiences has allowed her to move beyond traditional research discourses. Her writing asks us as educators to re-think curricular definitions of [End Page 40] composition, not simply as a collection of skills to be acquired or languages to be learned, but rather as embodied ways of living in and through sound. Using notation as an example, she argues that composing generates its own practical and existential questions distinct from those of listener, performer, and researcher, and which can never be totally shared with others... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PHILOSOPHY AND STYLE: WITTGENSTEIN AND RUSSELL by John Hughes Was there ever a great philosopher who was not also a distinctive stylist, whose modes of elucidation or comprehension were not inseparable from wholly individual ways of writing? If it is true that this is a fact often noted by commentators or philosophers, it is also true that its implications are somewhat neglected. A study of a philosopher 's (...) characteristic uses of language can suggest a great deal about the relationships between thought and personality—between what is said or written, and how or why. The aim of what follows is briefly to compare Wittgenstein and Russell in these terms, to suggest something of how a study of this kind can deepen our understanding of the personal sources and contexts of philosophy. Russell's daughter Katherine once wrote of her father that although he was "a passionate believer in liberty and equality" he was, in practice, incapable of "fraternity," an aristocrat "who had been taught to think himselfsuperior."1 Such paradoxes and blind spots are, ofcourse, often noted in men of vision and principle, and it would be invidious to lay too uncharitable an emphasis on these words. However, the comment does indicate a track of vision fundamentally characteristic of Russell. In intellectual terms he was capable of imposing upon phenomena of the most diverse kinds a synoptic perspective of supreme sweep and rigor which, nevertheless, coexists with all sorts of necessary simplifi332 John Hughes333 cation, even evasiveness. As an aspect ofthis his prose can come to seem both satisfied in its own superior lucidity, and tendentious. An obvious, if perhaps slighdy unfair, example of the personal aspect of this is a passage from the beginning of the Autobiography: "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither... over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair...."2 The self-esteem which sustains and is sustained by this prose lacks relation to words, reader, and world. The vocabulary, sentiments, and syntax of this sentence assume an impossible grandeur which merely encloses Russell within his own expansive sense of his destiny. The comparisons here are worth pursuing. Russell depends on a congenial sense of an historic philosophical mission, and is adept at conveying his sense of this to the reader. However, he remains unreflective about the implications or nature of the process, and this may excite orirritate us depending on how we react to thewriter's assumption of our acquiescence in his own estimation of himself. The later Wittgenstein, in contrast, is far more suspicious of the way philosophy can be compromised by self-satisfaction: "A beautiful garment that is transformed (coagulates, as it were) into worms and serpents if its wearer looks smugly at himself in the mirror...."3 As has been implied, for Wittgenstein philosophy, in one aspect, was an attempt to authenticate self-presentation, as it was also an attempt to evade "the edifice of... pride."4 The unremitting grappling with words reveals the man to the reader, while the exacting inner focus and process ofthe philosophy exclude any composed consciousness of self. What of Russell's writing on other topics? Here is an example picked more or less at random from On Education: But that is not the real issue; the real issue is: should we, in education, aim at filling the mind with knowledge which has direct practical utility, or should we try to give our pupils mental possessions which are good on their own account? It is useful to know that there are twelve inches in a foot, and three feet in a yard, but this knowledge has no intrinsic value; to those who live where the metric system is in use it is utterly worthless. To appreciate Hamlet, on the other hand, will not be much use in practical life, except in those rare cases where a man is called upon to kill his uncle; but it gives a man a mental possession which he would be soriy to be without, and makes... (shrink)

The article combines later Wittgenstein’s fictitious language games, along with the forms of life associated with them, with the concept of otherness and places them both within the philosophy of education. The account of otherness overlaps with the view of fictional language games in that the latter deviates from our ordinary, extant uses of language and our Lebensform, and thus can be perceived as extraordinary, unusual, strange, and sometimes nonsensical. The advantages of dealing with such (...) construed preposterousness rely, first, on its leading to a better understanding of our own form of life; second, on its opening a window on the changing of our form of life; third, on its acquainting us with the other. The educational roles of it are presented, first, as being needed at the very beginning of a child’s language learning, when the learner probes the limits of sense and thus enters the domain of otherness; second, as freeing children from the tyranny of adults’ norms and showing the norms that adults accept as absurd; thirdly, as puzzlement that gives an impulse to our thought development, which occurs in contact with the other. Therefore, it is claimed that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy opens perspectives on educational thinking not only in terms of teacher training (Abrichtung) of the learner to follow the rules of existing practices, but also in terms of imagination and critical attitude towards the existing forms of life. (shrink)

