Conceptions of Childhood and Moral Education in Philosophy For Children

KINDHEIT – BILDUNG – ERZIEHUNG
Dina Mendonça /
Florian Franken Figueiredo (Eds.)
Conceptions of Childhood
and Moral Education in
Philosophy for Children
Kindheit – Bildung – Erziehung.
Philosophische Perspektiven
Series Editors
Johannes Drerup, Institut für Allgemeine Erziehungswissenschaft, Technische
Universität Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany
Franziska Felder, Institut für Bildungswissenschaft, Universität Wien, Wien, Austria
Veronika Magyar-Haas, Departement Erziehungs- und Bildungswissenschaften,
Université Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
Gottfried Schweiger, Ethik und Armutsforschung, Universität Salzburg, Salzburg,
Austria
In der Reihe „Kindheit – Bildung – Erziehung: Philosophische Perspektiven”
erscheinen Monographien und Sammelbände, die sich mit philosophischen
Debatten über Fragen der Kindheit, der Bildung und der Erziehung beschäftigen.
Thematisiert werden etwa Problematiken der theoretischen Konzeptualisierung, der
Legitimation und Gewährleistung von Erziehung und Bildung in (post-)modernen
Gesellschaften genauso wie aktuelle Kontroversen über normativ relevante
Unterscheidungen zwischen Kindern und Erwachsenen, über spezifische Güter
der Kindheit und über das Verhältnis von Eltern- und Kinderrechten in und
außerhalb von liberalen Demokratien. Die Reihe richtet sich an Interessierte aus der
Erziehungs- und Bildungsphilosophie, den Childhood Studies, der Philosophie der
Kindheit und aus weiteren philosophischen Disziplinen (z.B. Politische Philoso-
phie), die sich mit den genannten Themen- und Problemfeldern beschäftigen.
In the series „Childhood and Education. Philosophical Perspectives” monographs
and edited volumes are published that deal with philosophical debates about
childhood and education. Topics include philosophical questions and problems
concerning the conceptualization, justification and the practice of education in
(post-)modern societies, as well as controversies over normatively relevant
distinctions between children and adults, the specific goods of childhood, and the
relation between the rights of children and parents in and beyond liberal
democracies. The series addresses scholars from the philosophy of education,
childhood studies, philosophy of childhood as well as from other philosophical
disciplines (e.g. political philosophy), who are interested in the aforementioned
topics and issues.
More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/16428

Dina Mendonça •
Florian Franken Figueiredo
Editors
Conceptions of Childhood
and Moral Education
in Philosophy for Children
Editors
Dina Mendonça Florian Franken Figueiredo
Instituto de Filosofia da Nova Instituto de Filosofia da Nova
Universidade Nova de Lisboa Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Lisbon, Portugal Lisbon, Portugal
ISSN 2662-5040 ISSN 2662-5059 (electronic)

Kindheit – Bildung – Erziehung. Philosophische Perspektiven
ISBN 978-3-662-64179-8 ISBN 978-3-662-64180-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-64180-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag
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Acknowledgements
This edited volume is the first collected work in the research project P4C-AIM
(PTDC/FER-FIL/29906/2017) funded by FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Sci-
ence and Technology, at the New University of Lisbon within IFILNOVA at
NOVA FCSH in collaboration with the Azores University. The project Philosophy
for Children and the Dawn of Moral Intuition: Values and Reasons in Rationality
and Reasonability is focused on the field of Ethics in P4wC and aims to show how
philosophy can play a decisive role in promoting excellence of thinking and rea-
soning for a complete citizenship. It is based on more than 15 years of work in the
field doing Philosophy for Children sessions in a variety of pedagogical settings
(schools, museums, libraries, etc.). Each and every colleague within the project
deserves our special recognition for none of this would be possible without them.
We thank the Co-Pi of the Project Magda Eugénia Pinheiro Brandão Costa Car-
valho, and all the team: Ana Isabel Santos, Maria Gabriela Azevedo e Castro, Rui
Sampaio da Silva, Júlio Sousa, Paula Pereira Vieira from the Açores University and
Chrysi Rapanta, Dima Mohammed, Maria Grazia Rossi, Marta Faustino, Nuno
Venturinha, Paolo Stellino, Susana Cadilha.
Special thanks are directed to the authors of this collected volume who kindly
agreed to contribute their ideas, conceptions and arguments and thus made the book
possible. We are grateful for their excellent work and collaboration, and also for
their previous presentations of material in the Lisbon P4C seminar 2021. Further-
more, Dina Mendonça thanks Prof. Shaun Gallagher for his invitation to be a vising
scholar in 2019. Owe to this invitation it was possible for her to participate in P4wC
sessions facilitated by Jonathan Wurtz. The Editors also want to extend their
gratitude to Prof. João Sàágua who has been an ongoing supporter of the Philos-
ophy for Children activities from the very beginning, and to Prof. João Contâncio
for continuing to encourage the research within this field.
This research work is supported by national funds through FCT—Fundação para
a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the context of the celebration of the programme
contract foreseen in the numbers 4, 5 and 6 of article 23.º of D.L. no. 57/2016 of 29
August, as amended by Law no. 57/2017 of 19 July. This research work is also
supported by national funds through FCT with Strategic Project of the Nova
Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA) no. UIDB/00183/2020 and Research Project
P4C-AIM (PTDC/FER-FIL/29906/2017).
v
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Dina Mendonça and Florian Franken Figueiredo
2 Philosophy with Children as and for Moral Education . . . . . . . . . . 13
Claire Cassidy
3 Schooling, Neoteny, Ethical Reconstruction, and the Child
as Privileged Stranger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
David Kennedy
4 Facing Childhood Ethically: Overcoming Normative Overloading
in P4C and Opening Philosophy to the Radically New . . . . . . . . . . 41
Jonathan Wurtz
5 Daring a Childlike Writing: Children for Philosophy, Moral End,
and the Childhood of Conceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Walter Omar Kohan and Magda Costa Carvalho
6 An Exercise in Sámi Philosophising: Indigeneity, the Young Child
and an Ethics of Cultural Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Viktor Johansson
7 Personality Traits, Habits, and Virtues: A Moral Education
Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Félix García-Moriyón and Tomás Miranda-Alonso
8 P4C and “Self-Education”: How Can Philosophical Dialogue
Best Solicit Selves? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Susan T. Gardner
9 Paradox, Friendship, and Philosophy for Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Anastasia Anderson
10 Conceptual Analysis as a Means for Teaching Intellectual
Virtues in P4C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
vii
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors

Tomás Miranda-Alonso holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of
Valencia, Professor of Philosophy of Secondary Education and Associate Professor
of Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities of Albacete (University of Castilla-La
Mancha). He is a member and founding partner of the Spanish Center of Philosophy
for Children. He has published books and many articles and book chapters on the
theory of argumentation, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of the mind,
the didactics of philosophy and philosophy for children.
Anastasia Anderson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University

of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada. She is the Director of the UFV
Centre for Philosophical Inquiry with Children and an Assistant Director of the
Thinking Playground Summer Camps. Her graduate studies in philosophy took
place at the University of Toronto. She has training in P4C through the IAPC, the
Philosophy Foundation and the VIP4C.
Magda Costa Carvalho holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy (Ph.D., University of the

Azores, 2009) and is a Professor (auxiliar) at the University of the Azores. She
coordinates the Masters programme in Philosophy for Children. She is also a
researcher for NICA-UAc: Interdisciplinary Nucleus for Children and Adolescents,
and the Institute of Philosophy at University of Porto (Portugal). She holds Levels 1
and 2 of P4C certification from the Society for the Advancement of Philosophical
Enquiry and Reflection in Education (SAPERE) in the UK.
Claire Cassidy is a Reader in the School of Education at the University of

Strathclyde and the Deputy Head of School. She is the course leader for the
Postgraduate Certificate in Philosophy with Children, a course that is unique
internationally. She is also on the editorial board for Childhood & Philosophy and
the Scottish Educational Review. She is a member of the General Teaching Council
for Scotland, the International Council for Philosophical Inquiry with Children, and
the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow.
ix
x Editors and Contributors
Florian Franken Figueiredo is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy

at the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. He was FAPESP scholar from 2016 to 2019
and Postdoctoral Fellow during that time at the State University of Campinas in São
Paulo, Brazil and at the University of Reading, UK. Together with Dina Mendonça
he works in the FCT funded project Philosophy for Children and the Dawn of
Moral Intuition: Values and Reasons in Rationality and Reasonability, and in
particular on philosophical that regard the teaching of P4wC.
Susan T. Gardner is a Philosopher (Ph.D., Concordia University, 1981) and a

Professor of Philosophy at Capilano University in North Vancouver, Canada. She is
the Director of The Vancouver Institute of Philosophy for Children (VIP4C), and
the Director of the P4C camp “The Thinking Playground”. Gardner is also a
director of The North American Association of the Community of Inquiry (NAACI)
and she is currently serving as the Vice President of the International Council of
Philosophical Inquiry with Children (ICPIC).
Viktor Johansson is an Associate Professor in Pedagogy at Södertörn University

in Sweden. He is primarily working in philosophy of education, children’s
philosophies, philosophy of literature, children’s literature and early childhood
education. His most recent books are Literature and Philosophical Play in Early
Education (2019) and Filosofi i tidig barndom [Philosophy in Early Childhood]
(2019). He is currently working on a project about children’s philosophies in
indigenous early childhood, especially in Sámicontexts in northern Scandinavia.
David Kennedy is a Professor of Educational Foundations at Montclair State

University and fellow at the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for
Children (IAPC). He is the author of The Well of Being: Childhood, Subjectivity,
and Education (2006), Changing Conceptions of Childhood from the Renaissance
to Post-Modernity: A philosophy of Childhood (2006), Philosophical Dialogue with
Children (2011) and My Name is Myshkin: A Philosophical Novel for Children
(2013).
Walter Omar Kohan is a Full professor at the Childhood Studies Department

of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ; Brazil). He is the researcher of the
National council of Research of Brazil (CNPq) and the foundation for Support of
Research of the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ). He is Coordinator of the Project
“Philosophy in Childhood of schooling” (CAPES-PrInt; Brazil). He is the author of
Philosophy and Childhood (2014), Childhood, Education and Philosophy (2015)
and The Inventive Schoolmaster (2015).
Dina Mendonça (Ph.D. University of South Carolina, USA, 2003) researches on

Philosophy of Emotions and Philosophy for Children at the Universidade NOVA de
Lisboa. She is the author of several papers on emotion theory and, in addition,
promotes and creates original material for application of philosophy to all schooling
Editors and Contributors xi
stages. She is the author of a manual of Philosophy for Children (“Brincar a

Pensar?”) and Principal Investigator in the FCT funded project Philosophy for
Children and the Dawn of Moral Intuition (PTDC/FER-FIL/29906/2017).
Félix García-Moriyón (Ph.D. in Philosophy) is an Honorary Professor at the

Department of Specific Didactics (UAM), after 35 years as philosophy teacher in
high school. He has authored 19 books and co-authored or edited 22 books, about
philosophical and educational topics, with a specific focus on practical philosophy.
He is founding member of the Spanish Society of Philosophy Teachers, of the
Spanish Center of Philosophy for Children, and of Sophia, the European foundation
for the dissemination of Philosophy for Children.
Jonathan Wurtz is currently an independent researcher who recently graduated

with a Ph.D. from the University of Memphis. For the last 7 years, he has been
involved with the University of Memphis’ Philosophical Horizons programme; an
outreach P4C program that specifically aims to introduce philosophical thinking
and dialogue to underserved and underrepresented pre-college students in the
Memphis area.
Contributors
Anastasia Anderson University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, BC, Canada
Magda Costa Carvalho Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto, Porto,
Portugal
Interdisciplinary Nucleus for Children and Adolescents of the University of the
Azores, Azores, Portugal
Claire Cassidy University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Florian Franken Figueiredo IFILNOVA, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lis-
bon, Portugal
Félix García-Moriyón Facultad de Formación del Profesorado Y Educación,
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Francisco Tomás Y Valiente 3, Madrid, Spain
Susan T. Gardner Capilano University, Vancouver, Canada
Viktor Johansson Department of Education, School of Culture and Education,
Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden
David Kennedy College of Education and Human Services, Montclair State
University, Montclair, NJ, USA
Walter Omar Kohan Center of Philosophical and Childhood Studies, State
University of Rio de Janeiro, São Francisco Xavier Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
xii Editors and Contributors
Dina Mendonça IFILNOVA, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

Tomás Miranda-Alonso Facultad de Formación del Profesorado Y Educación,
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Francisco Tomás Y Valiente 3, Madrid, Spain
Jonathan Wurtz University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA
Introduction
1
Dina Mendonça and Florian Franken Figueiredo
Moral Education and Philosophy for/with Children
Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) is a pedagogical methodology that aims to

improve thinking abilities. It was originally developed by Matthew Lipman (1923–
2010), Ann Margaret Sharp (1942–2010) and Gareth B. Matthews (1929–2011) in
the 1970s, and is now an international movement which has been adapted and
developed around the globe (Pritchard 2020; Gregory 2021) united by an Inter-
national Global Network—ICPIC.1
Around the world, Philosophy for Children (P4wC) contributes to the education
showing that there is a unique and singular contribution of philosophy for the
improvement of thinking. The pedagogical program P4wC builds upon children’s
thinking skills, and helps them verbalize thinking to fruitfully do it with others. The
program aims to give voice to children by promoting dialogues on philosophical
issues in a variety of pedagogical environments to foster reasoning and argumen-
tative skills. It also develops imagination and caring dispositions (Santi and Di Masi
2010). The multi-layered learning experience of a P4wC session occurs by pro-
moting a dialogue in a group where participants are encouraged to speak and listen
to each other’s opinions, and to discuss philosophical issues with the help of a
facilitator.
1
https://www.icpic.org.
D. Mendonça (&) F. Franken Figueiredo

IFILNOVA, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
e-mail: dmendonca.ifl@fcsh.unl.pt
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, 1

part of Springer Nature 2021
D. Mendonça and F. Franken Figueiredo (eds.), Conceptions of Childhood
and Moral Education in Philosophy for Children, Kindheit – Bildung – Erziehung.
Philosophische Perspektiven, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-64180-4_1
2 D. Mendonça and F. Franken Figueiredo
P4wC has long been considered as crucial for children’s ethical and moral
education (Lipman; Gardner 2012; García-Moriyón et al. 2020) and as a decisive
contribution for education for the democratic life (Lipman 2003). The philosopher
Martha Nussbaum recognizes this crucial element for the education for democracy
in a global world in her book Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities
(Nussbaum 2010, pp. 73–77).
The intimate connection between P4wC and moral education is not surprising if
one considers that “[p]hilosophers have always intended to transform the way we
see and think, act and interact, they have always taken themselves to be the ultimate
educators” (Rorty 1998, p. 1). In addition, P4wC was initially “built unapologeti-
cally on Deweyan foundations” (Lipman 2008, p. 150), and, as Amelie Rorty points
out, “Dewey (1859–1952) thought that moral education coincides with democratic
civic education” (Rorty 1998, p. 9).
The depth of connection of P4wC to ethical and moral education is already
present in its foundation. For example, one way to describe the richness and
importance of P4wC for ethical and moral education is to point out its impact on
reasonableness and put forward that moral education is best captured by how people
become more reasonable persons (Lipman 1992, 2003; Splitter and Sharp 1995;
Pritchard 2020; Costa-Carvalho and Mendonça 2016). The suggestion is that P4wC
methodology promotes dialogue and reflective habits of mind and, in so doing,
contributes to reasonableness which highlights how every citizen must somehow be
prepared to think lively (Mendonça, forthcoming). It has been noticed that P4wC
“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”
(Gregory 2021, p. 161) and consequently the theoretical background requires
ongoing revision. The importance of reasonableness and its role for evaluating the
impact of moral education is no exception. For instance, it has been argued more
recently that the centrality of reasonableness may involve an implicit racial bias
(Chetty 2014, 2018; Chetty and Suissa 2016) because it “is constituted within the
epistemology of ‘white ignorance’ […] and operates in such a way that it is unlikely
to transgress the boundaries of white ignorance so as to view it from without”
(Chetty 2018, with reference to Mills 2007). Thus, the concept of reasonableness
and its role in P4wC has become an issue that raises questions about its force
similar to the ones that challenged the strength of the notion of reason (Rooney
1993; Field 1997), and this has required a new theoretical analysis (Mendonça,
forthcoming).
Despite the theoretical growth and variety of ways to promote P4wC practice as
well as a wide diversity of materials in the field of P4wC (cf. Gregory 2021), the
overall guideline for the dialogue continues to be given by the philosophical notion
of “a community of inquiry” (CI) first proposed by Lipman and Sharp, which can
be traced back to Charles Sanders Peirce. Although Peirce seems to have never
actually used the term like it is adopted in P4wC (cf. Cam 2011, p. 106), the notion
of a CI embodies Peirce’s claim that, “individually [we] cannot reasonably hope to
attain the ultimate philosophy which we pursue; we can only seek it, therefore, for
the community of philosophers” (Peirce 1992, p. 29). Maintaining Peirce’s ideal of
1 Introduction 3
a worldwide scientific community of inquiry, the term is adopted within P4wC to

emphasize that what happens in a philosophical session is an inquiry which can
never be carried out by a single individual, and always demands the coordination
and cooperation of several individuals. The underlying assumption is always that
there is a unique contribution to be made by philosophers for how P4wC can foster
good thinking (even if different schools of thoughts have different suggestions on
what that contribution is). For instance, the ability to promote questioning and
practice questions and their impact and role in thinking (Costa Carvalho and
Mendonça 2019) can be seen as one particular contribution of a philosophical
nature to promote better thinking. As Garreth Matthews once wrote: “Philosophy, if
it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of
asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness
and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily
life!” (Matthews 1976, p. 12).
There is an inevitable link between the education for better thinking and moral
education, given the argument that philosophy is always pedagogical, at least
implicitly (cf. Rorty 1998, p. 1). Lipman related his proposal of Philosophy for
Children to an interpretation of thinking as a multidimensional dynamic process
that involves the cultivation of its caring, critical, and creative dimensions, as well
as of its reflective aspect. (Lipman 2003, p. 27) According to Lipman, the sessions
of Philosophy for Children should encourage participants “to engage more often in
creative thinking (as well as in thinking about creativity), critical thinking (as well
as thinking about criticism) and caring thinking (as well as thinking about caring)”
(ibid., p. 135). He conceives of these dimensions as intertwined in their meaning
similarly to how length, breath, and depth are part of a good understanding of space
(cf. ibid., p. 65).
It is crucial to highlight that the concept of caring thinking, first introduced by
Lipman in the Philosophy for Children literature and central do the moral education
of the methodology, demands the recognition of a reflexivity which recalls the
philosophical notions of philia, eros and agápe (Brenifier 2008, p. 13). The
reflexivity inherent in the notion of caring thinking (cf. Frankfurt 1982, Baier 1982)
reflects the “very etymology of the word philosophy. The reflexivity that underlies
caring thinking (caring about caring) is one of the vital characteristics of the
importance of caring thinking, and thus crucial for P4wC sessions. This means that
caring thinking always implies a dual valence of thinking attentively and seriously
about the issues that interest people when they think together, along with their
interests and their values. And, at the same time, it requires that one is seriously
attentive about how one thinks about what matters (cf. Lipman 2003, p. 262).
The notion of caring thinking identified and cultivated in P4wC incorporates
caring about caring thinking, and implies that caring thinking means a “thinking
that is also busy with oneself, observes, feeds, deals with your identity and takes
pleasure in your activity, etc.” (Brenifier 2008, p. 2).Ultimately, this also means that
it is possible to identify different ways of living within a posture of caring thinking
because there are different ways in which we care. There is a great variation not
only of the things we can care about, but also of the intensity that they require, as
well as of the persistence that our caring attitude must have (Frankfurt 1982,
p. 263).
The notion of caring in thinking P4wC points to the interconnectedness of
philosophy and ethical and moral education. However, to put this relation into
words is rather difficult because of the way in which ““[m]orality is everywhere
[…] or nowhere in particular” (Rorty 1995, p. 67). People are thrown into a world
in which they need to fruitfully cooperate with people who have ethical convictions,
values and orientation that are different from their own. Each individual lives their
adventure of acting as an individual in communities that are diverse and complex
(Rorty 1995, p. 69).
Apart from the P4wC literature, Rorty has made a convincing argument for the
advantage of moral diversity (Rorty 1992) which can be used to support the view
that the social and pluralistic nature of the overall P4wC movement imposes also
the recognition of moral diversity. It is undeniable that the idea of a community of
inquiry, which is a key element in the P4wC methodology, implies the method-
ological assumption that “[m]orality is not the enterprise of an individual who, as it
happens, depends on others for her welfare. It is, rather, the enterprise of a com-
munity that is composed of distinct individuals who can and should act indepen-
dently of one another” (Rorty 1992, p. 53).
Most proponents of P4wC may agree with the interpretation that ethical and
moral diversity are an advantage (cf. Rorty 1992, p. 38) in part because “[p]eople of
different ethical orientations can—and need to—cooperate fruitfully in practical life
while having different interpretations and justifications of general moral or proce-
dural principles” (ibid.). The advantages of accepting ethical diversity is best
illustrated in philosophy by the various ethical proposals and the meta-ethical
discussions. Even moral systems that have the same general principles and argue for
the same general virtues can hold different ethical positions with some significant
different action guiding priorities (cf. Rorty 1992, p. 43). As Rorty points out,
different moral systems “depend […] on the functioning of the others for its own
fulfillment” (Ibid.) such that to understand each one of them one needs to recognize
the existence of the others.
The advantage of moral diversity can be traced back to Ancient Greece. As
Rorty argues, “[i]t is, of all people, Plato who introduces the argument that different
psychological types have, at an action-guiding level, different ethical values” (ibid.,
p. 45). Although we may want “in the end, to detach ourselves from the political
consequences that Plato draws from all this” (ibid.), it is unavoidable to add that for
each moral system there will be a different proposed education, which recommends
a different moral education (ibid., p. 47). The different proposals of moral education
will frequently “focus on different sorts of problems, recommend different kinds of
strategies for solving them, and have different criteria for their successful resolu-
tion” (ibid.) of ethical problems and dilemmas.
1 Introduction 5
Childhood
In addition to the interconnection between philosophy, thinking well and moral

education, there is the challenge to describe how P4wC scholarship interprets
childhood in its connection to ethics and moral education. Given that moral edu-
cation is inevitably dependent upon a specific conceptualization of childhood (cf.
Matthews 1994), and often with a selection of a specific understanding of ethics and
morality within the diversity of possibilities, P4wC scholarship requires a more
detailed description and explanation of how childhood and ethics are interrelated
within the P4wC movement.
Although the concept of childhood has not been ignored in philosophy (cf.
Turner & Matthews 1998, p. 1) it is also a fact that philosophers, at least “in the
Western tradition have not written about children in any systematic way” (ibid.).
Ideas and theories about children and childhood are worthy of philosophical
examination and pertinent for P4wC, and “the concept of childhood is philosoph-
ically problematic in that genuinely philosophical difficulties stand in the way of
saying just what kind of difference the difference between children and adult human
being is” (Matthews 1994, p. 8).
For example, when philosophers think about what a child is they examine the status
of childhood (Schapiro 1999) or they consider the importance of children’s rights and
social obligations towards them (O’Neill 1992). Some philosophers have also
reflected on “whether or not there are features of childhood that make childhood bad
for children” (Matthews and Mullin 2021, p. 14). Matthews has raised the hypothesis
that “philosophy is an adult attempt to deal with the genuinely baffling questions of
childhood” (Matthews 1994, 13). If this assumption is correct then it requires of the
practitioners in P4wC to locate the “questioning child” they have inside them (cf.
Matthews 1994, p. 14). Matthews also comments that adults “fail to appreciate what
children have to offer adults” and that “[o]ne of the exciting things that children have to
offer us is a new philosophical perspective” (ibid.). Perhaps in the future a collected
volume such as this one may have to include texts from children, or transcripts from
classroom sessions. This collected volume gathers contributions from experts in the
field who reflect on issues that arise in the intersection between philosophy, ethical and
moral education, and childhood brought about by P4wC in the hope to continue the
intense reflection P4wC demands on these issues.
Overview of the Book
With the exception of the chapter by David Kennedy, all of the chapters contained
herein are original to this volume. All of the chapters address in their unique way
the relationship between moral education and childhood in P4wC.2 In doing so,
2
The extended abbreviation P4wC is used here as some authors in this volume particularly refer to
Philosophy with Children (PwC). For the distinction between P4C and PwC see, e.g., Vansielghem
each author takes the freedom to put a different emphasis on these two key issues
that are explored in the book. Since the inquiry of moral education in P4wC cannot
be separated from questions that address an adequate understanding of child and
childhood it would be a false attempt to strictly categorize the chapters into two
parts. Even though it might seem useful, a strict division of the content into two
categories moral education and childhood is imperfect. Perhaps it is more accurate
to say that the content of the volume represents a spectrum in which the focus in
each of the chapters is somewhere between questions of childhood and moral
education in P4wC. Moreover, the spectrum is characterized by certain continuity
such that inquiry on one end has important impacts on the theoretical outlook at the
other end. In this picture, it seems that the first four chapters are rather concerned
with the understanding of the concept of child and childhood in the framework of
moral education in P4wC, whereas the remaining chapters operate more or less with
a tentative understanding of these concepts while aiming for a better understanding
of the nature, practice, and methodology of moral education in P4wC. Representing
the spectrum in this way, the two key issues in the volume revolve around the
following questions: (1) What is the adequate understanding of child and childhood
that underlies successful moral education in P4wC? (2) How should the relationship
between child(ren) and adult(s) be understood for the purpose of ethical develop-
ment? (3) What effects does an alternative understanding of this relationship have
for the practice in P4wC? (4) Does it relate to ethical or moral normativity at all?
(5) How does the philosophical practice of children in indigenous cultures influence
the traditional western concept of moral education? (6) What is the adequate ethical
conception that explains moral growth in P4wC? (7) What are the strategies in
P4wC that must be required for a successful moral education? (8) What might be a
proper conception of the community of inquiry to understand the development of a
moral character? (9) What might be the proper understanding of virtues in P4wC
and what role do they play in the community of inquiry? In the following we relate
the single chapters to these questions and give a brief summary on how they are
addressed.
In Chap. 2, Claire Cassidy uses a passage from Jankins’ novel The Changeling
as a basis on which she develops her account of practical PwC as a pedagogy of
compassion. As in the novel, children are in general often viewed as irrational,
unpredictable, uncritical and lacking in competence. In contrast to a mere feeling of
pity towards the child, Cassidy identifies compassion in these views which she
takes to be a necessary ingredient of moral education. Human-to-human connec-
tion, she argues, prompts an ethical response which becomes manifest in com-
passionate action. Against top-down approaches in moral education she argues that
they fail in provoking compassion. They also do not encourage children to form
their own ethical understandings. One of the main problems that Cassidy empha-
sizes in this regard is that children are not taken seriously in their interpretation of
the world. However, she argues that children can only learn to be compassionate
and Kennedy 2011. Notice that some authors exclusively refer to P4C without mentioning PwC
which might limit the scope but is, of course, not a shortcoming.
1 Introduction 7
actors if they are recognized as interlocutors. She proposes that PwC is a pedagogy
that fulfils this requirement and explores how it can be conceptualized as moral
education that presents the structural framework in which children have the
opportunity to reflect on who they are and how they wish to be in the world and in
relation with others.
In Chap. 3, David Kennedy explores the understanding of the relation between
adult and child in the context of ethical development. He suggests that ethical
development is based on the relation between ideals for both ethical behaviour and
personal dispositions on the one hand and education of adult-constructed practices
or customs on the other hand. This relation, Kennedy argues, relies on closely
related contrastive binaries of normative criteria. He explores how the normative
criteria relate to childhood education and argues that the primary form of childhood
education aims at a normative balance between the binaries that is needed for
human beings to approximate an ethical ideal in daily life. To this end, he suggests
that the common understanding of the adult-child relation needs to be transformed
into a new adult construction of childhood and, specifically, in the understanding of
the child as interlocutor. He argues that this transformed understanding of the
adult-child relation should be considered as centrepiece of a pedagogy and cur-
riculum in which adults are existentially engaged with children, as well as with
themselves and with each other. Finally, Kennedy develops a picture of the school
as a realm of ethical reflection with philosophical inquiry as a communal, dialog-
ical, and ‘facilitated’ practice that problematizes the underlying philosophical
concepts of a certain discipline (science, history, etc.). In this scenario he locates the
community of ethical inquiry as centre point of the philosophical curriculum.
In Chap. 4, Jonathan Wurtz explores the ethical nature of the relationship
between childhood and philosophy in P4wC based on a proposed ontology of
childhood that conceives of the child as “the Other”. Referring to Lipman and
Matthews, he claims that their ontology of childhood is misconceived because it is
understood relative to adult goals (i.e., what he calls “normative overloading of
childhood”). Both authors describe relative ontologies of childhood as they value
childhood relatively to either democratic or philosophical aims. Wurtz argues that
their conceptions are the symptom of the history of Western philosophy and, with
Levinas, describes it as the attempt to reduce the other to a totality. The result is
ontology as first philosophy, i.e. ontology that constitutes a philosophy of injustice.
Drawing on Levinas’ work, Wurtz rejects this attempt while appealing to a tran-
scendental philosophy that begins with the encounter between the self and the
radically other. Transferring this approach to P4wC, he argues that the parent-child
relationship in P4wC should be expressed as the unique relationship between I and
the other in which the emergence of the radically new becomes possible. In this
relationship philosophy reveals its amorphous future introducing the possibility for
transcendence beyond knowledge and power.
In Chap. 5, Walter Omar Kohan and Magda Costa Carvalho put the focus on the
relation between childhood and moral education while they critically suggest that
academic reflection on this relation needs to be radically reconsidered. They argue
that academic reflections suffer from taking a wrong position towards childhood:
they subordinate the phenomenon under certain concepts and claim that children
must be capable of philosophical thinking as adults do which, Kohan and Costa
Carvalho argue, is a patronizing, paternalist, and colonizing approach. The authors
challenge what they take to be attempts of subjugation and suggest that the per-
spective from which Philosophy for Children is traditionally perceived needs to be
turned around: the usual understanding is that children benefit from philosophy
whereas the authors claim that it is rather philosophy that benefits from childlike
views. Consequently, they invite the reader to follow them in their endeavor to
experience their inquiry of moral education from a childlike perspective one that
does not, as they say, take childhood as an object of study and analysis. Instead,
they suggest that childhood should be understood as a place of philosophical
deconstruction. This perspective, they argue, reveals the oppressive character of
morality. Childlike philosophy, however, leads to the end of morality and moral
education and brings back philosophy’s playful character by putting children’s
conceptions in its place.
In Chap. 6, Viktor Johansson takes an interesting viewpoint exploring the
relation between childhood and moral education by putting the focus on the crucial
aspect of cultural diversity. In particular, he investigates how philosophy is exer-
cised by Sámi children and how their way of philosophising can be translated into
contexts that do not involve knowledge of the Sámi culture. The chapter begins by
discussing the ethics of writing about indigenous children’s philosophies and the
practices of cross-cultural translation that are suggested in Cavell’s writings on
Thoreau. Johansson suggests, working with Cavellian translation, that the writer on
indigenous children’s philosophies is engaged in a philosophical exercise of
decolonising cultural translation. Furthermore, he explores how Pierre Hadot’s idea
of philosophy as a form of spiritual exercises can be understood in and through the
context of how Sámi philosophies are expressed through translation as a poetic,
literary and special form of thinking. He argues that exercising indigenous
philosophies is inseparable from connecting to particular places in the land and
concludes that moral education in the Western tradition can benefit from the
insights of non-indigenous philosophers as a form of spiritual exercise when one
engages with indigenous children’s thinking.
The P4wC program developed by Lipman and Sharp gives special importance to
moral growth. In Chap. 7, Félix García-Moriyón and Tomás Miranda-Alonso
explore how the programme can promote and develop moral growth in students. In
doing so, they apply their own approach to moral education which combines the
Aristotelian conception of the virtuous person with modern scientific research on
moral psychology. The authors start from a concept of goodness drawing on the
Aristotelian concept of virtue, which they understood as a habit that aims at a
human being whose behavior is governed by reason and prudence (phronesis). This
includes courage as the capacity to carry out decisions, and justice as the value that
gives a meaning to moral life in the context of a community. They transfer the
Aristotelian conception into the framework of a moral science that allows for
reflection on goodness by relating the contributions of moral or ethical philosophy
with the contributions of personality psychology and research on the human brain.
1 Introduction 9
Drawing on work by Dacia Narvaez and contributions in the field of personality

psychology they argue for traits that are associated with a balanced personality and
which can be modeled in the process of personal growth.
In Chap. 8, Susan T. Gardner points to the fact that participants in a community
of philosophical inquiry (PCI) first perceive each other as physical bodies and
claims that this presents a challenge for moral education in P4wC. She argues that
moral education requires that participants recognize and view each other as selves
and that this requirement has so far received insufficient attention among practi-
tioners in P4wC. If selves are not visible, she argues, they cannot be educated.
Educators should not be inclined to the false assumption that when bodies show up
in the PCI, selves do as well. The physical presence of a person in a dialogue can be
misleading. Therefore, she suggests that educators should be rather careful and
follow the assumption that for all kinds of reasons selves may not show up in
dialogue. In the center of her piece, Gardner offers strategy in order to be prepared
for the contingency that selves may or may not be present and suggests (1) that
educators summon selves by means of certain techniques of questioning; (2) that
educators ensure that selves feel “seen” (through questioning for clarity and depth
and responding for connection); and (3) that educators themselves show up as who
they really are.
In Chap. 9, we return to the investigation of an Aristotelian account of moral
education. Anastasia Anderson reminds us that such an account is facing a paradox:
On the one hand, a moral character is the result of habituation. On the other hand, a
moral character implies free choices and being responsible for one’s action.
Advocates of P4wC claim that by means of the program children become capable of
forming their own beliefs and to achieve autonomy which enables them to critically
reflect on their early habituation. Anderson argues, however, that their claim begs a
solution to the paradox as it ignores the motivational impact of moral socialization
and does not answer the question of how it provides the basis for moral reasoning.
On her account, a requirement for critical reasoning is to move away from the
community in which one is inculcated. Drawing on Aristotle’s idea of the friend as
another self, she suggests that friendship is the key that supports the self-creation of
moral character. Among other benefits that Anderson points out, friendship pro-
vides the opportunity to shared dialogue that enables friends to critically reflect on
the moral perspective of their family, teachers, and community. She argues that
P4wC may encounter the paradox of moral education when CPIs are conceived of
as community of friends that help children to shape their own characters.
In Chap. 10, Florian Franken Figueiredo argues that, although P4wC has tra-
ditionally been conceived of as an educational program that is not necessarily
related to academic philosophy, P4wC is committed to philosophical scrutiny of the
relation of education and morality. Based on this assumption, he first explores
Lipman and Sharp’s conception of moral education and demonstrates that both
founders relate P4wC to Aristotelian philosophy, but it is Sharp who argues that the
P4wC programme is the proper means for teaching intellectual virtues. Figueiredo
argues that their account does not explain what entitles one to the claim that the
participants have adopted the virtues and values in question, however. It leaves a
gap between the claim that intellectual virtues can be taught and the argument that
entitles one to the claim that the participants have adopted them. He then argues that
the attempt to close the gap implies a commitment to conformism, realism or
relativism views that are either rejected by the founders or not adequate for
defending their accounts. This suggests that the procedural processes in P4wC must
be understood differently if we are to relate P4wC to moral education. Figueriedo’s
solution is to conceive of the inquiry as conceptual analysis that aims at under-
standing as an end-in-itself. He concludes that the conceptual analysis that is carried
out to this end explains how participants apply intellectual virtues.
As this overview suggests, the book aims at reaching a relatively broad audience.
While it might be primarily interesting for philosophers of education and educa-
tional theorists, and their graduate and advanced undergraduate students, the con-
tributors have made an effort to ensure clear discussions without requirement of
specific knowledge in the field. The book is thus intended to be accessible for the
wider audience of P4wC practitioners with all kinds of backgrounds, including
pedagogical scientists, school teachers, and policy makers.
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Philosophy with Children
as and for Moral Education 2
Claire Cassidy
Introduction
With his leer of sympathy he [Mr. Forbes, the teacher] contemplated the small, smiling,
incommunicable, deprived morsel of humanity beside him. Curdie’s smile was notorious:
other teachers called it sly and insolent; it was, they said, the smile of the certified delin-
quent, of misanthropy in bud, of future criminality, of inevitable degradation. Forbes
refused to accept it as such; to him it indicated that this slum child, born so intelligent, was
not only acknowledging the contempt and ridicule which his dress and his whole economic
situation must incur, but was also making his own assessment of those who contemned and
ridiculed. The result was not a vicious snarl, but this haunting and courageous smile. It was
possible, it was likely, that the boy would ultimately become debased. Who would not, born
and bred in Donaldson’s Court, one of the worst slums in one of the worst slum districts in
Europe? There rats drank at kitchen sinks, drunkards jabbed at each other’s faces with
broken bottles, prostitutes carried on their business on stairheads, and policemen dreaded to
enter. Most children brought up there were either depraved or protected by impenetrable
stupidity. (Jenkins 1989, p. 2)
Here, in the beginning of Robin Jenkins’ book The Changeling, we see various
versions of ‘the child’. The child, latent with badness, ordained to be worthless. The
child with intelligence, stymied by circumstance. The child, as observer, as cynic,
looking at the world with wisdom beyond his years; the puer senex (Cunningham
2006). The child both as victim and not. The child, with potential; potential to
overcome the context in which he finds himself. And it is the adult, Mr. Forbes, the
boy’s teacher, who sees this potential, who sees an opportunity to rescue the boy
Tom Curdie from his surroundings and to preserve a childhood innocence he thinks
is there. Mr. Forbes, in the remainder of the book, sets out to do just that. He seeks
to lift Curdie from the sanctuary of what he knows by taking him on holiday with
his middle-class family to the countryside where innocence and childhood can
blossom. As Forbes sadly discovers, any innocence that was once there cannot be
C. Cassidy (&)
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
e-mail: claire.cassidy@strath.ac.uk