There are many interpretations of what Wittgenstein's later approach entails and what its motivations are. Yet, despite extensive exegesis significantly deepening our understanding, his later approach—howsoever one interprets it—remains at best marginal and at worst ignored in contemporary philosophy. This is especially puzzling given the general consensus that Wittgenstein is a very influential philosopher. I suggest a change in approach. Rather than focussing on the potential differences to be found in Wittgenstein's work, in this essay I propose that Wittgenstein's (...) later approach entails a core overarching method, which Wittgenstein summarises through a simple instruction: ‘Describe language‐games!’ (PI §486). I first explicate this instruction before contrasting it with the dominant method in philosophy and proposing that a recently promoted philosophical approach—Investigative Ordinary Language Philosophy—offers a practical way by which to put Wittgenstein's method into action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What I Think about When I Think about Teaching Ethics: A Philosophical Exploration in Pedagogy1Douglas R. HochstetlerIntroductionIn his book, Philosophy Americana, Anderson outlines the basic tenets of those individuals in American philosophy known as pragmatists. The pragmatists “were not Enlightenment believers in the inevitability of progress,” Anderson writes, “but across the board the pragmatists were meliorists. They believed that inquiry and experiment could lead to the (...) betterment of human existence” (Philosophy Americana 28). Similarly, college professors seem to understand that progress is not inevitable in the classroom either. In fact, some of the most skeptical academics may even contend that students’ academic skills are deteriorating over time rather than improving (they may place the blame on high schools for poor preparation here). Rather than progress as a given, most faculty believe that their own inquiry and experimentation in the classroom may prove as fertile ground for the learning process. At their best and most impactful, they embody this pragmatic notion of meliorism, hopeful that their efforts will make a difference in the lives of their students.The American philosophical tradition encapsulates a variety of philosophical themes. Several stand out as ones that intersect with and potentially inform higher education pedagogy. In this introduction, I briefly highlight American philosophical themes related to the practice of teaching and learning. I follow this with the journal portion, with entries from a semester-long habit of recording my thoughts and observations related to pedagogy. The paper ends with reflections on the journal process itself.One theme pertinent to this topic is the aforementioned notion of meliorism. The pragmatists, in particular, held an underlying hope that life could improve with a requisite amount of effort and planning. As Anderson puts it, this hopeful stance toward meliorism permeated “Dewey’s faith in [End Page 81] education, and James’ faith in the human spirit” (Philosophy Americana 29). The idea of growth and continual improvement holds intuitive promise, but requires a foundational approach in terms of what it means for teachers and students. For example, as educators, we need clarity around our intended aims in the classroom. In his book, Experience and Education, Dewey provides a partial answer, with attention to the student experience: the “good aim... [forms] a tentative plan of treatment, keeps the plan constantly in view and yet modifies it as conditions develop. The aim, in short, is experimental, and hence constantly growing as it is tested in action” (Dewey 105).While growth and a belief in meliorism involve a sense of gradual improvement and sense of progress, it is clear that growth, especially, is not always a linear process. Marathon runners provide a clear example here. In their training regimens, the goal is to successfully finish a 26.2 mile race, perhaps within a pre-determined time. To meet the designated fitness levels required to run for this distance, it is quite typical for runners to follow twelve- or sixteen- or eighteen-week training programs. These programs provide the runners with a plan to gradually increase endurance capacity, in other words, to grow in physiological and psychological health. While these plans gradually increase the mileage per week, they are not merely linear in nature. Rather, after incremental increases in weekly mileage—say from 28 to 30 to 32 miles per week, it is recommended that the runner then follow with a “step back” or “rest” week, perhaps at 25 miles per week. In this way, the body has an opportunity to restore, thus allowing the runner to continue with this growth pattern and increased fitness the following week.In addition to meliorism, Henry David Thoreau articulated another theme related to pedagogy. Reflecting on his time at Walden Pond, he observed, “how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves” (Thoreau, Portable Thoreau 459). Too often, tradition and conformity serve as barriers to growth and meliorism; this impacts teachers and students, and classes may become repetitive, stale, and boring. Examples of conformity occur in the sense of choosing class texts or rigidly adhering to lesson or curricular plans that someone else created. Part of the job of educators is to balance this tendency... (shrink)

This volume, the result of an ongoing bridge building effort among engineers and humanists, addresses a variety of philosophical, ethical, and policy issues emanating from engineering and technology. Interwoven through its chapters are two themes, often held in tension with one another: “Exploring Boundaries” and “Expanding Connections.” “Expanding Connections” highlights contributions that look to philosophy for insight into some of the challenges engineers face in working with policy makers, lay designers, and other members of the public. It also (...) speaks to reflections included in this volume on the connections between fact and value, reason and emotion, engineering practice and the social good, and, of course, between engineering and philosophy. “Exploring Boundaries” highlights contributions that focus on some type of demarcation. Public policy sets a boundary between what is regulated from what is not, academic disciplines delimit themselves by their subjects and methods of