14 C. Cassidy
recovered and is ultimately lost in the final and tragic scenes where Curdie,
recognising his own lack of childhood innocence or that what awaits him in
adulthood is far from desirable, takes extreme action to avoid fulfilling the potential
Forbes may have recognised in and for him.
This sense of the child as potential is one that pervades the academic literature in
the field of childhood studies and philosophy of childhood (Jenks 1996; Hallett and
Prout 2003; James and James 2004; Cook 2009; Alderson 2013; Murris 2013).
Stables (2008) draws our attention to this sense of potential, or becoming, as one of
the three ways in which we think about childhood. He suggests we define children
biologically, or by their age, such as in the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child (United Nations 1989), where one is considered a child if under
the age of eighteen. The third way in which Stables describes the child is in terms of
their becoming, their potential. Drawing on Aristotle, he suggests that childhood is
‘a period of constrained preparation’ (Stables 2008, p. 4). This is seen, too, in
Matthews’ sense that adult is the end to which the child is driven (cf. Matthews
2006). This echoes Shamgar-Handelman’s (1994) suggestion that childhood is a
time for socialisation when children are trained for what they will become. What
they will become is often understood to be ‘adult’. The child under such a view is
seen as ‘raw material’ (Kennedy 1992, 2006) that is to be shaped and constructed
into the adult considered—by adults—to be desirable.
Compassionate Action
If children are seen, as many of Tom Curdie’s teachers saw him, as innately bad or
corrupt and in need of re-forming or reforming, there is nowhere better for such
education than the school. The Dionysian view of the child (Jenks 1996), who is
inherently bad, perhaps amoral, needs to be tobered, to use a Scots word, to be
brought into line, in order to fit within society. Indeed, Jenkins’ novel is called The
Changeling, a creature belonging to another world, the world of fairies and wicked
elves. Tom Curdie, the story’s main protagonist is, as many of his teachers see him,
a changeling, a wicked imp put in place of a human (child); he is, as they would
have it, less than human. It does not serve society well to have aberrant children;
children are considered to be a part of society while being apart from society. The
often unstated aim is to ensure childhood innocence is protected; it is the view we
(adults) wish to have of children. This defense of childhood innocence, argues
Cook, is an ‘adult priority’ (cf. Cook 2009, p. 9) because we are protecting the
memory of our own childhood. To see childhood as other than this destroys our
childhood and, in essence, who we are, for the adult travels with the child (Kennedy
2006).
Children are often considered to be irrational, unpredictable, uncritical and
generally lacking in competence (Matthews 2006; Cassidy 2007, 2012; Kennedy
2010; Tisdall and Punch 2012; Cassidy and Mohr Lone 2020). Tom Curdie in
Jenkins’ novel is seen as feral. Greta Thunberg, on the other hand, would be
2 Philosophy with Children as and for Moral Education 15
considered dangerous in a different way if she were taken more seriously. She
challenges the social order by daring to voice the case for action to overcome the
climate emergencys. She may be invited to speak to global leaders, but she is
mocked and dismissed by many for one reason: she is a child. It is not that her
message is unclear or that it is unsound; it fails to win adult attention and action
because she is a child (Mohr Lone 2018; Cassidy and Mohr Lone 2020). Look, for
instance, at the attention Donald Trump received as president of the USA. Cer-
tainly, most of this was not positive, but he still commanded power and status while
behaving in a manner that is often ascribed to children. Amongst other things, the
reason he commanded such attention was because he is an adult. Not everyone took
him seriously, but as adult he was allowed to behave in a way that would never be
granted a child behaving in like manner.
Mr. Forbes, Curdie’s teacher in the extract above, wants to rescue the boy from
his surroundings. He recognises the human in the child. Certainly, he aspires to
effect some positive change in him. He aims to show Tom a world beyond slums
and filth. In true Rousseauian fashion, he removes the child from the squalor of the
inner city to the green and glorious countryside where he can thrive (Rousseau
1948), where he can be human, and enjoy that childhood innocence Forbes seems
concerned to protect. We recognise, in Jenkins’ drawing of Tom Curdie, a way of
seeing the child that resonates with Davis’ sense of the child as understood in
Vaughn’s poem The Retreat; an ‘emphasis is placed upon the connection between
healthy early childhood experience and the moral and psycho-spiritual well-being
of the adult individual’ (cf. Davis 2011, p.386). It is the healthy future adult that
Forbes is trying to protect, and Curdie’s inevitable trajectory to that adulthood.
So, what might Forbes’ motives have been? He was a teacher and teachers do
not usually take their pupils on holiday with them and their families. Certainly, the
act seems altruistic, motivated by a desire to do good, to help a child on that journey
of becoming, of becoming more fully human, of becoming a good and whole adult.
He recognised the potential of a clever and articulate child who could think for
himself. He also saw clearly how circumstance would nip the flower in the bud and
Curdie and his innocence would be lost prematurely. Perhaps the teacher acted as a
result of pity, or perhaps from compassion, but he saw an alternative future, a
healthy future adult.
Had the teacher acted out of pity we might not think his behaviour so altruistic
because in pitying it is easy to remove oneself from the thing we pity. Pity, of
course, induces some kind of emotional response, but it need not require more than
a passing thought or sense that something is not right or good or fair. Daytime
television in Scotland is host to adverts for one charity or another, often displaying
the suffering of children living in poverty, without food or the medical care they
need. The adverts exhort viewers to subscribe to a monthly payment plan where
they can alleviate this suffering for a (relatively) little amount of money each month.
The images, the music, the voice of the person requesting the money is crafted to
move us to pity these poor souls. We pity them and are grateful that it is not us or
our children. We absolve ourselves by either signing−up to make the monthly
payments, or we look away, or change channel. It is easy to do so; we have
16 C. Cassidy
expressed our pity, but we are moved to little more. Indeed, there is a danger we
become insensitive to the plight of the victims because of over-exposure to their
misfortune (Rousseau 1948). Something is required to shift from the objective
spectating upon misery, this tokenistic lip-service (Nussbaum 1996). It is the thing
that moves Mr. Forbes from simple sentimentalism: compassion.
Zembylas (2013) suggests that ‘pity denotes the feeling of empathetic identifi-
cation with the sufferer, and compassion refers to the feeling accompanied by
action…pity requires an object whereas compassion requires a subject’ (ibid,
p. 507, italics in the original). He warns that we should not be at a great remove
from the thing or person who experiences the suffering; we should establish a
connection between ourselves and the sufferer, and that connection is a human
connection. Perhaps it is this human connection that Mr. Forbes makes with Tom
Curdie, and this connection acts as a call to action that goes beyond simply putting
his hand in his pocket and offering money. The human-to-human connection may
be what prompts or provokes the action that moves us from pity to compassion.
And it is this compassion that moves us to action, or, as Zembylas hopes, it is this
that moves the observer of suffering to one of agentic participation. Gibson and
Cook-Sather (2020) building on Zembylas’ work, suggest that compassion ‘entails
an emotional reaction to something or someone…and may result in a state of
action’ (ibid., p.20), but the move to action is central, indeed, implied by com-
passion and it should lead to positive change. It is the sense of responsibility we
might have for others when we see or hear the call of human vulnerability that may
prompt a response that is ethical (cf. van Manen 2012), and this response becomes
manifest in action. It is, as van Manen suggests, that contact is important, whether
this is physical or intellectual, but it is important to consider the move from the
emotional response to compassionate action.
Streaming adverts about the plight of others need not make us either connected
to or active in addressing their plight, regardless of how emotional we may feel as
we eat our meal as the images of suffering tug on our heartstrings. Compassion, and
the action entailed in the associated acts requires thought and reflection. It demands
that we recognise that we live with others and that we understand others’ experi-
ences in relation to ours. Indeed, it necessitates that we accept ourselves as
in-relation to others and the world. While this realisation may occur naturally, we
do not trust ourselves to this. Rather, we do not trust that children will find their
way to the good naturally. After all, children are under-developed, they need to be
civilised (Wall 2010), and being civilised is being adult. So, to avoid ‘childish’
adults as evidenced in the likes of Donald Trump, we institute moral education.
Note that being childish is different to being child-like, child-like being a state we—
adults—wish to preserve as it signifies innocence. If children move too far from
innocence, they are considered deviant (Davis 2011), as seen in the case of Tom
Curdie above. We need, after all, children to protect society. At least, we need them
to protect our idealised, adult, version of society. They are, as Jessop (2018) argues,
on the ‘ideological front line. As signifiers of a specific version of the future, they
become child-soldiers for that vision’ (ibid., p. 453).
Moral Education
The way in which adults recruit these child-soldiers is through their schooling. It is
there where they are inducted into a vision of a particular way of living in a specific
society, whatever that imagined society may be‚ as it is clear that whatever the
current shape of society, it is not the one we presently inhabit; it is an ideal, one to
which we aspire but never attain. Children are our hope for the future, though it is
our adult hope for a future we may never live to experience. Nonetheless, we induct
children into this imagined world, and we do it in school as arguably it is easier
there to socialise children into a way of being (Biesta 2015). Moral education, then,
has the purpose, of saving children from themselves and saving them for society.
Society (adults) needs those who know how to behave. It does not welcome chil-
dren who do not conform as we – adults –look towards them as messianic figures
who are ‘our only hope that there will be a future’ (Jessop 2018, p. 446), even if that
future is a mythical one, some ‘lost horizon’ or Shangri-la.
Kennedy, in discussing moral education, draws attention to the school as culture,
as a site where opportunity is afforded for a ‘collaborative reconstruction’ (see
Chap. 3 in this volume). This is the way in which, to answer van Manen’s question
of how children ‘enter our adult lives’ (cf. van Manen 2012, p. 17). It is an
induction. As Wall (2010) highlights, there is a top-down model of moral education
whereby what constitutes moral goodness is ‘imposed on children and adults if
humanity is to rise above itself’ (ibid., p.18). This top-down approach holds reli-
gious connotations, where adults are, as children, subject to moral imposition. Of
course, not everyone subscribes to a religious life, and even in religious schools and
communities, the religious authority is depicted as adult, the moral compass is
directed by the adult, positioning adults, one way or another, as determining the
morally good. Matthews (1994, 2006) would argue strongly that children are not, as
such a top-down model would have it, pre-moral or even amoral. He evidences the
capacity for children to engage in moral reasoning through his philosophising with
children.
Tying moral education with religious education, as often happens, explicitly or
not, provides a tension, with it being caught between a ‘sceptical culture on the one
hand’ and ‘the mythical silence of the incommunicable and irreducible on the other’
(Conroy et al. 2012, p. 319). Not only does this lead to a lack of resonance with
children’s lives, it also induces a ‘sense of boredom and sceptism’ (ibid., p. 316).
Such a result can only fail in provoking compassion, in prompting action, never
mind encouraging children to make any sense of the world in which they live.
Indeed, many children do not have religious convictions, making this alignment
even more challenging. Even when situated in the realm of citizenship education,
moral education tends to be exhortations to behave in particular ways that ulti-
mately benefit the state. While such citizenship education may be appropriate, it
narrows the scope of what moral education could be. Our morality is intricately
entwined with how we live our lives, and how we think we and others ought to live.
It is, simply put, how we are in-relation to others and the world around us, but it is
18 C. Cassidy
vital that we have space and the tools with which to reflect on this. Without personal
resonance, it is hard to see how children form their own ethical understandings that
might dictate how they live their lives. The danger is that they will inevitably do as
they were done unto, and potentially they will, as those before them have done,
seek rescue from the children who follow them. It could be argued that there is a
need, therefore, to bridge the gap between knowledge, experience and under-
standing in personal, ethical development (Teece 2010) to move towards com-
passionate action. Of course, action of any kind is limited for children.
Childism
Part of the reason that children’s action is limited is because they are not taken
seriously. This lack of attention is often manifest through them not being listened to
(Clark 2005; Komulainen 2007; Lundy 2007; Taylor and Robinson 2009; Mitra
2008) and through adults being positioned as ‘knower’. Adults are ‘epistemically
privileged’ (Lone and Burroughs 2016, p. 10), a status to which children have no
access and will only ascend when they have passed through their incompetent
childhood to being completely human, to being adult. This echoes Kennedy (2006),
who points to the widely accepted view that children are ‘inadequate, dependent,
vulnerable and implicitly amoral creatures who need to be isolated from the “real
world” until they are no longer children’ (ibid., p. 9).
Considering Kennedy’s later assertion that adults have the privilege of being a
‘“reader” of life and the other, and the reader is by definition an interpreter’ (cf.
Kennedy 2010, p.14), Cassidy and Mohr Lone (2020) suggest that not only are
children not afforded the status of ‘knower’, they are not countenanced as ‘reader’
because their interpretation of the world as it is and as it could be is over-looked.
Children, as Murris (2013) would have it, should be accepted as knowledge bearers.
She is clear that in understanding and behaving towards children as though they are
‘deficient in reason, emotion control, responsibility and maturity, has consequences
for how we imagine ourselves’ (ibid., p. 253). In writing about Freire’s philosophy,
Kohan (2021) highlights that Freire understood childhood ‘as a condition of human
existence, associated with the human person’s unfinished quality’ (ibid., p. 139).
This unfinished quality is not to be understood as a deficiency; rather, Kohan
stresses and demonstrates the positive way in which Freire thought about childhood
by comparing the Nicaraguan revolution to a young child. He notes that the child
exists in the present, is live with curiosity, is driven by questions and it dreams and
creates; this is not a future orientation, but one which recognises the child qua child.
There are other ways in which to think about children and the extent to which we
see them as part of the wider social sphere. Cassidy (2007) proposes that rather than
thinking of children simply as a means to an end, with the end being adult, it makes
sense to recognise them as beings who inhabit the present and contribute in the
present rather than identifying their potential usefulness. One way, she argues, in
which this may be achieved is to resist the pull of the deficit view of children and
their associated childhood and to consider the child, not as Archard (1993) would
suggest, as an individual who lacks certain qualities possessed by adults, but as an
individual who possesses the same attributes and qualities as adults, the difference
being that biologically mature humans—adults—generally have more of these
qualities and attributes. She likens people to cars. The child is the basic model with
all the body parts and engineering required to function as a car, while the adult is
the basic model with a few accessories added such as alloy wheels, a navigation
system and drinks holders. It would be a mistake to think that all adults, by dint of
age, are the equivalent of the high specification sports car. In essence, the child is no
different in concept to the adult. And this, Cassidy proposes, can alter the way in
which children exist in society. Childism (Wall 2010, 2019) offers a view that
resonates with this.
Childism is not like other -isms such as sexism or racism, though it implies some
form of discriminatory behaviour toward children. Such -isms are negative in focus.
Instead, childism has a positive orientation, as used in the likes of feminism,
postcolonialism or environmentalism (cf. Wall 2019). Childism is one way of
recognising children by ‘grant[ing them] full humanity precisely as children’ (Wall
2010, p. 23); without doing so, all humanity is diminished. Wall (2019) sees
childism as a way of (re-)structuring society, where the norms of that society are
understood to include children. Adopting this view will ultimately ensure that
everyone benefits from a transformation in understanding, in practice and the
structures that govern how we live together (cf. Wall 2010, 2019). It is funda-
mentally about changing the politics and systems within which we exist (Sundhall
2017). As things currently stand, even if it is well-intentioned, the child is a product
of adult imagining, and it is invariably based on what adults think children will or
should become (Cassidy 2007; van Manen 2012; Geisinger 2017).
Seeing the child in-and-of-the-world is important if children are to be taken
seriously (Cassidy and Mohr Lone 2020). This includes us, as adults, seeing our-
selves in-relation with children. Such a relationship recognises ‘the child as inter-
locutor’ (cf. Kennedy in this volume) as opposed to being something alien. It
requires that we engage in a relationship where we ‘listen to oneself as well as to the
other’ (ibid.), where we acknowledge that the child never leaves us, and where our
sense of self emerges (cf. van Manen 2012). A human connection is necessary (cf.
Zembylas 2013) to forge this relationship, where our own humanity as adults and as
children is recognised and where children’s humanity is similarly acknowledged. It
allows that adults, and children, share their humanity, and within that humanity
resides both vulnerability and scope for compassionate action that takes account of
that shared humanity. Zembylas (2013) recognises this shared humanity and
advocates for an ethics of compassion. This solidarity across humanity leads to
Gibson and Cook-Sather’s (2020) ‘politicised compassion [as] a political position
that encourages practical action framed within the wider critical work of social
justice and equality’ (ibid., p. 21).
Such action will not occur from the ether. Individuals must be inducted into
habits that may move towards this way of understanding. Thinking breeds action,
and careful thinking breeds thoughtful action. If we accept Biesta’s sense that
20 C. Cassidy
school is a useful site for socialising children into ways of being (cf. Biesta 2015),
and, at the risk of treating children as a means to an end, schools appear to be the
main vehicle through which children can learn to be compassionate actors. Peda-
gogies of compassion aim to ‘transform students and teachers, as well as the
schools and communities which they serve, by identifying and challenging senti-
mentalist and moralistic discourses that often obscure inequality and injustice’
(Zembylas 2013, p. 506). It might be suggested that these ‘sentimental and
moralistic discourses’ are focused as much on how children are understood as on
other issues of equality and social justice. What is proposed here is that practical
Philosophy with Children (PwC) might be seen as a pedagogy of compassion.
Philosophy with Children
Broadly speaking, Philosophy with Children (PwC) is a generic term used to

describe a variety of approaches of structured, practical philosophising with chil-
dren and young people. The original programme of Philosophy for Children was
created by Matthew Lipman in the USA in the 1970s (Lipman 1980, 2003; Daniel
and Auriac 2011), with other approaches evolving from this. The main common
element across different approaches to practical PwC is that rather than teaching
about traditional, academic philosophy, participants engage in structured, collabo-
rative dialogue that has a philosophical direction (Murris 2000). The dialogue is
constructed in such a way that participants are encouraged to make connections
between the ideas presented, often by offering agreement and/or disagreement, and,
importantly, by providing reasons for that agreement/disagreement.
Lipman (1995) suggests that moral education reaches further than differentiating
between what is good and bad. For him, moral education should support children to
‘distinguish greater goods from lesser ones’ (Lipman 1995, p. 61), and that this
should be done through inquiry. In engaging children in philosophical inquiry, he
would suggest that a moral education is provided where children ‘can knit together
emotions and reasoning, facts and values, intuition and argument, desires and
values, beliefs and dispositions… so as to form one single, unified approach to the
improvement and enrichment of human life’ (ibid., p. 62). Considering moral
education as an approach to reflect on the life one wants to lead and the ways in
which we should engage with one another and the world around us is a broader
sense of moral education than the sense of induction or socialising we may find in
some quarters. Indeed, such an approach allows children to reflect for themselves
and about their self. It presents opportunities for them to consider themselves
in-relation to others and the world in which, and of which, they are a part. In turn,
this will support children to live well (Cassidy 2012).
Living well is not the same as one’s well-being in the sense that it is commonly
used in terms of being physically or mentally healthy, though this may form part of
the sense considered here. Living well, here, is understood as engaging positively
with the world and others in it. Philosophical thinking allows children—and adults
—to reflect on their lives. It is not a discrete activity, but is a way of being (Gazzard
1996). It is an approach to living that has to be nurtured. Compassionate pedagogy
allows children to ‘discover who they are and what they are’ (van Manen 2012,
p. 31), it supports a considered way of being and PwC may offer an approach to
this. Indeed, both Sharp (1995) and Lipman (2003) highlight that PwC not only
encourages children to think for themselves, it encourages them to care about the
thing about which they think. Caring thinking is a central idea running through
Lipman’s approach to PwC, and it brings together the affective and cognitive,
reason and empathy. The alteration in one’s thinking moves one to action through
compassion (cf. Nussbaum 1996). Lipman stresses that having been relatively
passive until the age of majority it can’t be expected that individuals ‘go through a
sudden and inexplicable metamorphosis which enables them to be politically
active’ (cf. Lipman 1995, p. 70). While the relative passivity children may display
is imposed on them as a consequence of the (adult) structures and strictures under
which they live, compassion requires tending. Caring thinking that leads to com-
passionate action may help overcome ‘passive empathy’, as Schertz (2007)
describes it, where the affective and cognitive connect.
Caring thinking requires respect for others’ views and careful attention to what is
said, but it does not require that there be agreement, that views are shared or even
tolerated by the others engaged in the dialogue; indeed, a range of perspectives and
alternatives are valued (Cassidy 2018). For Jusso (2007), caring thinking involves
being able to determine what has value, to value the thing that has value, and that
this is revealed to all. Lipman (2003) is clear that when we care about something we
are making a judgement; we are judging that it matters. In order to make that
judgement, when views are articulated they are received and reflected upon seri-
ously and critically (cf. Bleazby 2011). In so doing, we are empathetic towards the
views and experiences of others, we can situate ourselves in their place; it leads us
to consider not only how one wants to live, but how one ought to live. Such
questions of morality constitute ethical inquiry (cf. Sharp 1987; Noddings 1988;
Lipman 2003). Judgement needs compassion to ensure one is not blind to human
suffering (cf. Nussbaum 1996). Informed thinking—caring thinking—therefore,
that marries reason and emotion, is essential if compassionate action is to result.
In order to develop compassion, and bearing in mind compassion implies action,
children need to be supported to recognise themselves in-relation to the world and
others. To be political, active participants they have to learn how to question
themselves, others and the world they inhabit (Cassidy 2007). PwC presents a safe
environment in which they might explore and practise engaging with ideas of their
own and others. A pedagogy of compassion emphasises the need to ask challenging
or difficult questions (cf. Gibson and Cook-Sather 2020); it provokes action, while
recognising that ‘not just any action is good action’ (Zembylas 2013, p. 505). So,
while compassionate action is desirable, children should learn to reflect on what
might constitute appropriate action that is reasoned and proportionate. In so doing,
empathy is present, but so too is reason. Sharp argues that ‘If through inquiry, rather
than unquestionable dogma, a child arrives at the view that one should never treat
another person as a thing, the chances that the principle will manifest itself in the
22 C. Cassidy
child’s everyday behaviour are greatly enhanced’ (cf. Sharp 1984, p. 7). This is
liberating, she proposes, because it is transformative in promising ‘a qualitatively
different life’ (Sharp 1995, p. 55). Practising PwC may support a consideration that
moves away from the notion of the good life as purely subjective, as right for an
individual (Fenner 2007), to one that is a shared vision for wider society. Jónsdóttir
(2015) and Griffiths and Murray (2017) question how humans should live well in
the world. They understand ‘world’ by seeing humans and more-than-human ele-
ments in-relation, and clearly articulate the relationship we have with others and the
physical world. We cannot, says Jónsdóttir, pursue the good life without taking
seriously the quality of others’ lives (cf. ibid.). In advocating the vision of the good
life as being good for all, it inevitably becomes good for the individual (cf. Conrad
et al. 2015).
This morally enriched life supports children to consider what is, and to reflect
upon, and move towards what ought to be (Sharp 1995). For Wall (2010), in
adopting childism, we are offered new ways of thinking about what it means to live
a good life and this will be of benefit for all. Certainly, children’s interests or focus
for what constitutes the good life may not be the same as adults, as illustrated in
Sundhall’s example of children spending community funds on a water slide (cf.
Sundhall 2017), but their concerns should be taken seriously (cf. Matthews 2006).
Indeed, in his philosophy of childhood, Matthews presents the idea that we should
‘make room for the possibility that children may have genuinely cognitive interests
that are not standardly valued by adults around them’ (ibid., p. 6, emphasis in the
original). He makes clear, too, that children are moral agents and that considering
them as amoral or pre-moral is neither theoretically nor ethically acceptable.
The view presented of children, so dominated by developmental psychology, is a
deficit one, where children are considered to be devoid of or lacking certain
capacities, assumed to be held by adults (cf. Matthews 1994, 2006; Cassidy 2007).
Children and adults are positioned at opposite ends of a spectrum, with adulthood
being the direction to which one should strive in order to be considered fully
human. Rather than adopting this view, Matthews’ asserts a more balanced
approach, offering a ‘mirror-image’ conception of childhood, one that the likes of
Wall may approve. Often, says Matthews, ‘the strengths of childhood tend to be the
weaknesses of adulthood, and vice versa’ (Matthews 2006, p. 14). He argues that
recognising that children are better at some things than adults, and that adults are
better at some things than children, means that neither childhood nor adulthood can
be understood independently and that this is beneficial for all concerned (see also
Kohan and Cassidy 2021). Achieving the good life requires that individuals have a
sense of the good, are able to reflect critically on one’s life and have opportunities
to participate in political decision-making that govern that life (cf. Nussbaum 2011).
This, if childism is an approach worth adopting, requires that children have an equal
stake in the good life, in contemplating what that might mean and how it might be
enacted.
Shared philosophical dialogue allows for a more equal platform in terms of
recognising ‘the child’s epistemic privilege, to recognise a speech other than their
[adults’] own’ (Kennedy 2010, p. 21). The key is that children’s contributions are
valued as worthwhile. It presents the adult-child relationship as a positive one

between individuals where age is not the determining factor in reading the world.
This requires that we rid ourselves of some of the assumptions to which we, as
adults, are particularly wedded (cf. Cassidy and Mohr Lone 2020). It allows for the
development, for all concerned, of a ‘philosophical being-in-the-world with others’
(Murris 2017, p. 187). Cassidy and Mohr Lone (2020) propose that power
dynamics that reinforce the adult/child binary could be countered through shared
philosophical dialogue and that these intra-actions may offer alternative ways of
being together. This, then, requires that particular relationships demand attention.
The Teacher
Given the position of the teacher in children’s lives, their role in advancing a moral
education merits some consideration. Positioning the teacher as ‘knower’ in terms
of what constitutes what is morally good, and therefore how we, notably children,
should live our lives, is problematic. In the first place, it suggests that the teacher
knows what the good life is, particularly when this is the imagined or idealised life
that adults seek to protect by charging children with the task of (re)capturing it.
And, secondly, it assumes that s/he practises what s/he preaches, that s/he is morally
good. Neither need be the case.
A pedagogy of compassion suggests a relationship of equality, where power
relations are challenged and where teachers work to create a culture of trust in
which they ‘subvert patterns of subordination’ (Zembylas 2013, p. 515). The tea-
cher should not stay silent if s/he sees injustice and if s/he wishes to liberate the
children with whom s/he works (cf. Kohan 2021). Though working with students in
universities, Gibson and Cook-Sather’s (2020) proposal for pedagogical partnership
that seeks to address the status quo is relevant in school education if we are serious
about reimagining children’s place and role in society. It requires, as they say, that
teachers hold ‘their students as humans in their thoughts and pedagogical practices’
(ibid., p. 20). This is the manner in which Mr. Forbes, the teacher in Jenkins’ The
Changeling, behaves. He holds the untamed Tom Curdie as human and this per-
spective is evidenced in his behaviour towards the child. Forbes challenges the
inequalities he sees suffocating the child, and this empathy, when coupled to
judgement becomes compassion, which leads him to action. His behaviour, even if
ultimately misguided, is ethically motivated. He does as Sharp (1984) and Nod-
dings (1988) advocate; as teacher (as adult), he lives out the commitment he would
have his pupils adopt.
Kennedy (2007) and van Manen (2012) recognise that in nurturing the child the
teacher is also nurtured, particularly through collaborative dialogue. Questions of
how we should live inevitably arise through such dialogic collaboration where a
pedagogical relationship that respects and values the humanity of others without
need of hierarchy or status, are valued in adopting an ethic of care (Noddings 1988).
Moral education need not assume the moral rectitude of the teacher. Nor does it
24 C. Cassidy
need to look to children to save us from ourselves (Jessop 2018) and an imagined
future. Through ethical inquiry, praxis emerges that promotes a consideration of
ideas and positions this consideration in such a way that it provokes action. Indeed,
as Kennedy asserts, ‘Any program of ethical reflection that does not assume this
natural turn from reflection to action, which is content to leave things as they are,
will only teach children the futility of ethics’ (cf. Kennedy 2007, p.10), and cannot
lead to compassionate action.
This demands not only that teachers practise their ethical behaviour and think-
ing, but that they listen to children. A moral education designed to elicit compas-
sionate action, should allow for the possibility of challenging accepted structures
and systems, and this requires that individuals think and reason for themselves
(Nussbaum 2010). If childism is to teach us anything about moral education it is
that a reimagining of social structures where children are recognised for their
humanity, for their difference and for their abilities is an important starting point.
A pedagogy of compassion such as that offered by Philosophy with Children, may
be a way forward.
Conclusion
Lipman (2003) identifies that moral education for the majority of children is
joyless and repressive… they are puzzled as to what society expects of them and how they
are to deal with the dark ambiguities that surround them. A moral education approach that
enables them to learn from one another's experience, to share one another's understandings
and to feel a sense of belonging to a larger community is bound to be greeted by them with
joy and warmth and enthusiasm rather than with suspicion and diffidence (Ibid., p. 70).
This enthusiasm may arise from seeing themselves recognised as part of society.
The proposed restructuring of society demanded by childism may allow for this to
happen, but it is not enough. While it may be desirable that children play a fuller
part in society, it is important that they are given opportunities to reflect on who
they are, how they wish to be in-and-of the world in-relation with others. Spaces
need to be created where children can explore the kind of world in which they wish
to live, and Philosophy with Children as moral education seems to present a
structure for this activity.
Sound moral education requires teachers like Jenkins’ Mr. Forbes who are
compassionate. Compassion entails action. Forbes’ action is political; he recognises
the injustice that is present and future for Tom Curdie, and he acts to overcome that
injustice, a commitment to which Gibson and Cook-Sather (2020) would approve.
A pedagogy of compassion recognises injustice and leads to action, but it also
politicises children by affording them opportunities to comment on the world as it is
and as it could or should be. At the very least, a pedagogy of compassion will
recognise the ‘theoretical possibility of [children’s] agency (Griffiths 2008, p. 7),
and at best, will take seriously what children have to say without seeing them as
saviours of a future world that we (adults) have imagined for them. Adults have a
responsibility towards children, as parents, as teachers, as fellow human beings.
Even childism has to accept this to be the case, but the restructuring of society that
childism demands may be important for a moral education that recognises that we
all live in-relation and all have much to contribute. Until, as Kennedy (2007)
argues, we recognise what children have to say, the binary adult/child relationship
and social structures will be maintained, and all that these entail. Compassion,
Nussbaum (1996) argues, leads to greater equality. It is not that children have to be
more like adults or adults more like children; what is suggested by the likes of
Sundhall (2017) is ‘a society that allows itself to change fundamentally in answer to
what makes children different’ (ibid., p. 170).
In calling for a compassionate nation, Nussbaum makes plain that ‘a compas-
sionate training of the imagination’ is required (cf. Nussbaum 1996, p. 58). PwC
may offer the compassionate training sought by Nussbaum in bringing together the
cognitive and the affective. Similarly, it may provide the political space that
Sundhall (2017) and Wall (2019) consider necessary for children’s participation. It
is important, too, when proposing an approach to moral education, that a pedagogy
of compassion is sought, where children are able to engage in dialogue that leads to
compassionate action. Jessop (2018) is right to be concerned that when children are
politicised there is the danger that they become prey to ‘ideological warriors’ (ibid.,
p. 446). However, the approach to moral education proposed here is practical
Philosophy with Children, an approach that supports children to make connections
between ideas, to identify faulty reasoning, to challenge arguments, and to think for
themselves. It is as a pedagogy of compassion that it has the potential to enable
children to reflect on the world in which they live, what it means to live well and to
take action towards that goal.
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Schooling, Neoteny, Ethical
Reconstruction, and the Child 3
as Privileged Stranger
David Kennedy
Two Contrastive Pairs
The deep-structural assumption of this paper is that there are two closely related
broad universal normative criteria of ethical development that can be applied across
both culture and history, each of them expressed in the form of a binary or con-
trastive pair, which implies a dialectical aspect to their relation. The first has to do
with the balance between two categories of experience—the heteronomous and the
autonomous—and how they interplay in the ongoing construction, not just of a
single human life, but of a culture. The second binary pair is the relation between
the individual and the collective in the construction of an implicit ethical theory or
system and a moral code.
The terms of both binaries are limit conditions. The notion of complete auton-
omy is as counterintuitive as the notion of complete heteronomy, and the same goes
for individual and collective. If we accept the principle that self or subjectivity is
actually the internalization of another—whether the superego, the mirror image, or
simply the “point of view of the other”—one term swallows the other; autonomy is
a subclass of a fundamental heteronomy. And if the individual is only an individual
in relation to a collective, then the collective is the primary phenomenon, its ground
or field.
But we do find differences in contemporary culture and, if we believe certain
scholars (see, e.g., Elias 1994; Aries 1962; Huizinga 1969), historical differences
between what are sometimes called “field dependent” and “field independent”
personalities and cultures. Fundamental approaches to the issue of human auton-
omy can vary widely according, not just to the broad cosmological views that are
disseminated and reproduced in religious doctrines, but in social and economic
structures and systems. And there are myriad hybrids. A religious doctrine might
D. Kennedy (&)
College of Education and Human Services, Montclair State University, Normal Avenue 1,
Montclair, NJ 07043, USA

30 D. Kennedy
proclaim the “priesthood of the believer”—the notion that each person is autono-
mous before God, for example, and must work out his or her salvation through an
act of pure individual will—in fact this Protestant notion was influential in the
historical construction of the modal secular individualist of the modern West—but
unless that “salvation” is formulated and performed according to a narrow set of
collectively approved criteria, it will be considered heretical. Similarly, the indi-
vidualism of the capitalist modal personality is assumed, as is the collectivism of
the socialist, but an economic individualist can be a social collectivist, and an
economic collectivist a social individualist. It would seem that there is virtually an
infinite number of combinations of the four terms, so what good are they?
Not much good, especially if we take a broad survey of our species’ ethical
situation. As it currently stands, I am not aware of any large social group that has an
ethical profile which is widely different from any other. There may be differences in
legal structure—the way in which ethical norms are encoded in laws and statutes.
The rule of law, for example, may be much more firmly established in one social
group than another. But in any reasonably large social group, whether we char-
acterize it as a heteronomy or an autonomy culture or individualist or collective,
there is dishonesty small and large, there is more often than not widely accepted
social or economic oppression of one sort or another, there is base disregard for the
other, there is criminality, corruption, and cheating both on a small and a large
scale, there are various endemic forms of fascism and hoodlumism, both on the
cultural and on the institutional level; and there are myriad forms of heroism,
loyalty, altruism, honest-dealing, and fundamental good will toward the other.
Looked at from this angle, the distinctions the two sets of criteria represent don’t
seem to do much good either.
Not much good unless one is thinking in terms of any given ethical system and
its relation to education. By the former I mean a normative system—a set of ideals
for both behavior and for personal dispositions (and thereby by implication a form
of subjectivity, or a characteristic way of living with the superego), which mark out
the limits and the possibilities for both individual and collective life. And by the
latter I mean, not necessarily formal education, but ethoi, i.e., practices or customs
of adults relating to children, and different adult-constructed and maintained
environments in which children find themselves, which are the basic cultural forms
that ground formal educational structures like schools.
Schooling, Neoteny, and Modal Subjectivity
The two main environments we associate with children are the home and the school.
Unlike the home, the school is the place where the forms of life of a culture—
including the ethical—are open to collaborative reconstruction. The school, we
might say, is at least potentially a collective laboratory for cultural evolution. The
human is the species marked by cultural evolution because of its big brain and,
concomitantly, because of neoteny, which means, not just the long period of
3 Schooling, Neoteny, Ethical Reconstruction, and the Child … 31
dependency (gr. neo-tenein, extended youth) that is necessary for the big brain to
mature, but the permanent characteristics of childhood (“paedomorphism”) that
mark the species, most importantly, the brain’s lifelong capacity for growth and
change—that is, the ability to learn and reconstruct throughout the life cycle.
The primary form of childhood education of a culture—in our case the school—
will determine the extent to which that culture takes advantage of neoteny in order
to search for a normative balance between autonomy and heteronomy and indi-
vidualism and collectivism that makes for a form of human subjectivity more
capable of approximating an ethical ideal in daily life. The outcome of a normative
balance between the four terms is expressed well enough in Kant’s three forms of
the categorical imperative—the first two having to do with both sets of terms, and
the third with the first.1 But the capacity to search for, find, practice and develop the
balance is grounded in the lifeworld. Piaget offers a Kantian version of this process
in his genetic epistemology, which traces the growing capacity of the child to move
beyond an epistemological “egocentrism” and take multiple points of view. While it
is true that the capacity to take the point of view of the other is the necessary and
sufficient condition for ethical and moral practice, Piaget’s whole formulation
suffers from the same narrow rationalism as Kant’s—a rationalism that depotenti-
ates the lived experience of alterity that is in fact the only sure basis for the
autonomy that Kant calls for.
In order to be able to imagine the sort of qualitative advance or leap that neoteny
promises, we must turn to something much more radical than cognitive decentering.
The possibility of ethical evolution hinges on a new experience of alterity within the
self—the “rupture of the egoist-I”2 that Levinas represents as the onset of a new
form of knowledge, a knowledge no longer dominated by what he calls “the
same”—which is to say the ego’s projection. The onset of this radical alterity
amounts to a sort of deconstruction of self, and the emergence of a vulnerability, an
instability of self, a self-doubt that signifies that one has become a dialogical other
to oneself, a self-interlocutor. The dialogical self is engaged in the ongoing
deconstruction of everyday psychological and intersubjective space—which is
reified in the psychological space of the “normal” scientific paradigm—and its
reconstruction as a space of possibility and transformation.
The emergent psychological space of the dialogical self is transitional. It is an
intrasubjective and an intersubjective self, where projection and introjection are
recognized as never overcome. It is where the distinctions between subjective,
objective, and intersubjective break down. It is a chiasmic self: it no longer knows
exactly where the boundaries of self and other begin and leave off. It is a
post-Cartesian, a post-rational self; it is a self that has come apart, and has taken on
1
The first: “Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it would become
a universal law.” The second: “So act to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of
another, in every case as an end and never merely a means only.” The third: “The will is... subject
to the law in such a way that it must be regarded also as legislating for itself and only on this
account as being subject to the law (of which it can regard itself as author)”; cf. Kant 2003.
2
The term is introduced by Emmanuel Levinas’ translator Richard A. Cohen; cf. Levinas 1987,
p. 17. [Notice by the editors: For reference to Levinas see also Wurtz (cf. Chap. 4) in this volume.].
32 D. Kennedy
the project facing its own contradictions. The life-work, and by implication—
because it has to do with the other—the ethical work of the dialogical self is one of
emergent reorganization for the purpose of the integration of those contradictions in
an emergent synthesis. The synthesis is always just beyond it because of the nature
of temporality, and thus the dialogical self is an immanent, not a transcendent self,
except in the sense that it is governed by an emergent whole, one transrational
system in ongoing reconstruction. Above all, it is a system in which the ego—the
seat of rationality—occupies a different position than in a nondialogical self. It is a
system in which greater autonomy and more poignant individuality result in greater
sensitivity to the collective, and in which a more poignant awareness of our fun-
damental heteronomy encourages rather than numbs our felt sense of responsibility
toward the other.
Having imagined a style or a form of subjectivity that is more capable of
approximating a normative balance between our four terms of ethics, one must ask,
can it be taught in school? Obviously not. Modal subjectivity—the subjective (and
therefore intersubjective) style of a collective—is indeed “produced,” but the ele-
ments and dynamics of that production are too contingent and too large-scaled and
multiple and complex—in short, too chaotic—to be available for manipulation. On
the contrary, it is the historical episteme and its discourses that manipulate us, not
we them. Even those who think they are manipulating them are simply fulfilling
their own inherent goals.
The powerlessness—indeed, the abjectness—of the traditional school as a site
for the reconstruction of modal subjectivity is dramatically borne out by the history
of universal compulsory education. The national system of Napoleonic France in
the first years of the nineteenth century set an enduring example of schooling in the
interests of the nation-state which, although it may seem extreme to us today, in fact
lays down principles that still underlie, if not always the institutional mechanics,
then the culture of public compulsory schooling. Schooling in the modern Western
nation state is inherently dedicated to the reproduction of class, of relations of
power between classes, of economic systems, of social relations, and of cosmology
or world view. Simply put, the school is a machine run by the state for the
reproduction of the docile consumer, worker, and “citizen,” in that order.
This is not to say that there is no counter-tradition, or that there are not countless
schools—public compulsory ones included—and countless teachers and adminis-
trators who feel the impulse to imagine the school differently, to understand it as
“collective laboratory for cultural evolution,” a site for the reconstruction of sub-
jectivity, for fulfilling the promise of neoteny. And the origins of all these impulses
can be found, not so much in an interest in “betterment,” or “progress,” or “effi-
ciency,” or even “humanization,” but in the human possibilities that a transformed
adult–child relation offers.
The Adult–Child Relation and the Dialogical Self
The transformed adult–child relation has its origins in a new adult construction of
childhood, and therefore of any particular child, which in turn is based on a
reconstructed notion of adulthood, of subjectivity as an ongoing project. Most
specifically, it has its origins in the understanding of the child as interlocutor rather
than wild body to tamed, creature to be domesticated, or even client to be “served.”
As a form of adult dispositional behavior, it has most primarily to do with listening,
and thus is a hermeneutical relation through and through, and being in a
hermeneutical relationship with children has to do with facing and working on the
contradictions in oneself—which is to say listening to oneself. Working with
children is every bit as much self-work as it is work with another. This is because
each child represents my own potential for reorganization. In fact I still carry my
own childhood—I still am the child I was. I am still working with the experiences
that child had, and I am still the possibilities that child embodied. I still work with
the relationship between desire and reason, body and mind, id and superego,
unconscious and conscious, impulse and habit that I grew up with, and that my
parents’ form of life socialized me into. Nor is it through suppression of one or the
other of these terms that I continue to grow—that is to say, reorganize—but through
their interlocution. It is not through suppressing contradiction, but rather through
recognizing, acknowledging, confronting, enduring, suffering, contemplating,
struggling with, and (sometimes) glorying in contradiction—that is, allowing the
dialectical path of contradiction—that I develop, that I become myself, a becoming
that is never finished. And the same imperative for interlocution applies to my
relation with the children I have been given, whether in the home or in the class-
room; even more so, because childhood is the site of the original bargain between
desire and reason, and the site for the possibility of a new kind of bargain. As
Dewey argued, it is the very “impulses” of the young that are capable, not just of
transforming outworn and destructive “habits” (including some “good” ones), but
of reconstructing habit itself—that is, of fulfilling our potential for being habituated
differently—for having (or Dewey might suggest, being) habits that are more
flexible, more reconstructable, more intelligent in every sense of that term (cf.
Dewey 1988). Every child is a potential evolutionary experiment, and in nurturing
the child’s experiment I clarify and nurture my own, which, because of neoteny, is
ongoing. And the school is the natural site—even, we may say, more natural than
the home, since here “blood” is not involved, and therefore my relationship with the
child is more emblematic of the culture and the species as a whole—for this double
interlocution.
34 D. Kennedy
Community of Philosophical Inquiry and Ethical

Reconstruction
The nation-state and the culture it represents have, in general, made an everyday
dystopia of school—where, as Rilke’s autobiographical child testified,
Time . . . drags along with so much worry,/
and waiting, things so dumb and stupid./
Oh loneliness, oh heavy lumpish time. (Rilke 1981)
Nevertheless, a school in which the neotenic relation between habit and impulse is
the fulcrum of practice, in which adults are existentially engaged with children, with
themselves and with each other—what Dewey called an “embryonic society”—may
be the only systematic promise of the large-scale social and ethical reconstruction
that at this particular moment in the history of the species and the planet appears to
have become a matter of survival. And if one could think of a centerpiece of
pedagogy and curriculum for such an adult–child collective—a fundamental
ur-discourse—it would be one in which children and adults are provided a means
for ongoing collaborative reflection on the deep assumptions that ground their own
knowledge. In the realm of the ethical, these assumptions gather in a conceptual/
affective/ narrative matrix, some of whose themes are fairness, equality, right and
wrong, good and bad, evil, justice, forgiveness, responsibility, self and other. In fact
it tends to be the case generally that collaborative reflection on any philosophical
concept, if pursued far enough, takes an ethical turn, for the question “how then
shall we live?” inevitably presents itself. Nor can any authentic ethical reflection in
the classroom avoid finding its way into the everyday life of the classroom, which is
a realm of ethical action just like any other dyad or group. Inherent in the idea of
dialogical ethical inquiry is the interhuman reconstruction of relationships of power
and responsibility, and thus any school that undertakes such inquiry is implicitly
committed to the ongoing reconstruction of authentic democratic practices. The
child–adult collective imagined here is also, then, an experiment in “real”
democracy—which means, not some form already arrived at and institutionalized,
but democracy as we wish, or hope, or believe it possible to be; for democracy as an
emergent political form.
This ur-discourse—which I will call “community of philosophical inquiry,”
represents, not only the liberation of a space for children’s voice, but what follows
from the opening of a marginalized voice in general: the emergence of the “priv-
ileged stranger” (cf. Harding 1991). The voice of the privileged stranger in any
culture—whether woman, racial other, cultural other (e.g. “Arab” or “aboriginal”)
or queer, is the voice that through its very speaking names something about the
“native” culture that natives do not see because of their level of vested interest in it.
I would go even further and suggest that it represents—particularly in the case of
woman, child and queer—an element of subjectivity that is repressed in the native
—that has been silenced. The native has not heard the voice, but it is within him.
When the stranger is privileged—i.e. listened to, taken seriously in spite of the fact
that she speaks differently—it suggests what in psychoanalytic parlance is referred

to as the “withdrawal of the projection.” That is, the adult struggles to no longer use
the other as a screen on which to see the material that is in fact within himself. The
adult comes to “own” his material, and is individuated thereby, but through alterity.
It represents the “rupture of the egoist-I,” the decentering or “dethroning” of the
ego, and the recognition, critical for ethics, that, as Levinas has taught us, the other
is there even before oneself.
“Community of inquiry” as a term of use applies, not just to an ethical com-
munity of inquiry, but rather to any community dedicated to a particular inquiry.
The academic disciplines of the school—language and literature, music and the arts,
history, economics, sociology, anthropology, archeology, science, mathematics,
and so on—are in fact all products of ongoing communities of inquiry. They
represent, as Dewey argued in The Child and the Curriculum, the current end-states
of inquiry in any particular subject matter (cf. Dewey 1959). A mathematics text-
book, for example, may be considered as a summary of centuries of ongoing,
collaborative inquiry in that particular field. The child’s experience in the world
represents the starting point of those inquiries. The young child’s interest in
mathematics as expressed in arranging and rearranging a handful of pebbles in the
dirt is thus on an epistemological continuum with the most advanced knowledge in
set theory. The task of the school is to identify the contours of this continuum—to
map it, to locate the experience of each student on the path that it represents, and to
find ways in which the end point (the curriculum and the teacher) can contribute to
the development of the child at whatever point she is in her own inquiry.
One particular crippling aspect of the traditional school is that it takes the
curriculum—the finished product—as something that is expected to replace the
child’s inquiry rather than contribute to it. This reflects traditional education’s
epistemology and its learning theory. On the other hand, a school that takes it as its
form of practice to connect the two is by definition devoted to the child’s inquiry
every bit as much as to the child’s internalization of the end-point of the inquiry so
far. It is also at least potentially implicit in this understanding that, just as the child’s
construction of the discipline is emergent and open-ended, so is the discipline itself,
and its “finished” state as represented by the curriculum reflects no more than the
current state of the inquiry in any given field. Furthermore, the degree to which any
given inquiry advances beyond its current state is dependent upon inquirers who
act, so to speak, like children—who are seized by inquiry rather than use it in the
service of other goals, like career—and for whom it represents an experience of
transitional space, where the boundaries between the “real” and the “possible” enter
into extraordinary relations.
Each discipline is grounded in a set of fundamental assumptions that are
philosophical—a set of working beliefs about what, for example, constitutes a
historical or scientific fact, what makes a work of art beautiful, the relation between
mathematics and the structure of nature, etc. It is these assumptions which, since
they are inherently contestable, provide the element of uncertainty upon which
inquiry is based, and that make of it by definition never-ending. Traditional edu-
cational epistemology, on the other hand, considers these philosophical
36 D. Kennedy
assumptions to be “settled.” As a result, the philosophical inquiry that should be a

key aspect of every discipline in the curriculum is suppressed. Even when tradi-
tional pedagogues do recognize the emergent and socially constructed character of
knowledge, they protest that children should not know about it. They argue this on
both instructional and moral grounds. Instructionally, they tend to believe that
children must start with known and established “facts,” a sort of data base of
uncontested information, delivered by teachers and books; critical thinking, they
claim, can only come after there is something to think critically about, and that
something must be acquired noncritically. This naïve epistemology has its analogue
in the argument that children need early inculcation in a clear and secure moral
picture of the world—they “need to be taught right from wrong”—if they are not to
begin “questioning everything.”
These arguments reflect the traditional, commonsense view of childhood and of
children as inadequate, dependent, vulnerable and implicitly amoral creatures who
need to be isolated from the “real world” until they are no longer children—that is,
as voiceless ones (Lat. infans, or qui fari non potest, “who cannot speak”). Both
views are implicitly impositional, and act effectively to close off philosophical
inquiry from the curriculum—not, as it is usually suggested, because it is not
“useful,” but because it is dangerous. But in fact it is just at the philosophical level
that the disciplines become meaningful, because it is just there that the dimension of
wonder (Plato and Aristotle’s thaumazein, Adorno and Benjamin’s “philosophical
shock,” and Heidegger’s “astonishment”) associated with philosophical inquiry is
accessed. When its philosophical dimension is under erasure, the curriculum is
value-neutralized, and loses meaning.
The School as a Realm of Ethical Reflection and Action
In a school modeled on the ur-discourse of community of inquiry, each discipline