inquiry, and professions approach problems with unique goals and by using concepts and language in particular ways that create potential obstacles to collaboration with other fields. These and other forms of boundary setting are also addressed in this volume. Contributors explore these two themes in a variety of specific contexts, including engineering epistemology, engineers’ social responsibilities, engineering and public policy-making, engineering innovation, and the affective dimensions of engineering work. The book also includes analyses of social and ethical issues with emerging technologies such as 3-D printing and its use in medical applications, as well as social robots. Initial versions of the invited papers included in this book were first presented at the 2014 meeting of the Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology, held at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. The volume furthers fPET’s intent of extending and developing the philosophy of engineering as an academic field, and encouraging conversation, promoting a sense of shared enterprise, and building community among philosophers and engineers across a diversity of cultural backgrounds and approaches to inquiry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Music Education for the New Millennium: Theory and Practice Futures for Music Teaching and LearningSean PenderelMusic Education for the New Millennium: Theory and Practice Futures for Music Teaching and Learning, edited by David K. Lines. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005, 150 pp., $34.95 paper.Music Education for the New Millennium is a 150-page collection of essays focused mainly upon philosophical introspection into the current condition of the profession. (...) Within this volume there are eight philosophic essays and one quantitative research article, by Alastair McPhee, Peter Stollery, and Ros McMillan. Other essays, beyond the work of the editor, were contributed by Thomas Regelski, Wayne Bowman, Robert Davis, Lucy Green, David Elliott, Constantijn Koopman, and Janet Mansfield. This collection contributes to our contemporary quandaries about aesthetics and praxialism in addition to adding pertinent questions for both philosophy and music education.The overall purpose of this volume is to stimulate thinking in ways not accounted for in the classroom or studio environments and expand upon the broader discourses impacting the profession and society (3). Given that Lines organized this volume as a collection about a specified theme, I will approach this review threefold. First, I will examine overall features that were promising and those that were disappointing. Second, each chapter's contributions will be examined in light of the aim of the volume. Lastly, each essay will also be examined for its contributions apart from the volume, due to the fact that all of the works can stand alone.Within this framework, six themes continually emerged throughout the essays. These themes involved the use and abuse of musical meaning; the construction of musical meaning and understanding; language used within advocacy; the difficulties presented by both aesthetics and praxialism; the problems posed by our focus upon psychology; and lastly, the "what works" mentality of efficient systems. These themes are incredibly relevant to the contemporary discussion surrounding music education in addition to benefiting the whole of the profession. In some fashion or another, each author confronts one to many of these issues efficiently and effectively, to the point that the volume and its aim is solidified within Bowman's essay, "Music Education in Nihilistic Times." As a negative point, however, an internal organization around these themes never seems to appear, and without this the volume lacks a certain flow; each chapter stands alone. Although internal organization is petty globally for this volume, it does affect its readability.Regelski's essay appears first and critiques both traditional aesthetics and praxial philosophy. Interestingly, he weighs the potential dangers posed by both and drifts toward the notion of praxis while maintaining a certain aesthetic influence within his philosophy. Through music education's abuse of aesthetics, Regelski chronicles the elevation of experience beyond societal values of participation, production, and the process of music creation. Due to this, the profession has been subject to a certain dependency upon the positive aesthetic experience rather than on the participatory process of education. Furthermore, he notes that aesthetics, when stretched to its philosophic extreme, has had a tendency to become exclusive and elitist. I liken [End Page 117] this to the Gnostic practices within early Christianity. This sect valued a spiritual/aesthetic experience and its resulting "enlightenment," which occurred during a state of ecstasy, to the point of elevating those who had experienced this moment beyond those who had not.To curb this movement, Regelski suggests redefining aesthetics in the tradition of Dewey and Wittgenstein rather than that of Kant. In the former, the aesthetics are tied directly to the using of the object, or the practice of doing and creating. In contrast, in the Kantian tradition, which has dominated music philosophy, the experience becomes removed from the practice and is elevated to a position of esteem, beyond that of understanding. Likewise, praxialism, when taken to its extreme, has the potential to suffer from breadth without depth, which may result in a loss of content and depth of understanding. Regelski suggests that what needs to occur is a balance of depth and breadth with a focus on the development of musicianship. If this occurs then the experience will become valued as a result of participation in the... (shrink)