includes a philosophical dimension in its curriculum, which is to say, a set of
inherently contestable questions. These are the questions that come before the
philosophemes—the metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological propositions—
these are the questions to which the philosophemes in each disciplinary branch of
philosophy are answers. The science curriculum, for example, devotes one or more
sessions a week to fundamental questions in the philosophy of science; the social
studies curriculum to a session in philosophy of history, or social and political
philosophy, and so on.
The philosophical inquiry that is practiced in these sessions is communal, dia-
logical, and “facilitated” rather than “taught.” The teacher brings a non-expository
stimulus—that is, a narrative of some kind—which, normatively, mentions no
philosopher’s name or philosophical tradition, nor does it use philosophical jargon.
Its purpose is to trigger philosophical wonder, and optimally to offer some sort of
model, whether in dialogical or introspective form, of people actually philoso-
phizing together, which is to say, problematizing, in their own everyday language,
philosophical concepts that underlie the construction of the discipline. The students
share the text together—preferably by reading it aloud so that it is in fact com-
munally voiced. Then they develop questions that explore or further problematize
concepts that have struck them in the reading, and the teacher facilitates a dis-
cussion of one or more of the questions, modelling critical and dialogical inter-
ventions or “moves”—restating or asking for restatements, referring interlocutors to
each other’s points, identifying contradictions, calling for definitions, identifying
criteria, probing assumptions, and so on. Her goal is that over time, these moves
will be distributed throughout the group, and she will become less and less a leader
and more a convener and a participant.
The centerpoint of this emergent philosophical curriculum that is practiced in
every subject matter will be the community of ethical inquiry, because the ethical is
the realm of philosophical discourse where the question “what shall we then do?” or
“how then shall we live?” manifests, and where the clarification and reconstruction
of concepts meets the imperative of action and emerges as praxis. Any program of
ethical reflection that does not assume this natural turn from reflection to action,
which is content to leave things as they are, will only teach children the futility of
ethics. The first realm of action is the school itself—the community in which the
inquirers are placed. Like any community, it is one in which multiple ethical issues,
of varying scale and salience, are always present. There are ethical issues within the
school between children, between children and adults, and between adults. There
are ethical issues between school and the outside environment, from home to
community to region and so on, all the way to the global level. Some of these issues
—bullying, for example, or other forms of the use or misuse of personal power—
are ongoing interpersonal dimensions of the human situation. Others are structural,
and have to do with customs, traditions, practices or attitudes—social habits—the
normalizing practice of grading students on a curve, for example—which either
directly oppress others, or are so maladapted to present social circumstances that
they impede the formation of an optimal balance between the four terms of ethics
identified above. They tend either to flout individual liberties, neglect collective
responsibilities, or some combination of the two.
The practical implications of, first, instituting collaborative ethical reflection in a
community and second, responding to the imperative for action that follows from it,
can be profound for issues of power and control, reaching all the way from the
reconstruction of the classroom to the reconstruction of the governance of the
school—that is, institutional reconstruction—including the reconstruction of the
subject matter of studies, or the curriculum. Nor should it stop there. In an age in
which transparency has reached a planetary level—that is, in which each individual
is made privy to and even connected personally to ethical issues that reach beyond
his or her everyday sphere of action—the distance between the personal and the
global has shrunk or collapsed, yet current social habits retain what seems to be an
insurmountable distance between the private and the public. The “good citizen” of
the state is expected implicitly to limit his or her own ethical reconstruction to the
personal level, to live within the law, and to leave ethical work on the larger
structures to those institutions that the state has constructed for dealing with them—
38 D. Kennedy
institutions which in the majority of cases prove hopelessly vulnerable to the private
interests of the ruling elites. I live in a world in which I am fully aware that sweat
shops in Asia produce my relatively inexpensive clothes; that my affluence depends
to a large extent on energy wars fought on foreign soil under the code word
“democracy”; that the cornucopia of consumer products available to me is made
possible in part through the increasingly irreversible savaging of the earth’s
ecosystem, and the impoverishment of millions. It is not that this level of excess
hasn’t always been present in the species, but technology is accelerating its effects
dramatically, and now there are many more of us on the planet—and what is crucial
for our new ethical situation, now I know about it.
In such a situation, is a personal ethics—an ethical comportment within a limited
circle—an ethics in any but the most nominal sense of the term? What if I deal
sincerely with the fellowhumans in my sphere of activity with all the traditional
character virtues, deeply felt, but the larger system in the context of which I am
virtuous is not virtuous? What if, for example, I am a “good American`` in an
“America” which not only is not particularly good, but in which the self serving
power elites use my very “American” goodness as rhetorical justifications for their
unethical behaviors? Can I really call myself ethical unless I act ethically—which in
this case would appear necessarily to mean oppositionally—toward those elites?
The sphere of ethics and moral education for children has traditionally, since the
beginning of universal literacy and the public school, been constructed in three
dimensions: personal morality (“purity” or “character”), faith in some higher power
that I should allow to direct my way, and patriotism, which is to say loyalty to the
interests of my own national collective and to the elites who dominate and control
it. At this moment in the history of the species, this construction is a recipe for
profound ethical disempowerment and consequent nihilism, and for bipolar rela-
tions between the two binary pairs of ethical determiners. It threatens the deep
alienation of a radical individualism without autonomy, and a heteronomy become
pathological—mirror conditions that are maintained and exacerbated by the
growing economic inequalities presided over by the elites. And according to the old
recipe, the members of these elites are “good,” “honest,” “virtuous,”
“well-meaning” men in their private lives.
The state-run school has been the primary locus for reproduction of the modal
personality that, however virtuous in his private life, is passive before the elites—
before structural oppression, repression, cultural seduction, and the subtle hypoc-
risies of the control-mechanisms of power. Through the school, the state in fact
controls and limits the possibilities of neoteny—in order, in the larger picture, to
protect and maintain the elites that control it. Cultural evolution is not immediately
profitable or convenient for the elites. The primary condition for suppressing and
containing the possibilities of neoteny in the schools is the suppression and con-
tainment of the very person for whom the school should be designed—the child.
Until the child becomes more active in her own education, until she is understood to
have something interesting to say, until the adult recognizes the voice of the child,
until the adult privileges the voice of the child, we cannot expect a program in
ethics to do anything but reproduce the same sort of dysfunctional or undeveloped
relations between the two binary pairs that the private–public divide produces in the
larger world. Until the adult finds the child’s relation between impulse and habit
interesting in terms of its possibilities for the dialectical emergence of a recon-
structed form of modal subjectivity—that is, until the adult sees its neotenic pos-
sibilities—the school will remain a cultural dead weight.
But in fact there is no more appropriate institution for the reconstruction of
relations between the binaries than the adult–child collective called “school.” Its
inherent identity as an intentional community or “embryonic society”; its intrinsi-
cally neotenic character, and thereby its suffusion with Arendtian natality; its
location as the site of intergenerational dialogue and the transmission and recon-
struction of cultural tradition: these characteristics mark it as an evolutionary
crossroads. And that which expresses it quintessentially, and acts as the meeting
place for all its reconstructive tendencies, is systematic communal ethical inquiry.
References
Aries, Philippe. 1962. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. Trans. Robert
Baldick. New York: Knopf.
Dewey, John. 1959. The Child and the Curriculum. In Dewey on education: selections, ed.
Martin S. Dworkin, 91–111. New York: Teachers College Press.
Dewey, John. 1988. Human Nature and Conduct. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University
Press.
Elias, Norbert. 1994. The Civilizing Process and State Formation and Civilization. Trans. Edmund
Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell.
Harding, Sandra G. 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Huizinger, Johann. 1969. The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought,
and Art in France and the Netherlands in the 14th and 15th Centuries. New York: Anchor
Books.
Kant, Immanuel. 2003. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. In Moral Philosophy: A Reader,
3rd Edition, ed. Louis P. Pojman, 194–213. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1987. Time and the Other. Trans. Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne
University Press.
Rilke, Rainer Maria. 1981. Selected Poems. Trans. Robert Bly. New York: Harper and Row.
Facing Childhood Ethically:
Overcoming Normative Overloading 4
in P4C and Opening Philosophy
to the Radically New
Jonathan Wurtz
Introduction
This essay is an attempt to consider the possibility of an ethical encounter between

childhood and philosophy in philosophy for children (P4C). The difficulty that P4C
faces in its endeavor to introduce childhood and philosophy to one another is not
only cognitive in nature, but ethical as well. The child is an Other1 whose future
points beyond me, towards a reality that I will never get to experience. The question
which I am interested in answering here is: how do I philosophically interact with a
child in such a way as to not overshadow its radical otherness? In other words, how
can I—and other P4C practitioners—face childhood ethically?
Historically speaking, philosophy has been an adult practice, and only recently
has it been opened up to younger children. In the history of Western philosophy,
children often “represent adults’ opportunity to carry out their ideals” (Kohan 2011,
p. 340). In fact, Western philosophers have a long history of violently appropriating
childhood for their own goals. The first part of this paper discusses two examples of
this—what I call normative overloading of childhood—in the P4C literature, and
lays out the ontology of childhood that makes it possible—what I call a relative
ontology of childhood. Normative overloading describes an inscription of “what
children say in the grid of our own adult hermeneutical devices” for the sake of an
1
I follow the traditional translation of “Autre”, “autre”, “Autrui”, and “autrui” in Levinasian
scholarship. “Other” with a capital “O” is used to designate a real other human being, while the
small “o” other is used to designate what is conceptually otherwise.
J. Wurtz (&)
University of Memphis, Clement Hall, 337, Memphis, TN 38152, USA
e-mail: jwurtz@memphis.edu

42 J. Wurtz
adult normative agenda (ibid., p. 354). The two examples of normative overloading
that I particularly focus on are (1) Matthew Lipman’s democratic overloading of
childhood, and (2) Gareth Matthews’ philosophical overloading of childhood. In
other words, the first section discusses how Lipman makes childhood responsible
for the maintenance of adult democracy, while the second section discusses how
Matthews’ makes childhood bear responsibility for the continued relevance of adult
philosophy in modern society. Both Lipman and Matthews’ respective overloading,
I further argue, are the symptom of an unethical relative ontology of childhood –
that is, a conceptualization of childhood that presents itself meaningfully only in its
relationship to adulthood.
By turning to the work of Emmanuel Levinas I reject the relative ontology of
childhood and the normative overloading it makes possible on ethical grounds, and
propose an alternative understanding of childhood as radically otherwise than
adulthood. After showing how a relative ontology of childhood suppresses the
radical alterity of the child, I turn to Levinas’ Totality and Infinity to describe the
ethical content of the relationship between the adult self and the radically Other
child. I conclude by discussing how the ethical encounter between childhood (as
radically otherwise than adulthood) and philosophy in P4C opens the latter to a
radically new and radically other future that exists beyond being. P4C, in this sense,
offers a relation of transcendence towards the radically new. In facing childhood
ethically, philosophy for children becomes the immanent condition under which the
amorphous and unthinkable future of philosophy—that is, the impossible—be-
comes possible.
P4C and the Democratic Overloading of Childhood
In April 1968, students from Columbia University gathered on campus to protest

both the construction of a new gymnasium in the Harlem part of New York and the
university’s complicity in the Vietnam war. After some time, the protest changed
from gatherings into an occupation of multiple buildings. After a few days of
occupation, talks between the faculty, administration, and student protestors broke
down and the police intervened arresting more than 700 students in the process. At
the time of the protest, Matthew Lipman was acting chair of the General Education
Department at Columbia University and was beginning to think through what
would eventually become P4C. For Lipman, this event pointed to a lack of critical
thinking skills that could have been avoided. As he recalled:
Neither the Columbia University administration, nor the faculty, nor the students came off
particularly well: They seemed bewildered and unreasonable. I wonder what they should
have or have experienced earlier in their lives, to be more reasonable now. They had all passed
through the school system. Could that be the locus of the problem? If so, could the Logic and
Critical Thinking course I offered to adult evening students be revised so as to make children
think more reasonably, more reflectively, more critically? (Lipman 2009, p. 10)
4 Facing Childhood Ethically: Overcoming Normative ... 43
Here we have an example of the first kind of overloading in P4C; the overloading of
childhood with a democratic agenda. For Lipman childhood ought to encounter
philosophy because of the political salience that this relationship can bare. Child-
hood must engage in philosophical thought, in other words, for the sake of liberal
democracy. Lipman shadows John Dewey’s argument that liberal subjects are not
ready-made in the state of nature (like John Locke argued) but rather created and
molded through a society’s institutions. As Dewey argued:
liberalism knows that an individual is nothing fixed, given ready-made. It is something
achieved, and achieved not in isolation but with the aid and support of conditions, cultural
and physical: — including in ‘cultural’, economic, legal and political institutions as well as
science and art. (Dewey 2008, p. 291)
While classical liberal theorists mistakenly separate the individual from their social
context, both Dewey and Lipman understood that institutions are crucial to the
existence of democratically-able political subjects. This is why Lipman asks
whether the school system is responsible for what happened at Columbia University
in April 1968. Since liberal citizens are created, something must have gone wrong
in their production. But even more urgent are the implications of the unreason-
ableness and bewilderment that occurred on that day. Students, administration, and
faculty “all passed through the school system” (see quotation above) and failed to
resolve the situation peacefully and reasonably. What about the others who received
the same education? Where are they? Do they also lack the capacity to entertain
reasonable and clear-minded dialogue?
There is a larger problem at stake here than the reasonable cooperation of
Columbia University’s students, faculty, and administration. If schools do not
effectively produce democratic political subjects, then the very stability of liberal
democracies is threatened by the possibility of widespread unreasonableness. For
Dewey, democracy is a form of politics that deploys inquiry as the primary methods
for resolving the problems of a community. Lipman, following Dewey, knew that
liberal democracies “need reasonable citizens above all” (ibid.). Without reasonable
citizens, democratic inquiry is corrupted and democracy runs the risk of turning into
authoritarianism. What happened at Columbia University was a symptom of a
larger sickness. Schools are the institution meant to produce “persons who are as
knowledgeable as they need to be and as reasonable as they can be helped to be”
(Lipman 2003, p. 11). For Lipman, however, schools in North America were failing
to uphold this crucial function of a liberal democratic society:
It's not that Johnny can't reason. It's just that he can't reason as well as he should. And it's
doubtful that the present educational system can take much credit for the reasoning he does
perform. No one ever seems to bother to instruct the child in the hygiene of thinking …
What the school does succeed in introducing into the child is a negative charisma, a
gratuitous belief in his own intellectual impotence, a distrust of any intellectual powers of
his own other than what it takes to cope with problems formulated and assigned to him by
others. (Lipman 1982, p. 38)
44 J. Wurtz
What occurred on the Columbia University campus in April 1968, in other words,
was not just a local problem. It was the product of a larger systemic threat to the
very core of liberal democracy—i.e., the reasonable citizen.
For Lipman, the remedy to this crucially urgent social-political issue was the
introduction of philosophy in the K-12 public school system. As he argues, “an
education which promotes philosophical research among children is the guarantee
of an adult society which is genuinely democratic” (ibid.). This is because phi-
losophy teaches critical thinking which he saw as a protective shield against “being
coerced or brainwashed into believing what others want us to believe without our
having an opportunity to inquire for ourselves” (Lipman 2003, p. 47). Introducing
philosophical inquiry into the public-school curriculum would also prepare students
(i.e., future citizens) “to be participants in a society likewise committed to inquiry
as the sovereign method of dealing with its problems” (ibid., p. 34). In other words,
children’s philosophical community of inquiry prepares them for the task of
eventually joining adult’s democratic community of inquiry. As a result, more
philosophical schools mean more reasonable schools, and “more reasonable schools
mean more reasonable future parents, more reasonable citizens, and more reason-
able values all around” (ibid., p. 11).
What is the driving normative agent of this project? It is not childhood.
Democracy is an adult construction; at least its current material existence (i.e., its
laws, policies, and institutions) is created by adults and for adults. Yet, childhood is
depicted as an instrumental and even necessary element of democratic institutions’
existence and enduring operation. Children are responsible for continuing the
democratic project across time and must bear responsibility for an adult normative
project. As Nancy Vansieleghem argues, “every act, every thinking process [in
Lipman’s philosophy for children] is determined by a future goal—namely creating
autonomous, self-reflective citizens” (Vansieleghem 2005, p. 25). Lipman, in other
words, looks beyond childhood for P4C’s own normative raison d’etre and treats
children as future investments for the sake of the broader democratic society. As a
result, P4C becomes an instrument of the current political infrastructure and par-
ticipates in the larger reproduction of the adult status quo. It actively coopts and
alienates childhood into an adult project. This is ultimately why Lipman’s approach
to philosophy of childhood emphasizes the similarity between children and adults
all the while undervaluing their differences:
For if we refuse to acknowledge the rationality of children, we cannot satisfactorily engage
in philosophical dialogue with them, because we cannot accept their utterances as reasons.
If we cannot do philosophy with children, we deprive their education of the very com-
ponent that might make such education more meaningful. And if we deny children a
meaningful education, we ensure that the ignorance, irresponsibility, and mediocrity that
currently prevail among adults will continue to do so. (Lipman 1988, p. 198)
Children have rational capacities, like adults (cf. ibid.). Children have a right to
reason, just like adults (ibid., p. 192). They have the capacity to engage in ethical
inquiry, like adults (ibid., p. 194). In philosophy for children, the community of
inquiry even allows children to be equal with adults (ibid., p. 196). Refusing to
acknowledge and highlight these similarities will only doom adult society even
more. In overemphasizing the similarities between childhood and adulthood, Lip-
man is then able to overburden childhood with adult democratic goals. The simi-
larity between adults and children, in other words, allow for the translation of adult
ethical and political projects into those of children without ever having to truly
consider what a childhood ethics or politics is. We only need to consider adults’
conceptualization of democracy to then educate children into the cognitive and
normative needs of this vision.
P4C and The Philosophical Overloading of Childhood
Alongside this democratic overloading of childhood, there is another kind which I

call philosophical overloading. This kind of overloading is less straight forward
than the previous one because philosophy is an inherently difficult term to define.
Different philosophers operate under different conceptions of philosophy. However,
every instance of philosophical overloading I am interested in concludes in a similar
fashion: children naturally and pre-consciously embody a philosophical approach to
the world. In other words, childhood and philosophy are not strangers who are
introduced to one another at school, but rather share a profound relationship.
According to this view, not only is childhood fundamentally philosophical but
philosophy itself is also profoundly childish.
Throughout the history of philosophy, the relationship between childhood and
philosophy has been defined in a negative way. Philosophers are adults, and since
children are not adults, they cannot be philosophers. Take the beginning of the
Nicomachean Ethics for example. Aristotle rejects the idea that individuals “young
in years or youthful in character” could ever benefit from his lectures (Aristotle
1984, 1095a2). The Nicomachean Ethics is a book concerned with adult moral
thinking, which implies that it is inadequate for young or immature people. A more
contemporary example of this logic can also be deduced from Jean Piaget’s
developmental psychology and genetic epistemology. Piaget conceptualized three
stages of cognitive development (sensory-motor, preoperational, and concrete
operational) that must be completed before a person gains the capacity for
higher-order thinking that is definitive of philosophy (i.e., the formal operational
stage of cognitive development). Philosophical thinking, Piaget held, is a product of
all the previous stages of cognitive development coming to fruition and, as a result,
cannot be practiced until a child reaches 11–12 years of age. Thus, he claimed that:
It goes without saying that the child does not actually work out any philosophy, properly
speaking, since he never seeks to codify his reflections in anything like a system. Even as
Tylor was wrong in speaking of the “savage philosophy” as that which concerns the mystic
representations of primitive society, so also one cannot speak, other than by metaphor, of
the philosophy of the child. (Piaget 1931, p. 377)
46 J. Wurtz
Both of these are examples of the same idea: children must be barred from prac-
ticing philosophy due to a lack of adult cognitive and moral features. Under this
view, childhood and philosophy are alien to one another. While philosophy is
concerned with analytic, abstract, and systematic thinking, childhood is a time
defined by emotions and immanent thinking.
One strategy for rejecting this traditional understanding of the relationship
between childhood and philosophy is to highlight the parallels between children’s
thinking and adult’s philosophical thinking. Gareth Matthews (1980, 1994, 2009),
for example, argues that children are natural philosophers by specifically showing
how children ask established and epistemologically urgent questions in the history
of philosophy:
Steve, 3 years old, was watching his father eating a banana. “You don't like bananas, do
you Steve?” said the father. “No,” Steve agreed and thought a moment. “If you wuz me,
you wouldn't like bananas,” he said. Steve reflected another moment and then asked, “Then
who would be the daddy?” 2. Some question of fact arose between James and his father,
and James said, “I know it is!” His father replied, “But perhaps you might be wrong!”
Denis, 4 years, 7 months, [then] joined in, saying, “But if he knows, he can't be wrong!
Thinking's sometimes wrong, but knowing's always right!” In the first example, Steve raises
a problem with what philosophers call “counterfactual identicals.” … In the second
example, Denis makes a philosophically interesting comment about what it is to know
something. Although there is no consensus among philosophers even today about the
proper analysis of knowledge, some philosophers, beginning perhaps with Plato in his
Republic, have insisted that genuine knowledge is infallible. (Matthews 2009, p. 164)
Matthews thus connects childhood and philosophy by directly showing how chil-
dren’s questions parallel what professional adults recognize as philosophy. The
attentive and open-minded philosopher can, in other words, recognize Plato,
Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Mill, and many more philosophers
in children’s questions. Hence, if children entertain similar questions and
methodological approaches than those philosophers, we cannot simply continue to
believe that they are strangers to philosophical thinking. In fact, as Matthews and
many others will argue, children have a natural inclination for philosophical
thinking that adults lack. For him, childhood and philosophy share a kind of
“naiveté”. That is, they both take part in an epistemically innocent approach to the
world that prompts both children and philosopher to ask big fundamental questions
about the nature of reality, knowledge, and values (Matthews 1980). Children,
however, do not just “do philosophy naturally, they do it with a freshness of
perspective and a sensitivity to puzzlement and conceptual mismatch that are hard
for adults to achieve” (Matthews 1994, p. 122). While the adult must make a
conscious effort to “cultivate the naiveté that is required for doing philosophy well,
to the child this naiveté is entirely natural” (ibid.).
Childhood’s ontological situation and the inherent wonderous curiosity or nai-
veté that follows from it makes it a philosophically abundant time. From this, it
follows that philosophy must also be child-like since it requires us to adopt a
childish approach to the world. As Matthews exemplifies:
The Cartesian project of reconstructing what we know from the beginning requires that we
sort of start over and in a way become children again. I mean, we can see how we can put it
together, we've been socialized to accept all sorts of things, but if we're asked, do we really
know? How can we justify our claim to know that? We have to sort of start over and go
back to the most basic beliefs that we have. I think that move in modern philosophy invites
us to approach children—not just being socialized to accept things that adults accept, but
reflecting on the basis for whatever good reason they have for believing the things that they
believe. (Matthews 1999)
In other words, the wonderous naiveté that children display is also at the center of
many important philosophical projects. In so far as philosophers are interested in
“perceiving anew” or “rethinking” a concept, idea, or argument, they must become
“childish”. Thus Matthews depicts philosophy as “an adult attempt to deal with the
genuinely baffling questions of childhood” (ibid., p. 13).
Again however, I am pressed to find the normative source behind this concep-
tualization of childhood as “philosophical”. Unlike the previously discussed
democratic overloading, the argument presented here is that childhood itself is
philosophical. When we are practicing philosophy with children, we are allowing
childhood to express and cultivate its own philosophical nature, all the while
allowing philosophy to become more child-like. At first glance, it would seem that
we are deriving philosophy from childhood rather than imposing philosophy from
the outside as Lipman did with democracy. However, as Karin Murris (2016) points
out, it can be the case that the “perspective of what it means to be ‘childlike’ and for
P4C-proponents [to be] child-philosopher-like is firmly embedded in adult
assumptions and desires about how [childhood] should be” (Murris 2016, p. 76).
In other words, how we define and recognize “philosophical” can lead to what I
have called normative overloading. In fact, if we take a closer look at Matthews’
method for connecting childhood and philosophy, we can see that what it means to
be a “child philosopher” is dependent on adult philosophers’ recognition. As he
explains:
In my judgement, the best way to become convinced that young children have genuinely
philosophical thoughts is not to define ‘philosophy’ and then see whether there is any
evidence that children have thoughts that fit the definition. The best way is rather to see
whether anything that children say or ask is similar to what some philosopher has once said
or asked. (Matthews 2017, p. 55)
Childhood is philosophical, not because it raises its own philosophical questions or

because it calls itself philosophical, but first and foremost because it emulates adult
philosophy. Matthews, in other words, interprets childhood to be philosophical in
nature by translating the child’s questions into a canonical philosophical question.
As we can remember from the previously discussed example, Steve’s “who would
be daddy?” question is translated into a question concerning “counterfactual
identicals”, and Denis’ point about “knowing always being right” is translated into
Plato’s discussion about the infallibility of knowledge in the Republic.
48 J. Wurtz
Finally, we should ask what normative agenda is childhood being overloaded

with? At first glance, it would seem as though Matthews is merely promoting the
relationship between childhood and philosophy by virtue of the inherent philo-
sophical nature of the former. While it is clear to anyone who has ever practiced
philosophy with children that children enjoy doing philosophy, I do not think this
fully explains the need to call children “natural philosophers”. Children can enjoy
doing philosophy without being philosophers. Rather, we can point to another
possible normative reason for why Matthews overburdens childhood with adult
philosophy—i.e., what he calls an “antiphilosophical bias” in our society (Mat-
thews 1978, p. 73). As he expands:
Most adults have no interest in and patience for philosophical reasoning. I expect that many
of them have had philosophy beaten out of them by a process of socialization. But,
however, they came to be that way, they now have no nose and no ear for philosophy.
Some of them talk to children a great deal. They do not discover philosophical thinking in
children for the very good reason that they are themselves largely immune to philosophical
perplexity. They fail to recognize philosophy for what it is and they discourage its elab-
oration and development. (Ibid.)
In other words, childhood bears responsibility for philosophy’s continued relevance

in our contemporary scientific and capitalist society. Calling the child “a natural
philosopher” allows philosophy to display its relevance and importance in a society
that continually misunderstands and rejects it. If we care about children, then we must
also care about philosophy. This being said, would like to emphasize that I agree with
the attempts to foster children’s agency and philosophical thinking skills, and also
with the general idea that philosophical education is relevantly beneficial to children’s
well-being and capacity for self-creation. However, I am wary of the ways in which
P4C practitioners justify their normative projects through an adult ontology of
childhood. I am not looking to criticize philosophy for children as a practice, but rather
the way that we think about the relationship between childhood and philosophy.
The Relative Ontology of Childhood and Normative

Overloading as Violence
I have argued that P4C practitioners justify their normative projects through an
adult ontology of childhood. In the following I will refer to their conceptions as a
relative ontology of childhood. The normative overloading of childhood I described
above is a symptom of a larger philosophical illness afflicting the history of Western
thought. According to Levinas, the history of Western philosophy “can be inter-
preted as an attempt at universal synthesis, a reduction of all experience of all that is
reasonable, to a totality where in consciousness embraces the world, leaves nothing
other outside of it, and thus becomes absolute thought” (Levinas 1985, p. 75). In
other words, it is an attempt at developing what he refers to as an “ontology” or “a
reduction of the other to the same by interposition of a middle and neutral term that
ensures the comprehension of being” (Levinas 1969, p. 43). Everything that was, is,
and ever will be can be categorized under a certain umbrella term that encompasses
the totality of being. This is best exemplified by thinkers like Hegel for whom: “I,
the selfsame being, thrust myself away from myself; but this which is distinguished
which is set up as unlike me, is immediately on its being distinguished no dis-
tinction from me” (Hegel 1977, p. 102). In the subject-object relationship that
defines first philosophy, the self is both the starting point and the end goal. I may
alienate myself from myself in order to understand this external object which is
distinguished from me. But in the end, according to Hegel, I must find myself again
in this external object since the subject-object distinction is a product
self-consciousness. As a result, “consciousness of an other, of an object in general,
is indeed itself necessarily self-consciousness, reflectedness into self, consciousness
of self in its otherness” (ibid.).
The main problem with ontology is that it fails to impose limits on itself and its
own projects—which is itself the result of a deeper failure to recognize what is
completely otherwise than it. Theoretically speaking, Levinas argues that ontology
as first philosophy fails to recognize how it is first and foremost conditioned by a
“metaphysical” encounter with the radically otherwise than itself. Practically
speaking, he argues that this ontology constitutes a “philosophy of injustice”
(Levinas 1969, p. 46). Because everything must fit under the universal umbrella of
the universal synthesis, ontology resolves conflicts between same and other by
forcefully totalizing the radically other under the same. In other words:
Ontology as first philosophy is a philosophy of power. It issues in the State and in the
non-violence of the totality, without securing itself against the violence from which this
non-violence lives, and which appears in the tyranny of the State. Truth, which should
reconcile persons, here exists autonomously. Universality presents itself as impersonal; and
this is another inhumanity. (Ibid.)
Ontology is therefore marked by an antagonistic relationship of violence and

domination between same and other. The history of Western philosophy is,
according to Levinas, a history of the same violently imposing itself onto the other
(ibid., pp. 24–25). Its privileging of the same over the other (i.e., of the universal
synthesis of Being) means that the “consciousness of the self is at the same time the
consciousness of the whole” (Levinas 1985, p. 75). This “‘egoism’ of ontology”,
according to him, further implies “a feeling that man is absolutely free in his
relations with the world and the possibilities that solicit action from him” (Levinas
and Hand 1990, p. 64). In other words, it implies a profound ethical failure, that is, a
lack of ethical responsibility for the Other. In a world in which everything is
subsumed under the logic of the same, there is no room for what Levinas considers
the ethical proper—i.e., the Other’s ethical demands. What results from this is a
philosophy that legitimizes both theoretical and material violence against the Other;
one that legitimizes the enslavement of the Other, for example, as a necessary
motion of Universal Spirit’s coming to self-consciousness.
We find, I argue, the same deployment of ontology in P4C literature that
overloads childhood with adult normative projects. The main issue at stake, and
what I propose is the main agential pillar behind normative overloading, is a
50 J. Wurtz
relative ontology of childhood. To be more specific, a relative ontology defines

childhood along two epistemic vertices. First, a relative ontology makes childhood
meaningful only in its relationship to adulthood. The vast majority of Lipman and
Matthews’ philosophical work, for example, aims to show that rational thinking and
philosophical questioning are not secluded into adulthood. Rather, the goal of P4C
is to show that children and adults are ontologically closer than what most people
would think (Kohan 2015). Lipman, for example, argues that “childhood is no more
incomplete without a subsequent adulthood than adulthood is without a prior
childhood … only together … they make ‘a life’” (Lipman 1988, p. 194). Mat-
thews, similarly, offers a dialectical understanding of the “natural” philosophical
child that is relative to the “nurtured” adult philosopher (Murris 2000, p. 265).
Thus, for both Lipman and Matthews, childhood only exists meaningfully via its
relationship to adulthood. They, in other words, must show that children are not so
radically different from adults that they cannot practice philosophy. The assumption
being that in order to practice philosophy, one must practice it in a fashion that is
similar to and recognizable by the adult.
Second, a relative ontology of childhood relates both concepts by means of a
synthesizing third term that originates from the adult’s epistemic position. Lipman,
for example, deploys the concept of “rational personhood” from liberal philosophy
as the synthesizing third term that relates childhood and adulthood. Both the child
and the adult, as we can see above, must be considered “rational” for us to “accept
their utterances as reason”, and for the community of philosophical inquiry to
achieve its goal of modeling Dewey’s democratic community of inquiry and
preparing children for their role as future citizens. Lipman coopts the terms “ra-
tional” and “personhood” directly from the traditionally adultist liberal political
philosophy and applies them to children. As a result, he can overload childhood
with democratic values by arguing that both share this “rational personhood” on
which democracy is based, all the while deploying a concept of rational personhood
entirely constructed by adult rationality. Matthews, on the other hand, uses “phi-
losophy” or “naiveté” as the synthesizing third term that relativizes child and adult
(philosophers) together. Both the child philosopher and the adult philosopher share
a kind of innocent approach to the world. However, without the “adult philosopher”
who can translate the child’s utterances into canonical philosophy, their “profound
naiveté” is unrecognizable (if not impossible).
As a result, a relative ontology of childhood is an adult’s view of childhood. But
this is not problematic per say. We (professional philosophers who practice P4C)
are adults and can only perceive childhood from our own adult perspective. The
issue with this relative ontology of childhood is its failure to let children be the main
agent in their own subjectification. Again, as Levinas argues, ontology makes it
such that consciousness of the self can be translated into consciousness of the
whole. A relative ontology of childhood similarly reduces childhood to adult’s
totalizing consciousness. As described, a relative ontology makes childhood
meaningful only in its relationship to adulthood and synthesizes both together
through a seemingly neutral third term that actually reflects adult consciousness. In
doing so, adults can impose normative projects onto childhood/children from the
outside and hide the violence behind a moral façade. For example, in Lipman, the
status of “rational person” that both the child and adult have entails that both ought
to use inquiry as a method for dealing with the problem of their community.
Similarly, Matthews’ description of the child and adult as “philosophers” allows
him to imbue child philosophy with adult philosophers’ normative agendas. What is
particularly important to highlight with these two examples of normative over-
loading is the uneven-power relation that conditions them.
On the one hand, liberal democracy, at least in Western contemporary society, is
defined by adults and for adults, and as a result propagates a violent a-symmetrical
power relationship between child and adult. As such, philosophical education with
children is not only conceptualized by adults (since adults are the ones who know
what democratic citizenship entails), but, at the same time, is normatively driven by
an adult agenda as well (since adults are the ones who create the normative scope of
democratic citizenship). Children are not only alienated from the democratic pro-
cess, but are also being subjectified by the very nexus of institutions that prohibits
their democratic participation. Similarly, Matthews defines the child as philo-
sophical but deploys a conceptualization of “philosophy” that is only accessible and
recognizable by adult philosophers. If we can call a child “philosophical” by virtue
of being able to place their question within the history of philosophy, children can
only ever be called “philosophical” by the adult philosopher.
The relative ontology of childhood deployed by both Matthews and Lipman
ultimately leads to a form of P4C that intensifies the violent relationship of power
between child and adult. This adult–child relationship specifically commits violence
and intensifies the power of adults over children in at least three ways. First, the
relative ontology of childhood disallows us (adults) from encountering the child and
childhood on their own terms. Both Lipman and Matthews filter the child and
childhood through adulthood to make it intelligible them. This however establishes
the adult–child relationship in P4C as a dominating relationship in which childhood
is silenced through adult knowledge and intelligibility. Secondly, a relative ontol-
ogy of childhood easily transforms P4C into a tool that subjectifies children into the
status quo—what has been dubbed the instrumentality problem (Biesta 2011).
Because of the power differential between children and adults (whether it be in
defining the normative scope of democracy or that of philosophy), defining
childhood in relation to adulthood inevitably invites normative overloading. “The
child is rational” means “we must cultivate the child’s rationality”; “the child is
philosophical” means “we must cultivate the child’s philosophy”. The trick being,
of course, that both the “rational child” and the “philosophical child” are subjec-
tivities which require an adult’s (re-)cognition. Thus, a relative ontology of child-
hood, combined with the inherent power differential that constitutes the child–adult
relationship in our time, quickly becomes a moral justification for coopting children
into our normative projects.
Finally, as someone who practiced P4C in extremely segregated classrooms, I
read both Lipman and Matthews’ respective ontologies of childhood as recapitu-
lating prevalent racial harms against non-white European/North American children.
Of course, neither discusses how race and racism fit within P4C: either as a topic of
52 J. Wurtz
conversation in the community of inquiry or as a topic for philosophical investi-

gation (cf. Chetty 2018). Lipman’s understanding of the philosophical community
of inquiry as a model for the democratic community of inquiry is based in the
relative ontology of childhood. It is because children are rational persons that they
can have a role on this proto-democratic stage—otherwise, we should remember,
we cannot treat children as equals. However, the features of such a community are
not just derived from adult norms, but from Western European political norms of
rational personhood as well– the very same norms which are currently contributing
to racial disparity across the Western world. This makes Lipman’s community of
inquiry inadequate for majority minority cities (like Memphis, TN) since it can
compile on the harms of everyday racism (Kronsted and Wurtz 2021). Matthews,
similarly, only ever recognizes canonical Western European philosophers in chil-
dren’s questions. As someone trained in the history of Western philosophy, it is
hard to say how successful Matthews would have been at recognizing non-Western
European children’s philosophical questions. If we are limited by the adult’s
recognition of philosophy in our identification of childhood’s philosophical nature,
then someone like Matthews can very easily fail to recognize the philosophical in
children from marginalized communities. But more importantly, the history of
Western philosophy is not innocent. Much of the modern Western canon has
directly contributed to the rise and expansion of colonialism and racism across our
globalized world. To limit the encounter between childhood and philosophy to the
history of Western philosophy without addressing the racist and colonial logic in it,
is to essentially allow both to enter the community of inquiry.
Radical Alterity and the Ethics of the Adult–Child

Relationship
To reject ontology as first philosophy and the philosophy of power that accom-
panies it, Levinas appeals to a transcendental philosophy that begins with the
immanent “face to face” encounter between the self and the radically Other. It
should be clear from what has been said above that such an “Other” is not reducible
to a concept within system of knowledge or ontology:
The absolutely other is the Other. He and I do not form a number. The collectivity in which
I say “you” or “we” is not a plural of the “I” … Neither possession nor unity of number nor
the unity of concepts link me to the Stranger [l’Etranger], the Stranger who disturbs the
being at home with oneself [le chez soi]. But the Stranger also means the free one. Over him
I have no power. (Levinas 1969, p. 39)
“The Other”, Levinas explains, “eludes thematizations” (ibid. 86). I cannot possess
the Other nor can I seek to understand them because they are, by definition, that
which is external to my understanding and to being. The Other is transcendence;
they “can not be encompassed” (ibid., p. 293). Levinas is very careful not to reduce
the Other to a mere negation of myself either. The Other “is not the simple reversal
of identity, and is not formed out of resistance to the same, but is prior to every
initiative, to all imperialism of the same” – i.e., prior to any ontology (ibid., pp. 38–
39). For this reason, “the best way to encounter the Other” according to Levinas, “is
not to even notice the color of his eyes!” (Levinas 1985, p. 85). An authentic
encounter with the Other requires that they remain completely otherwise—not
relative to the same, but absolutely.
The radical alterity of the Other does not imply however, the impossibility of an
encounter. I face the Other as a concrete externality that cannot be subsumed under
a relationship of sameness. This is not just a descriptive “cannot” but a normatively
loaded ought not for Levinas. On the one hand, actualizing my power to totalize the
Other “is its defeat as power” since in totalizing them, “the Other has escaped me”
(Levinas 1989, p. 9). On the other, in my “face to face” encounter with the Other,
their face expresses a fundamentally ethical command. As he explains:
The face is exposed, menaced, as if inviting us to an act of violence. At the same time, the
face is what forbids us to kill … the relation to the face is straightaway ethical. The face is
what one cannot kill, or at least it is that whose meaning consists in saying: “thou shalt not
kill.” (Levinas 1985, p. 87)
The face does not express such an ethical command formally. My encounter with
the Other is pre-representational, pre-philosophical, and pre-ontological. Rather,
“[there] is first the very uprightness of the face, its upright exposure without
defense” (ibid., p. 86). The face, in other words, is “signification without context,”
that is, it expresses “meaning all by itself” (ibid., p. 86). In being exposed, vul-
nerable, and defenseless the Other’s face summons me and commands me not to
totalize and kill them.
The face to face encounter between self and Other is hence depicted in terms of
ethical responsibility. In my encounter with the radically Other, I specifically enter
into a non-symmetrical non-reversible ethical relationship with an Other who is
wholly other and above me. In this relationship, the Other “dominates me” such that
to “hear his destitution … is to posit oneself as responsible, both as more and as less
than the being that presents itself in the face” (Levinas 1969, p. 215). The pre-
cariousness of the Other’s face commands me “from a dimension of height, a
dimension of transcendence” which is inescapable (ibid.). As a result, in my face to
face encounter with the Other, I become responsible “for the Other, … for what is
not my deed, or for what does not even matter to me; or which precisely does matter
to me” (ibid., p. 95). The face of the Other, in other words, “opens the primordial
discourse whose first word is obligation, which no ‘interiority permits avoiding’”
(ibid., p. 201). The face of the Other reveals to me an exteriority that cannot be
consumed but for which I am none-the-less responsible.
The relationship between the self and Other can then be summarized as a
non-symmetrical ethical relationship in which the destituteness of the radically Other
commands me from above. This relationship is pre-ontological in so far as it cannot
be subsumed under a totality of being. Because the Other is wholly other, I cannot
encounter them in any context other than the one which is revealed to me by their
face. They are not a citizen nor a philosopher. They are wholly and independently
54 J. Wurtz
other—an escape out of being towards transcendence. In Totality and Infinity this
ethical relationship between self and the Other is reified in the parent–child2 rela-
tionship—what Levinas calls filiality or paternity. The parent–child relationship, in
fact, is an extremely useful analogy to understand the complicated and unorthodox
nature of Levinasian ethics. In the parent–child relationship, the child’s vulnerability
invites violence onto them from the perspective of the parent. When holding a baby
for the first time, for example, their exposed nakedness makes me realize all of the
ways in which I could bring them harm—I can drop them, I can squeeze them too
hard, or even infect them with a disease etc. At the same time however, it is the very
destituteness of the baby’s face that summons and obligates me to be responsible for
them, to care for them, and to respond to their ethical demands. The child–adult
relationship is transformed from a hierarchical relationship of injustice that origi-
nates from the adult’s power over the child into a hierarchical relationship of ethics
that originates from the child’s destituteness.
It is important to note that Levinas rejects a reduction of the child-parent rela-
tionship to the biological. Filiality is first and foremost an ethical relationship. As
he explains, “biological filiality is only the first shape filiality takes; but one can
very well conceive filiality as a relationship between human beings without the tie
of biological kinship” (Levinas 1985, p. 70). The child, for Levinas, “is a stranger”
who is radically other from the parent (Levinas 1969, p. 267). As a result, the
parent–child relationship resembles the ethical face to face encounter. The “child”
and “childhood” in the Levinasian sense, are not ontological categories that adults
can subsume under a totalizing system of knowledge or power—that is, as either
philosophers or future citizens (ibid., p. 277). They are first and foremost ethical
categories that express a normative command which open the self to a unique
relationship with the Other—a relationship which Levinas calls “beyond the pos-
sible” (Levinas 1985, p. 71).
Philosophy and Childhood: P4C and the Possibility Beyond

the Possible
I conclude here by arguing that the parent–child relationship in P4C, expressed as

the unique relationship between the I and a radically Other, opens philosophy to the
radically new— that is, to an amorphous future which is beyond the possible. In
other words, the encounter between adult and child (as parent–child) in philosophy
for children expresses an ethical relationship in which the emergence of the radi-
cally new becomes possible. Following Levinas, P4C can then be understood as the
parent–child relation of paternity through which philosophy transcends itself by
going beyond itself. To make sense of this claim we must understand two
2
We should note that Levinas addresses the father-son relationship when mentioning either
paternity or filiality. Because of the issues that come with reducing this unique ethical relationship
to people who identify as male, I take the liberty to discuss filiality and paternity in terms of the
parent–child relationship.
interrelated ideas in Levinas’ work: (1) Ethics as first philosophy, and (2) fecundity
as transcendence of the I.
Levinas is most often associated with the phrase “ethics is first philosophy”. The
claim is that philosophical thought emerges out of my ethical response to the
Other’s command (Crowell 2012). As Levinas states:
If philosophy consists in knowing critically, that is, in seeking a foundation for its freedom,
in justifying it, it begins with conscience, to which the other is presented as the Other, and
where the movement of thematization is inverted. (Levinas 1969, p. 86)
Philosophy, ontology, knowledge all emerge first and foremost by means of the
ethically loaded intersubjective relationship I have with the radically Other. To
understand how Levinas traces the origins of knowledge and philosophy to the
multiplicitous relationship with the Other, we must turn to his understanding of
language. Language “makes possible the objectivity of objects and their themati-
zation.” (ibid., p. 210). That is, it makes ontology possible. But, at the same time, it
“does not fill the abyss of separation” between the same and other, but rather
“confirms it” (ibid., p. 297). For Levinas, language can only emerge out of the face
to face encounter with the radically Other (ibid., p. 295). The presence of the face,
whose destituteness commands me, is expressed in language. Language, in other
words, makes the face to face encounter possible by accomplishing “the primordial
putting in common” which “effectuates the entry of things into a new ether in which
they receive a name and become concepts” (ibid., pp. 173–174). In this sense,
knowledge, reason, and philosophy are not preconditions for encountering the
Other, but quite on the contrary, emerge first and foremost out of my face to face
encounter with the Other. It is, in other words, my encounter with the Other that
conditions philosophy. Ethics as first philosophy hence reflects the intersubjective
and value laden origins of knowledge.
The parent–child relationship, as discussed in the previous section, parallels the
ethical relationship between the I and the Other that occupies the majority of
Levinas’ work. It is a relationship in which the parent experiences the very ethical
multiplicity that conditions both knowledge and power. But paternity is a special
ethical relationship of responsibility. It is a relation with an Other who is both,
myself, and not me. That is to say that in paternity, I don’t just encounter the
radically Other, I encounter myself as radically Other. As Levinas explains:
I do not have my child; I am my child. Paternity is a relation with a stranger who while
being Other … is me, a relation of the I with a self which yet is not me … In this
transcendence the I is not swept away, since the son is not me; and yet I am my son. The
fecundity of the I is its very transcendence. (Ibid., p. 277)
On the one hand, my child is a stranger who is a radically Other person that cannot
be reduced to the totality of the parent. On the other, the parent is their child. “To be
one’s son”, Levinas explains, “means to be in one’s son, to be substantially in him,
yet without being maintained there in identity” (ibid., p. 279). My child is me in so
far as I transcend myself into an Other. I am not this Other however, since I am me.
56 J. Wurtz
But in this Other, there is me. This ethical relationship in which I am not my child,
yet I am in them, establishes what Levinas calls fecundity as the transcendence of
the I. Fecundity, very simply put, is the power to create a child. This power
“liberates the subject from his facticity by placing him beyond the possible … by
enabling him to be an other” (ibid., p. 301). But this subject is not me; it is me in an
Other. The transcendence of the I is not something that returns to me, but it is my
child carrying the I forward as exteriority. This relationship with my child
“establishes a relationship with the absolute future, or infinite time” (ibid., p. 268).
It thus releases the I from its facticity, by placing it in an Other (Giannopoulos
2018). As a result, the relationship of paternity “denotes my future, which is not a
future of the same—not a new avatar: not a history and events that can occur to a
residue of identity” but as radically other—as radically new (Levinas 1969, p. 268).
Hence, if the encounter between the I and the radically Other conditions phi-
losophy, fecundity – the ethical relationship of paternity – conditions the possibility
for what is beyond being, beyond philosophy. Conceptualizing of the child and
childhood as radically otherwise than adulthood, transforms P4C from a practice of
normative overloading to one that actualizes philosophy’s relationship with a
radically otherwise and amorphous future. The encounter between the adult
philosopher and “their child”, in other words, creates a relationship which opens
philosophy “to the renewal of its substance” in an Other (Levinas 1969, p. 268).
Philosophy for children, in other words, does not affirm the philosopher’s questions
or create better citizens. It introduces the possibility for transcendence and makes
possible what is beyond the possible, beyond knowledge and power: philosophy’s
(i.e., being’s) own unanticipated and unforecastable future.
Acknowledgement I would like to thank Michael Ardoline, Edward Lenzo, Ashleigh Morales,
and Adam Randolph for their invaluable comments and support while I was thinking through the
main arguments of this article.
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Daring a Childlike Writing: Children
for Philosophy, Moral End, 5
and the Childhood of Conceptions
Walter Omar Kohan and Magda Costa Carvalho
Introduction
There’s nothing that hasn’t started.
Isabel.
With mumps and measles, flu and many upset stomachs, the worst of childhood ailments
came from ignorance and immorality. We were born stupid and immoral. We had to be
punished to sharpen the virtues and not perish in filth and danger. After years, I wished,
after being cured of childhood, we would have been taught to normality…
Valter Hugo Mãe, Contra Mim (against me).
My father, I know that today, could be summed up to one word: fear. All the aversion to the
foreign, the unusual, the novelty, the beyond, was just a visceral panic of the world, which
he disguised by transforming this tragic fear into conservative ethics, into moral solidity.
Afonso Cruz, Princípio de Karenina (Principle of Karenina).
“To start” is a childlike verb. There seems to be an indomitable boldness, char-

acteristic of the beginnings of life, that leads it to affirm permanent beginnings or to
permanently start over. No solemnities. And perhaps that is why, as we move out of
chronological childhood, it becomes more and more difficult, frightening, and
intimidating to begin anything—or simply to start. Isn’t it life itself that starts over
with each of these beginnings? Is this the vertigo we experience?
W. O. Kohan (&)
Center of Philosophical and Childhood Studies, State University of Rio de Janeiro,
São Francisco Xavier Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro 524, 25550-900, Brazil
M. C. Carvalho
Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
e-mail: magda.ep.teixeira@uac.pt
Interdisciplinary Nucleus for Children and Adolescents of the University of the Azores,
Azores, Portugal