Philosophy in Schools: An introduction for philosophers and teachers edited by Sara Goering, Nicholas J Shudak and Thomas E Wartenberg. Taylor & Francis, New York, NY. ISBN: 9780415640633. The edited collection Philosophy in Schools: An introduction for philosophers and teachers is exactly that; an introduction to the central ideas of the Philosophy in Schools movement, with tips and strategies as to how to implement Philosophy for Children in your classroom or educational space. With 25 chapters, this (...) handy edition includes the writings of 31 academics and well known practitioners of P4C worldwide. While all the voices contributing to this volume are positive and optimistic as they exalt the benefits of P4C, the diversity comes in the form of the various ways in which the numerous authors have practiced philosophy with participants of different ages, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. There is a mix of theory and pedagogy, with a focus on the pragmatic reality of doing philosophy with young people. (shrink)

This article examines the history of philosophy and some of its fundamental moments from specific interpretations provided by different authors to understand other critique perspectives. Philosophical critique as the practice of the art of existence, as a form of care that puts people at risk, as a critique of insufficiency based on the desire for what is not possessed, as a critique of government or power, as a form of voluntary “in-servitude.” Defense of affirmative freedom through critique. Critique (...) is an ethical-political value and an internal and external capacity that demands a democratic way of life based on the guarantee that specific capacities will be developed. Critique is part of the teacher’s academic freedom and the student’s freedom of opinion in education, which is monitored and repressed by the status quo. A knowledge society based on the logic of neoliberal power monitors and persecutes critique, and its education system promotes competencies for adapting to the status quo, thus ignoring critique. Critique acts as hope and resistance to the status quo. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Socrates Plays the Buffoon:Cautionary Protreptic in EuthydemusAnn N. MicheliniPlato's Euthydemus is somewhat uninteresting to traditional philosophers, who tend to treat the dialogues from the aspect of their theoretical content.1 The arguments repeatedly presented by Socrates' opponents are below Platonic standards,2 while Socrates carries on only a single, somewhat truncated logos of his own. The dialogue's primary interest lies elsewhere, in the odd use it makes of protreptic or conversionary (...) philosophical rhetoric and in its highly ambivalent examination of Socratic tactics. Socrates' adversaries are a pair of ludicrous charlatans, caricatures of the other fifth-century "Sophists"3 whom Plato satirized; but the tactics of the two brothers, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, are also awkwardly close to those of Socrates himself. No other Platonic dialogue features interlocutors who make a habit of practicing the Socratic question-and-answer mode, and in no other dialogue does Socrates allow anyone but himself to assume the dominant role of interrogator. 4 The "sandwich" format, in which two Socratic discussions [End Page 509] are flanked by three series of arguments by the brothers, both contrasts Socrates and his opponents and points up their similarity.The encounter is marked by its concern for protreptic, the exhortation, pervasive in later philosophical writing, as it is in the fourth-century texts of Isocrates and Xenophon, to leave conventional ways of life and care for wisdom and moral virtue.5 At the beginning of the discussion (274d7-e5), Socrates asks Dionysodorus whether his wisdom can be transmitted to even one person not yet persuaded of its efficacy. Socrates rather tendentiously concludes from Dionysodorus' positive response that the brothers would therefore be best at exhortation to virtue, and throughout the discussion he persists in pushing them to demonstrate their protreptic.6 This desire in turn motivates his self-abasing relation to Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, whom Socrates continually begs, on behalf of his young friend Clinias, to reveal their priceless wisdom and save the boy from bad influences. Not only does Socrates set up the brothers as masters of protreptic but he even offers his own version, showing that wisdom is the key to happiness and concluding that it is "necessary to philosophize" (282d1) in order to be happy. The fact that protreptic language is so little in evidence in Plato's other work implies an exceptional status for Euthydemus, the only dialogue that both employs the terminology of protreptic and focuses on the problems of philosophic exhortation and conversion.The phrase "exhort to philosophy and virtue" is conventional: it appears very frequently in both Xenophon and Isocrates.7 But, while Socrates in Apology describes his vocation in terms of an open protreptic of rebuke and exhortation, his use of the elenchus in the dialogues [End Page 510] is more subtle and tactful.8 More important, the trope of exhortation to virtue is notable for its absence from almost all Platonic texts9 except Euthydemus and the eccentric Clitophon.10 The thematic importance of the phrase in Euthydemus is emphasized by repetition and by overlap between the reported dialogue and its setting, in which Socrates exhorts Crito to join him as a student of the brothers' wisdom, and in which Crito expresses his concerns about the education of his son (, 307a2). In his important work on protreptic, Konrad Gaiser attempted to derive later protreptic from speeches by fifth-century "Sophistic" teachers that were designed to win pupils for training in rhetoric and politics. But, while admonitory or moralizing discourses were composed by figures such as Prodicus and Hippias, as they were by others from Hesiod onward, it does not seem likely that the specifically conversionary protreptic that appears in fourth-century writers derives from thinkers who were primarily concerned with demonstrations of skill. The real source for protreptic is likely to have been the Socratics themselves, writers who used the unconventional Socratic persona both to rebuke immorality and to show the inadequacy of traditional moral concepts. This Socratic protreptic demanded nothing less than a change of life.11Whether the dialogue Clitophon is by Plato or not, it affords a valuable proof that protreptic was associated with Socratic technique: Clitophon, an associate of Thrasymachus in Republic... (shrink)