60 W. O. Kohan and M. C. Carvalho
We can wonder if the childish boldness of beginnings is lost because the

accumulation of the chronological sequence of age carries a weight that is difficult
to discard. But doesn’t it also—or above all—have to do with the relationships we
establish at that same age? The dominant modes of production and consumption
seem to make us more concerned with ends, products, and results than with
beginnings. As our desires multiply at a dizzying pace, we let them put the answers
in for us, we focus on efficiencies that close paths, and we end up forgetting that
childlike verb.
Let us repeat, without repeating: “to begin” is a childlike verb, and childhood is a
way of life. A childlike life is a life that (always) begins, which begins each and
every time, because life loves to be reborn and thus is nourished by childhood.
Childhood in life and childlike life: that is why starting is a way to keep childhood
alive and give it life. Perhaps this is also why we celebrate, with such joy, powerful
and exuberant beginnings in the adult world—as when a child is born or a childish
idea arises.
A child arrives as a new world because in her and with her we feel that the whole
world can start over. But that is not the only reason. A child also arrives as a new
world because her arrival tells us what, being so simple, we had almost forgotten:
that the world is not just old and unquestionable. The child doesn’t let us be
indifferent; she breaks with conformity and arrives as hope, reeking of the unpre-
dictable. Of questions.
A similar arrival to that of a child is that of certain childlike ideas, such as the
idea offered by Matthew Lipman when he created “philosophy for children.” We
celebrate his childlike, daring, irreverent, inquiring character, commemorating his
birth nearly 50 years ago. With this childlike idea, a new world began—or at least it
became possible to start—in worlds which were already a little old and stuck in
conformity. When those in institutionalized philosophy and education heard about
the audacity of welcoming children among their reputable interlocutors in dialogue
and thought, they frowned and turned up their noses. Philosophy for children? How
come? Childhood in philosophy?
Even if they enjoyed and studied childhood, the worlds of philosophy and
education were (were they?) still reticent toward it. In those worlds, childhood was
(was it?) often like “an aberrant and useless time that adults abbreviated at all costs,
a decline or even an illness” (Hugo Mãe 2020, pp. 15, 49, 57). Perhaps philosophy
and education—very adult—have realized this beginning, with great difficulty and
disturbance. But Matthew Lipman, Ann Sharp, and all the collaborators in this
endeavor dared to start something different. Nowadays we can celebrate a childlike
beginning that opened a space for many other beginnings in worlds inhabited by
philosophically educating lives.
We start over, though, whenever we can: in every piece of writing, in every
thought, in every encounter with children of all ages. For the reasons mentioned, as
adulthood takes over our bodies, it is not so easy to start… to start seriously, to
really start. In other words, it is no longer so simple for us to start without pre-
tending, without simulating: to really start, to start by starting something new (even
if only for ourselves) in the world. To have a beginning, it is not enough to go back
5 Daring a Childlike Writing: Children … 61
to a routine or to repeat a movement. There must be anomalies, abnormalities, the

unforeseen, the unthinking. A dizzying movement. This is all perhaps more
symptomatic of that age when we are no longer children. The beginning is there,
inviting us, waiting to happen, but it is as if we don’t feel the need. Or we start
without even realizing that we are starting.
Despite this, we—the adult authors of this text—try to shelter ourselves in what
we understand as a childlike movement of beginnings. As if we were in a storm,
almost without visibility, we become attentive and sensitive to a writing that does
not take childhood as an object of study and analysis, a malady that urgently needs
to be cured (or trained or educated, through philosophy or anything else), but which
relates itself to childhood as we relate ourselves to the inspiration and power of
beginnings, a force that we pay attention to, take care of, remember. A shelter that
is also a refuge. The undertaking is difficult precisely because it is typical for adult
writing to fix and objectify subject matters, instead of installing itself in its own
movement of welcoming escapes and retreats.
So here we are, writing before writing, drawing words while we try to start
writing—thinking and thinking about ourselves childishly, in search of beginnings.
We have already started and at the same time we haven’t. Feeling out how and
where it might be appropriate to start writing this text. Taking care of the words and
being taken care of (and by) them. Going through and inside them.
Not because we haven’t started yet, we stop writing and, armed with the force of
repetition, we repeat: we are attentive and sensitive, two childlike forces. Child-
hood, we feel, accompanies us, takes care of us. We also know that stubborn and
obsessive pursuits can rule out, or at least weaken, the possibility of some
encounters. These are paths that focus on results, which exchange openness to the
unpredictable for the security of what is already known and savored, which take
refuge in ingenious constructions and comfortably lodge themselves in problems to
which they already know the solutions (Bergson 2009b, p. 124).
So we relax and let childhood invade us through the writing itself, which inspires
us, writes us and, by writing us, surprises us with a childlike beginning. Or with the
childishness of any beginning that deserves the name. Maybe that is what it’s up to
us to do: to accept and face the storm, to discover that shelter can be a refuge, and
that we can settle ourselves in the movement. We become attentive to what comes
in it, what can come from it, and what comes to us from it. And also to what might
want to run away from it, within us and outside of us.
While we wait to start writing, and without ceasing to write, we think that one
way to start is by remembering past beginnings, prior to the beginning: a child’s
recollection of the words that were part of the title of the book to which our
colleagues Dina Mendonça and Florian Franken Figueiredo so generously invited
us to contribute. The title of the book reads: “Conceptions of Childhood and Moral
Education in Philosophy for Children.”
At the provocation of this name, childhood then smiles and whispers in our ear:
“you're done.” Playful, uptight, messy childhood. It smiles non-stop and runs away.
Is that title too adult, safe, and finished? Curiously full of words that mean
“childhood” but that don’t themselves seem childish? Is it possible that philosophy
for children is proving itself to be old? We remember the Mozambican Mia Couto:
“Old age is not age: it is tiredness” (Couto 2009, p. 22). Or maybe this is a book
that started before it started, a book with a title that becomes an invitation because
in it each and every one of us is invited to “freely” meet with these expressions. We
were called and our invitation echoed: “look for a shelter that will be a refuge and
prepare yourselves for the movement.” With care and sensitivity, we pay attention.
We look at each other, look at the title once again more calmly, and try to
understand the reasons for so much joy and childlike playfulness. We translate the
words in the proposed title into Portuguese: “conceptions of childhood” “moral
education” “philosophy for children.”
Are these words adult ways of capturing childhood and childlike strengths? We
look at each other and smile again. We don’t know where this question came from,
but we feel that childhood, in its provocative hit-and-run, has already given us its
message and left a mark on us. Interest (inter-esse; among being) Interesting. Feeling
the childhood among us excites us and gives us strength, even if the challenge seems
exaggerated, too big for our smallness. We, the ones who continue to the storm. To
the rain. But we do not fear. Do we? We repeat: childhood is within us, among us.
We let time go by for a while. If we’re not afraid, we’re not in a hurry either. We
are already wet. Soaked. Little by little, the childhood that inhabits us decides to
jump into puddles of water. Into each and every puddle that it finds. Puddles of
water are as irresistible as questions. The questioning loosens up and jumps. Why
“moral education”? Why moralize education, if this seems to make it regenerated
and normalized, de-educational? If “educating” can be “leading to the outside,” are
there still exteriorities beyond morals, principles, customs? And why moralize
childhood if this moralizing seems to de-infantilize it? If an infant is one whose
strength is in non-speech, who is “education as training” for?
Why “conceptions of childhood”? What are we affirming when we place
childhood as the object of a cognitive conceptual activity? What do we leave aside
by not relating to it in other distinct ways, such as in the interiority of sensations and
affections?
Why “philosophy for children”? We don’t need to simplify the issue on which so
much ink has been spilled (Costa Carvalho 2020), but wouldn’t it be interesting to
explore different ways of interlacing philosophy and childhood?
More generally, why so many nouns? Can they be denominalized? What would
happen in a writing experience that transmuted childhood and philosophy into
verbs? To infantize? To infantilize? To infant-be? Philosophize, philosophizing, or
philosophically-being? Why, always why. Childhood always asks questions and,
therefore, it is more a movement than a stopping. We could continue listing “whys.”
Could we? We could. However, the childlike beginning invites us toward other
pranks. The words of a title are not just a juxtaposition of units of meaning; they
move towards each other, they happen in-between. If they are also movement, then
why understand them as static? What if we surprised them in this movement?
What if… ? Another one of childhood’s favorite exercises, one more appeal to
attention and sensitivity. All right, here we go. And if we start over? Let’s start
over. Childhood brings us a backpack. It is not just any backpack, but a backpack
full of foreignness which, some children’s voices say, has the magical, Babelic
power of confusing lines, renaming words, changing their appearance. A backpack
that makes words mumble, which makes them no longer able to be pronounced in
the same way. A backpack that, let’s say, turns childlike everything that goes into it
because it removes common speech, subtracts the first language in which the words
talked. For aren’t foreignness and strangeness childhood-friendly?
We can’t resist this provocative boldness any longer. We stop asking; we write
words on pieces of paper and put them in our foreign backpack. We put in each of
the words which were addressed to us, one after the other:
conceptions
of
childhood
and
moral
education
in
philosophy
for
children
There are ten slips of paper, each one with a word written on it. No words are
repeated. There is no punctuation. No words have capital letters. They are all
written in the same size, occupying the same space on the paper, as if they are the
same: equal wording. Ruy Belo, an infant poet, wrote that in a poem, no word
should raise its head in the middle of sentences (Belo, 2009, pp. 18–19). And Valter
Hugo Mãe, another thinker of childhoods, wrote several books without capital
letters, like al berto or bell hooks, who wrote their names and pseudonyms thus,
seeking to abolish the hierarchies of written languages. Childlikely being.
As we put our words in the backpack of foreignness, a few things catch our
attention: the first and last words—conceptions, children—are pluralized; the rest
are singular or have no plural form. Some are prepositions, forms of nexus or
connectivity; some are from the same semantic family; others have had constant
historical encounters. We notice an absence: there are no verbs, no movement
words. Is it possible to write childhood without them?
We close the foreign backpack with the words inside. We shake it again and
again, as magicians do, conjurers of the world. We look at each other and smile.
Someone winks. We wonder what could be happening inside that Babel world. Do
we imagine? A process of infantilization, creative involution. We wait for a while,
just as magicians always test the audience’s patience. We continue without haste.
We remain attentive and sensitive. The stormy rain does not stop, and we are now
in a moving shelter that is also a refuge. Expectant. Curious and restless.
And now? Who will open the backpack? It seems to be an irreverent, bold,
childlike gesture. Who will dare to unveil a mystery? Who will dare come face to
face with a childlike prank? Neither of us, alone, seems to have the necessary
courage. Perhaps, we think, we could share the irreverent act, put our hands in the
backpack of foreign affairs at the same time, and wait for the moment when both
hands grab the same paper, the same word. Will it be the same? In any case, leaving
our own self-worlds gives us courage. We do it. We try, at least.
We open the backpack of foreignness together; we play for a while inside it until
we both grasp one of the pieces of paper. As if there is a word there waiting for us.
We grip it firmly before taking our hands off the backpack at the same time. One,
two, three. Now! One of us closes her eyes in the process. She can’t see through her
emotion, or maybe because of the rain. We leave the paper on the table. It has
turned itself inside out. The written side is hidden from us, of course. Childhood
loves to hide itself too.
But it doesn’t look like any of the pieces of paper we put in the foreign back-
pack. It is magical, keen, naughty. Like childhood. At each moment, it requires us
to reinvent ourselves and makes us enter the childlike world of questions. We doubt
how to proceed: should we take the pieces of paper out one by one and look at them
one at a time? Or should we take them all out at once and look at them as a whole to
try to understand the changes we brought about? Or should we look at them in the
pairs or trios the words appeared to form before we put them in the backpack? We
also doubt whether what we do will affect what happens inside the backpack: that
is, if its effects will be different depending on our movements or if it has already
planned the whole game that it is playing with us. Perhaps we are exaggerating our
power to affect childhood and it would be more interesting to just keep trying to be
aware and sensitive to childhood. Feeling childhood in all its strength.
That’s what this writing deals with. So, in a way unintentionally, as we write, it
seems that a (childlike) wind blows, and the tiny piece of paper taken from the
backpack shows itself. It is none of the ones we put in. And it is all of them at the
same time. But it is still inside out.
We look back at the writing and read the last three sentences aloud. None of
them seems to make sense. How can this piece of paper, which has come to our
hands, be all the pieces of paper we had put in the backpack and none of them? And
how can it stay inside out if the wind has turned it around?
But laughs and smiles invade the letters, and the paper unfolds:
children for philosophy
moral end
childhood of conceptions
The words are (almost) the same. It seems that some have disappeared, and some
have changed greatly. Greatly? But even if almost all the words remain, their order
is altered, inverted, opposed. It’s a childlike tactic: perceiving the world and the
things that inhabit it inside out or upside down. And then it is also a philosophical
game: reversing the usual directions of thought (Bergson 2009b).
So let’s pay attention to each of the expressions that alchemically appears from
the backpack. Now the bias is childlike.
Children for Philosophy

Whilst P4C [Philosophy for Children] sets out to challenge many prejudicial ideas about
children and their capacities as thinkers, the Western philosophical tradition and methods
are often implicit within the materials, methods, forms of training and practice of promoting
critical thinking associated with P4C. The ‘movement’ of P4C embraces both the contra-
dictions and the possibilities of the encounter between philosophy and childhood and these
are wonderfully generative flashpoints. (Haynes and Murris 2019)
What comes first? It might seem like a detail. It is not. In some mathematics, the
order of factors does not change the product. In philosophy, in education, and in
childhood, difference—any difference—can be crucial.
“Philosophy for children,” written in that order, marks what comes first. And it is
that which comes at the beginning that is considered necessary to be taken to some
recipients: those who appear at the end of the expression. The movement proposed
by this expression reflects Lipman and Sharp’s infant idea: to break the canons
installed in the academy and dare to propose that philosophy can also have a place
in the educational path of children. That is why they both committed their lives to
bringing philosophy to children, to reconstruct philosophy in a novel and simplified
way so that it would become accessible (Sharp and Reed 1996).
However, let’s not forget that our backpack has messed up the initial expression.
The inversion has changed the starting place and, inevitably, the expression’s sense.
It is no longer Philosophy—an adult, uppercase word that comes with defined
canons and procedures—that is taken to children. It’s children who are coming
close to philosophy, who surround it in their characteristic childhood eagerness and
who, with noise and agitation, desire it, pull it, and challenge it. Like an unusual
invention in the middle of the playground. Children first.
Once again, we look at each other, realizing what the childhood experience of
writing demands of us now. A movement of bodies. It could only be like that.
Neither writing nor childhood is done outside bodies, outside their positions and
movements, because it is within them that childhood and writing find the places
from which they speak. Therefore, we can no longer stand up. A standing adult
takes up too much height. Seen from the ground, it looks as if they never end. An
adult body is a tiredness in height. We have to squat as children do when they need
to get even closer to the ground. Childhood arrives at the playground and invents
something right in the middle of the courtyard. While Philosophy looks at things
from above, childhood approaches, lowers itself, enters the same bubble.
Squatting is not an easy movement in an adult body. Problems similar to those
we face when starting arise, because age seems to set us apart from certain places,
especially from the earth. When a body grows, it gets farther from the ground, even
if its feet are still there. We adults, enclosed in our privileges and hierarchies, think
that the growth of the body is an evolutionary prize for the eyes, which have a much
greater field of vision as a result. We are supposed to be more ready to flee, in case
of imminent danger.
But this is only the perspective of the eye’s privilege. In reality, the increase in
vision also brings about a certain deafness. Deafness to the earth, to the ground, to
the smallness of the surface of things. As the Angolan poet Ondjaki says so
childishly: “all these were sounds that a child would hear, but it was no use
explaining to the elders, sometimes I wonder if they will be deafer than children, or
if it’s a thing of their age, that of not feeling the smallest noises in the world”
(Ondjaki 2020, p. 192).
Adulthood involves looking down from above, talking from above, and being
inattentive to anything that comes from other wavelengths. It occurs to us that
logocentrism (Derrida 1973, p. 5) may have benefited from this bodily develop-
ment, convincing us that growing up is the expected abandonment of a confused
and uneducated way of understanding. An understanding contaminated by the
transgressive undifferentiation of children. Animism and primitivism (Haynes and
Murris 2019) so present in childhood, are therefore considered things to avoid, to
abandon, to leave behind (on earth) during the growth process. They are things that
should remain on the ground, deviations and aberrations, small and shapeless things
(curious how language crystallized these places of thought in words like “low” that
even today, in Portuguese, can mean unworthy, ignoble, abominable). In this
reading of necessary growth or de-squashing, Philosophy is just one more tool
among many invented to form, to take out from the ground, to transmute uncon-
forming sludge into a shaped clay pot, elevating childhood to the only heights
capable of understanding the concepts.
Our writing demands proximity to the ground. We become low. Small. Smaller.
We squat down and make ourselves “smalls”—a word that, in Portuguese, can also
designate children. We make ourselves experience becoming small, becoming
childlike, putting our ears, eyes, and skin as close to the ground as possible. We get
down very slowly, again holding hands because we cannot keep our balance on our
own (childhood calls for a certain companionship). We laugh as we sway, turn
under the weight of awkward bodies, and nearly fall. We stop. We resume the
effort. We force the exercise of bodies so that we will continue writing and thinking
from the place of imaginary children. Now we are ready. We return to our
expression, starting over from this new place: children for philosophy.
At first glance, this phrase seems to tell us that it is no longer just a matter of
philosophy being understood or practiced by children, but that children need to
approach and aid philosophy. They would do good to philosophy, would be phi-
losophy’s benefactors. Children rescue philosophy from the middle of the courtyard
and take it to the classroom. “Children for philosophy” can mean that children help
philosophy itself, offer an opportunity. It isn’t children who need philosophy—it’s
philosophy that needs childhood.
As we write this last statement, it seems to us that we are still not low enough.
We may never be able to get low enough once we grow to a certain height. And
then we ask if this cannot happen in many school practices, even the best inten-
tioned. That is, can the idea that childhood needs to occupy a place in the life of
philosophy remain hostage to the perspective that childhood is an incomplete entity
in formation? Whether the philosophy is brought by adults or found by children,
does the urgency to bring it into the classroom still speak of childhood as missing?
And does thinking that children need to be brought to philosophy also require us to
see the latter as a lack? Is it possible to leave this assumption behind and think, on
the contrary, that no one is more sophisticated than anyone else, that philosophical
encounters can arise between children and non-children as equals?
In the case of the “philosophy for children” project—and many who are still
inspired by it today—the meeting of children and philosophy had educational
purposes. Children would be the greatest beneficiaries of those who would know
how to guide them from above (cf. Lipman 1988)—in this case, through Philos-
ophy. The program that Lipman, Sharp and all the collaborators from the IAPC
created chose a privileged venue for this meeting: the school institution. Children
would become, through contact with philosophy in research communities, more
reflective and reasonable adults and ultimately into democratic citizens. The setting
for the meeting would be the school. For the meeting to take place, the school
institution would have to embrace the subject of “philosophy” (and, wherever
possible, Philosophy—with a capital letter to set the tone, the position, the power).
Here there is a way to understand philosophy—as a set of critical, creative, and
careful thinking skills (Lipman 2003, p. 200)—and a way to understand childhood
—above all, as a stage in life. It is true that Lipman briefly rehearses another
treatment of childhood as “a legitimate dimension of human behavior and experi-
ence” (Lipman 1988, pp. 191–198). However, this is only to justify the legitimacy
of Philosophy of Childhood as an area of study, and then always within the dis-
ciplinary and chronological framework of a phase of human life. Likewise, in our
understanding of the proposal, it is the childhood that needs certain changes to be
brought about by philosophy, such as critical thinking and reasonableness.
We are standing, descending, becoming small. We ask: what has actually
changed due to the inverted expression brought to this writing by our backpack of
foreignness? Is this new expression interchangeable with the one we started from?
Philosophy for children, children for philosophy. Could we change expressions, and
yet have nothing changed in our view of children, childhood, or philosophy? Is
exchanging one for the other the equivalent of squatting down? Or do we need
something else, other gestures to connect philosophy and childhood? What would
these gestures be? Will it also be necessary to take into account different under-
standings of one, the other, and their connections, so that the possibilities and
meanings of the encounter are multiplied?
In a recent text on the relationship between philosophy and childhood, Viktor
Johansson (2018) takes up the two expressions which occupy us now: “Philosophy
for Children and Children for Philosophy: Possibilities and Problems.” The author
shows, on the one hand, that the idea of bringing philosophy to children is much
more common in the so-called history of Western philosophy than is usually rec-
ognized. If philosophy is conceived of as a way of life that confronts and challenges
a culture’s criteria, following perspectives such as Pierre Hadot’s (1995), when this
form of philosophy is practiced by children, it retroactively impacts our under-
standing of philosophy itself. Consequently, a philosophy of children could arise, a
childlike philosophy.
Listening to this childlike philosophy requires us to believe that children have

something to tell us, that they are capable of thinking philosophically (Johansson,
2018, pp. 1158–60). So “children for philosophy” makes us think of philosophical
children, philosopher children, and childlike philosophies. As those who think of a
“philosophy for children” think of the good things that philosophy would bring to
children, the expression “children for philosophy” evokes the good things that
children would bring to philosophy. Children would no longer be like formless
slime that awaits modeling, or like anything minor that needs to come of age. They
would be the protagonists of a new philosophy and—who knows?—of childlike
philosophies.
On the other hand, as we have argued elsewhere (Kohan 2016, 2021), childhood
is not just about children. Or, to put it differently, there are children of many ages, if
we think that childhood is not just—or above all—to do with a temporality mea-
sured by chronos, the temporality of stages of life, but with intensive and circular
temporalities that can be tried at different ages. So, “children for philosophy” could
give way to a philosophy of children of all ages: a popular childlike philosophy. For
that to take place, we would need to think that people of all ages have things to say
and to philosophize. And that age is something that differentiates, but which does
not render unequal.
Moral End (End-ucation; End-ing)

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful.
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily.
Oh joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible.
Logical, oh responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable.
Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical.
Supertramp, The Logical Song.
Positions tend to get blurry when we wander between expressions, when thought
conveys more contact than vision (Bergson 2009b), more experience than pho-
neme. Writing provokes us now to continue scrawling with our fingers in the earth.
Squatting down, we dirty our nails and fingers, we add a trickle of water to the earth
and set little stones apart from worms. Perhaps the writing asks us for other
childishness. What is stated between the words when we take them as if they were
clods of earth in the hands of a child? Clod-words unmake and remake themselves.
Clod-words cease to be such because, with water, the earth also sticks to your
hands. Mud-words which become hands and hands that do whatever there is before
there are words. Hands that allow themselves to move backward even before words,
before language, before any categorical differentiation. Childhood runs through our
messed-up bodies again and laughs aloud as it pours its trickle over the clods of
words. “Moral education” becomes “moral end.” Moral end-ucation? End. Ending.
This metamorphosis of the land in the hands of childhood comes to us when we

read Haynes and Murris (2019). We are not wrapped up in our bodies: things leak,
spill into the in-between spaces. The movement is of returning to childhood, of
bending our knees until there is as little space as possible between us and the earth.
Then we bury our hands, until writing forgets the common adult ways of addressing
children. Abandon what is crystallized. Stones don’t know how to be hands.
Haynes and Murris tell us to abandon the petrifying isms: universalisms, binarisms,
developmentalisms, progressivisms, essentialisms, unilinearisms. Henri Bergson
did not ask for them to be executed, but he said that if the isms died of natural
causes, he would not devote a single tear of regret to them (Bergson 2002). Mogobe
Ramose too alerts us to the need of turning the universal into the pluriversal
(Ramose 2011).
We pay attention once more to what appears written following our backpack’s
mischief: moral end. The word “end” is curious: it’s an ending that doesn’t seem to
want to end because, in itself, it can have more than one meaning. It can be an end
as an ending, a conclusion. But it can also be an end as a place that is far away, the
place that is farthest from the center. And it can also be the tiniest, smallest part,
which remains like a leftover, a trace, the small part of something that remains after
it has been used or consumed. Or it can be understood as an intention, a goal, a
purpose. There are many meanings of the word, and here we are listening to what
childhood may be suggesting that we think, having exchanged “moral education”
for “moral ending.”
Will childhood want to keep something of each meaning? After all, childhood
does not like to give up anything, any pleasure, any meaning (Cixous and Derrida
2019, pp. 151–152). It is full desire. In a way, “moral” is far, far away from our
writing. It looks as if childhood is the moral transgressor par excellence because it
is born ignoring and disrespecting the solemnity of norms. In this sense, childhood
is seen as a remoteness: between us and it, there are all the uninformed distances of
what is right and what is wrong.
But we can also perceive a moral purpose even beyond morality, in an
extra-moral sense, as the mustached Friedrich Nietzsche—who is more and more
vividly recalled in this section—wanted. In this line of thought, morality appears as
a remainder, a vestige, the last part of a solidified way of thinking and experiencing
the education that resists leaving its place. A place of rigid or flexible ends, of
sound intentions and well-intentioned purposes. A small remnant of something that
is coming to an end, that will end, even with all the efforts to prolong its agony
(including certain philosophies), something like a ruin (Barros 2010). However, the
most childishly clear sense of ending that appears to us is that of finishing, con-
cluding. Yes, because childhood loves to start, but it likes to finish no less (so that it
can start again?).
Even if we are still children of all those isms and are used to putting the child at
the beginning, there are those who have put it at the end. We remember, for example,
“The Three Metamorphoses” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A book for everyone and
for anyone. Can we introduce it childlikely? The spirit transforms itself in three
ways: first it is a camel, then it is a lion, and finally—in the end—it becomes a child.
Interesting: the child is at the end and not the beginning. And what is in the
beginning? The camel, the one that carries the weight, the morals, the “you must.” In
the middle there is the lion, the “I want” who says “no!”, thus freeing itself from the
heavy load and preparing the way so that, in the end, the spirit becomes a child. “The
child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling out of
itself, a first movement, a sacred yes-saying” (Nietzsche 1996, p. 30).
The child is forgetfulness so that, in the end, she might become a new beginning.
We have to finish what we have so we can start again. It is necessary to get rid of
the weight that sinks us in order to be able to create. The baby’s first kick. The first
kick of the ball that starts the match. And, like a spinning wheel, the end and the
beginning meet; there is no line, evolution, progress, or development. The child’s
movement is circular. And just like the rolling wheel she pushes with her wire
hook, the end is a new beginning, a pure affirmation, a yes-saying. What comes to
an end is the “moral,” a heavy load, the burden that humanity has placed on itself.
A kind of “bad conscience,” a deep illness, a prison of instincts, the suffering of the
human being towards itself. The atonement mentioned by Valter Hugo in our
epigraph: childhood ailments come from ignorance and immorality. But in Niet-
zsche, the child appears, at the end of the spirit’s transformations, as a new
beginning, as the power that allows a childlike re-start to the camel’s “you must”
and the lion's “I want.” Although they are portentous, neither the camel nor the lion
have, by themselves, the strength of a child to create a new world. What strength
will that be?
The child Nietzsche. Philosophy has been full of children of many ages since its
beginning. Ignoring this has given rise to several misconceptions, such as when we
take philosophy to education as an exercise in offering children what is adult in
morals, what is scientific in thought, reconstructing what we do with what is done.
Shouldn’t there be a different path? A childlike cartography as a path (Almeida and
Costa 2021)? A practice of recreating what is childlike in life? And who would be
better than restless philosophers to tell us about this childishness?
In another passage, this time from The Genealogy of Morals, the infant Niet-
zsche refers to the great child of Heraclitus, the one who rules in aion (Kennedy and
Kohan 2020) and plays with his unexpected and exciting moves:
Since then, man has come to be one of the happiest deeds of Heraclitus’ “big child,” whose
name is Zeus or Azar, and awakens in his favor interest, anxious expectation, hopes and
almost certainties, as if he were announcing something, as if he prepared something, as if
man were not an end, but just an étape, an incident, a transition, a promise... (Nietzsche
1992, XVI)
Ending with the moral is to end this game that no longer amuses us and that is why
we criticize it. What makes a game childlike? What de-infantilizes it? We usually
transform childlike games into sports, change them into exercises in technical
performance, subjugate them to the rigidity of rules for competitive purposes (cf.
Cabral 1991). That’s what happens to the ball in so many games. Professionalized.
The game is set apart from the fun, from pleasure, from invention. It is no longer an
amateur’s game. The practice is regulated, creative differences are erased, and the
possibility of successive reinventions dries up. Its time is transformed, from aion to
chronos. The game for the game’s sake ends, the game with no purpose. Undoing
this adultization of ludum leads us to listen to childhood, to listen to its affirmative
and creative strength. Because it is not enough to say “no” or “I want,” and because
we are not a goal but a path, an episode, a transition, a bridge… a hope, a place of
waiting for what cannot be expected (Heraclitus, DK 22 B 18; cf. Marcovich 1967).
A hope, as Paulo Freire wanted (Freire 2014). That is why childhood ends with
“moral” and starts a new (childlike) philosophy.
Inventive childhood. Once again, the Portuguese language makes us wonder
how (adult) morality invades discourses: “inventing” is a polysemic verb. Originate,
create, discover, imagine. But perhaps the strength of these senses has revealed
some risks. Childhood, left to itself, is bold and uncertain. “Inventing” also means
lying, falsifying, inventing ideas or stories to deceive others. It was necessary to
contain inventiveness as much as it was necessary to subjectify childhood, espe-
cially in playing (Almeida 2018). And yet the etymology of “inventing” signals a
sense of hospitality which is perhaps the most childlike of all (Kohan 2015).
To escape from this discursive, educational, moralizing continence is perhaps an
outrage: to leave prosthesis and orthesis and receive creation as it arrives. But our
childhood backpack played with us, offering us “moral end-ucation.” From this
expression, it suggests an end to moral education. The end of a prescriptive way of
designing human beings. Earlier we heard Nietzsche saying that the human being
was not an end, but “an incident, a transition, a promise….” We become aware
again of the challenges that playful childhood poses to our writing. Play seriously as
if there were nothing more than the urgency of the game. The human being as a
path, life as a bridge, childhood as a great promise.
The “philosophy for children” as conceived by Lipman, Sharp, and their col-
leagues seems to have understood this promise as a strict commitment to a certain
model of being human. Rationality tempered by judgment (Lipman 2003, p. 111).
In other words, reasonableness constitutes one of the bases for understanding the
community of inquiry that the authors propose (Costa Carvalho and Mendonça
2016). At the heart of this project, education is understood as a way to promote
reasonableness in children and, therefore, their democratizing socialization. Authors
such as Darren Chetty (2018) have shown that this argument can be politically very
slippery and even dangerous. The concept of reasonableness in childlike philosophy
can hide an epistemologically biased way of thinking. It can assert an epistemo-
logical “naivety” based on the “white ignorance” or “whiteness” that thinks of itself
as transparent or neutral—colorless and without history or, perhaps, owner of all
colors and all stories—and thus reproduce the historical oppression of other colors,
the slavery still present. Hiding the contextual, historical, and situated dimension of
notions such as reasonableness leads to the assumption of perspectives based on
notions of good sense or common sense that are assumed to be impartial and free
from context. On the contrary, challenging these concepts, examining them, allows
us to escape from a gated community of inquiry and denounce the epistemic
injustice that other authors have shown to be present in more educational practices
than would be desirable (Haynes and Murris 2011; Fricker 2017).
Again, childhood plays in order to get us thinking seriously. Is it just the concept
of reasonableness that has these problems? Couldn’t the same be said of the con-
cepts of philosophy, childhood, and so many others that we come across in our
philosophical practices with children? Even the concept of concept itself? Is it
possible to sit in a circle, listen to the children, and nonetheless reproduce con-
ceptions of reason, philosophy, and even childhood that are built on (consciously
and unconsciously) moralizing and oppressive perspectives: not only in terms of
race and ethnicity, but also of gender, age, class, and other characteristics? How
many of these moralizing and oppressive forces still inhabit even this text of ours
that intends to listen to childhood? Is it difficult or even impossible for adults in
certain cultures to affirm a world without hegemonies, a world that accepts equality
and difference, that puts itself far away from practices based on naturalized char-
acteristics as if they were naive, neutral, or innocent?
Moral end.
It is curious how philosophy for children has shown itself, right from its beginning,
to be a privileged place to operationalize the purposes of what is understood by
moral education (Sharp and Reed 1996; Pritchard 1996a, b). Something in this
project—as in almost all education—became appealing to approaches concerned
with the morality of behavior, with education for values, with prescriptive ethics.
The historical exclusion of children was thus reproduced and widened within a
movement that, at the beginning, seemed to intend an inversion. Today, ethical
concerns continue to form part of the questions that concern philosophers and
educators when they consider childhood. But wouldn’t it be more interesting to
experience the question from the perspective of ethos rather than ethics? (Haynes
and Murris, 2021, p. 11).
Perhaps little has played as our backpack has done in this writing, turning
expressions inside out, or like childhood, as it is childhood that likes to do hand-
stands. When we swing our legs to the sky to see the world upside down, what’s
interesting isn’t just seeing the same things in opposite places (as when the back-
pack changed “philosophy for children” to “children for philosophy”). Perhaps the
most stimulating exercise in doing the handstand is everything that falls out of our
pockets! What is shown while the movement of the body takes place, everything
heard that was mute before, all the lurking invisible presuppositions.
“Ah… no!” exclaim the authors of this writing. They look at each other. Will we
be able to do more of this playfulness? Do a handstand?! The laughs of childhood
no longer go unnoticed; they are increasingly loud in our writing.
Childhood of Conceptions
It’s a matter of returning to childhood, with deconstruction. Not merely through radical
doubt, through ultra-problematic questions. It’s a matter of undoing the problems. […] It is
more childlike than every philosopher who claimed to start over ab ovo, from the begin-
ning, no? (Cixous and Derrida 2019)
We are upside down. With this third expression, the childlike backpack performed
an inversion just like the first. We went from “childlike conceptions” to “childhood
of conceptions.” We have read that concepts and problems are at the heart of certain
historical, philosophical traditions. That there are no ahistorical or neutral positions
in thought. For example, Deleuze and Guattari state that to do philosophy is to trace
problems and create concepts (Deleuze and Guattari 1991). But in the tradition of
deconstruction it is necessary to de-create before creating. The risk of doing a
handstand. It’s a matter of undoing the problems, as Hélène Cixous and Jacques
Derrida say in the epigraph. Nothing more childlike, they add. We suspect that they
were also found by a backpack of foreignness. Seeing inside out, undoing to do
something else. Before starting, you have to finish. We smile.
We feel as if we are accompanied. Cixous and Derrida propose childhood as a
practice of un-functioning the problems, of abandoning the problem itself as a shell
and protection, and going back to the formless, to that which does not even allow
itself to be captured in the form of inquiry. Exposing yourself without defenses in a
shelter that is a refuge. And Nietzsche soon returns to our writing, telling us of the
unprotected unreasonableness of a life that becomes mute in the face of concepts
and abstractions. The life of someone who, “When a storm hits him, he curls up in
his coat and walks away with a slow step in the downpour” (Nietzsche, No date,
p. 102). Again, we feel complicity.
In a more situated and localized way, and on educational ground, Johansson has
widely written about the disruption of childhood, using the idea of dissonant voices
that interrupt established practices (2013). This dissonance is not to be confused with
the asymmetrical power structure that shapes educational relationships between
adults and children. The author warns against the risk that we have already addressed
of placing the different as inferior, of imposing worlds right at the beginning of our
relations with childhood. There is a great adult temptation to take everything they
know as the only possibilities in the world (Johansson 2013, p. 202).
Dissonance is in danger of being isolated and reduced to an inferior way of
diverging from a supposed pattern (ours). And maybe—we say—it doesn’t even
make sense to talk about dissonance (in the singular), because there will always be
countless ways to dissonate. You tune up in one way, but you go out of tune in
infinite ways. And maybe school—life?—is a permanent process of searching for
tuned voices with different (un)tunings. And perhaps what may be most interesting
is what happens in the acoustic space where different voices meet and produce
sounds together—whether they are sounds considered in tune, which assure us of
practices in which we feel comfortable, or out of tune, which brings us the dis-
comfort of new, unpredictable, and unheard possibilities.
It is true that philosophy for children has allowed us to broaden the perimeter of
what is understood by philosophy and childhood, as well as to traverse the crossing
paths between the two. Even so, what we find is little more than the same: the
criteria for considering what is philosophical were questioned, destroying certain
adult-centric canons, so that children could be included among those who can
philosophize. Has this just been a move toward integrating dissonance? To make it
sound tuned and presentable?
The word “dissonant” itself seems to be a trap: it is something that clashes,

which is out of tune. When we use it, aren’t we putting ourselves in a certain
perspective, that of tuning, from which we assess what escapes this acoustic? And
when we accept that the instrument can also play out of tune, don’t we still continue
to instrumentalize? Is there a perspective from which certain voices are not noise,
but merely sound? Perhaps beyond looking for dissonance, we could look for
hesitation, stammering, babbling, experimentation, groove? The childhood of
writing prepares itself to create a stage under our feet and make us musicians. Who
sits at the piano? Who plays the bass? Who smiles when new instruments, other
ways of feeling and making music, come in? We accept the new challenge, more
enthusiastic than ever. Facilitators make way for improvisers; dissonance makes
way for difference; teaching makes way for jazz-ing (Santi 2017; Zorzi and Santi
2020).
Jasinski and Lewis (2016) show that the classic inspiration of philosophy for
children kills what could actually be unique in dialogues with and among children:
experiencing the power of speech beyond normalizer and disciplinarian ends. The
authors add that when philosophy follows the chronological line of learning
institutionalized skills and dispositions, it can completely lose its philosophical
dimension (ibid., p. 3). Therefore, they propose a transition from the notion of a
“community of philosophical inquiry” (as a paradigm or pedagogical model, with
clear and precise rules and purposes) to a “community of infancy” (in which the
ends are loose and speech does not know its own status, does not obey reason-
ableness or any pre-defined rule). Inspired by a reading of childhood beyond simple
chronology, they propose that, in the community of infancy, you don’t even know if
you will get anywhere. Of course, standardized measures and norms are refused. Of
course, you make ugly faces at things like quantitative criteria for measuring the
effectiveness of certain practices in promoting reasoning. You grimace as if you’re
eating green broccoli soup. The community of infancy preserves the last vestige of
freedom within the school: the space and time to babble (ibid., 2016, p. 4).
We go back to listening to childhood. What does the transition from the “con-
ception of childhood” to the “childhood of conceptions” tell us? We do handstands
and are made by the music. We seem to be at another end, needing to finish playing
a certain game or playing at a certain pitch. We are breaking with a position that
places childhood as one of philosophy’s favorite concepts, an objectified topic of
analysis. Philosophy deals with discussing the meaning of this or that notion. This
game, as we have seen, can easily become adultlike and politically dangerous. It’s
time to play another game—to insist on playfulness for playfulness’ sake. It’s the
moment to listen to childhood, to affirm childhood, and not to objectify it. It’s time
to fly through the butterflies movements instead of sticking them with scientists’
pins. It’s time for a childhood of conceptions and a childlike exercise of (de)con-
ceptualization. Not the games of childhood, but the childhood of another game.
Let’s not name it—let’s feel childhood. Let’s respect this childlike babble, even
with its hiccups.
Daring to a Childlike Writing

The other usual partner was
the child who writes me.
(Manoel de Barros, 2003)
We have started writing, but it took us a while to start… and when it looked as if we
were starting, we already needed to finish. That’s what childhood is like: it is in
another time, a circular time where the beginning and the end coincide, a time
which does not go by, that lasts in an unmeasurable present that is not consecutive.
In this time, there is no future waiting to become the past. It is a time when that time
is forgotten and another time opens: a time to play, to create, to philosophize, to
love, to play, to be an artist, to enjoy.
We have tried to stay close to childhood throughout this writing. Attentive and
listening, but also mobilized and physically engaged. The exercise had something
of memory, a childlike memory of the words in the title of the book to which we
were invited to contribute: “Conceptions of Childhood and Moral Education in
Philosophy for Children.”
And we were almost going in the opposite direction. Or upside down? We have
played with a childlike inspiration of pure affirmation, a wheel that turns by itself.
Enthusiastic about the invitation, we found a childlike backpack. We have put it on
our backs and decided to leave. We have been intercepted by challenges and laughs.
The bridge of childhood led us to find a new way of grouping the words that
marked the beats of writing: “children for philosophy” and “childhood of con-
ceptions” to the “end of moral.”
Two inversions of children and childhood, making them change places with
philosophy and concepts. At the end, an ending appears. Something that childhood
no longer wants. The end is also a beginning: that of an extra-moral world.
Extra-rational. Extra-linguistic.
But there are other ways to think about what a new title might look like. For
example: “End the Moral to Start the Childhood of Children’s Conceptions in
Philosophy.” Here the end of morality appears as the condition for beginning the
infancy of concepts and children in philosophy. Or perhaps something without so
many prepositions, more enigmatic: “End of Morality! Children for Philosophy!
Childhood of Conceptions!”.
The wheel could keep spinning. Nonstop. Titles and more titles. Time to play
and to philosophize. The feeling of ending up playing and philosophizing is
beautiful. Proposing ways to start, because those, after all, are the titles. Finish
starting. Childhood doesn’t stop smiling: “you're done.” If the reader is reading
these words, it is because this playful, uptight, messy childhood was welcomed.
And we go back to smiling.
In a conversation with Cixous and psychoanalysts, Derrida looks for what is
childlike in deconstruction. He points out three bridges. The first bridge comes
precisely from a state of playing with language, from a creative writing between the
passivity of invention and the bodily commitment of discovery. A relationship with
language itself which is difficult to put into words. Derrida hesitates in silences that
the transcriber puts down to reticence: he asks questions, suddenly advances, and
retreats to say what happens to us in a profoundly childlike writing—a bodily desire
that renounces no pleasure and no meaning and thus expresses a polymorphous
perversion. With the author, we take up the movements of our hands in this writing
which was also embodiment. We get into the backpack, go down to the ground,
splash in the mud, make a handstand, play music. Creative writing would be the
expression of an unlimited desire to be able to experience the enjoyment of writing
anything. Creative writers, Derrida says, are in a state of infancy (Cixous and
Derrida 2019, p. 152). Dreamers too, Cixous replies.
Derrida proposes two further bridges between deconstruction and childhood.
The first asserts deconstruction itself as a device for going back until you undo
problems. Reversing the direction of travel. Exchanging the play button for the
rewind button and returning to the constitution of the problematic field as such
would be a path leading to childhood. Childhood would thus be the destiny of
deconstruction. Childhood at the end? Or a childlike ending? In our case, what do
the problematic fields of “philosophy for children,” “moral education,” or even the
“philosophy of childhood” hide? In what ways can we live with knowledge, per-
spectives, readings, and concepts from different traditions and become aware of
what these knowledges, perspectives, and traditions hide from us? Which poly-
morphs are made transparent through the gesture of formulating problems in a
certain way? What is hidden in this epistemic construction? Which adult con-
structions force themselves upon us, even in the emancipatory discourses of
childhood? What is imposed on us when we do not ask the question? What is
censored in the question itself?
There is a third sense in which deconstruction is childlike: in its powerful
critique of logocentrism. Because it lives in the polymorph and retreats to form-
lessness, deconstruction is childish when it affirms non-speech (in-fans), the sus-
pension of any and all discourse, a pre- or non-linguistic world: a child without a
peep. Deconstruction is a child without origin. Having the possibility of speaking, it
still does not belong to speech. A “before” experience. Amid the agitation and the
labor of categorizing rationalizations and verbalizations—interruption. As “in a
blind language in which all things can have all names,” a poet writes (Couto 2011).
Cixous smiles as Derrida speaks. Why does academic writing tend to hide the
smiles of those who speak? And why do hesitations become reticence? She smiles
and comments on the ambiguities and potencies that the possibility of inventing and
creating contains. It is childlike, prior to language; therefore, two contrary things
can exist in it at the same time. We can believe and not believe that something is
possible or impossible, necessary, or innocuous. Deconstruction is that wild, rich,
and dangerous world in which we do not need to renounce contradiction and the
impossible. Deconstruction illuminates, Cixous says (Cixous and Derrida 2019,
p. 155), illuminates the eternal child that we are. Deconstruction illuminates! Not
only that. In the poet’s tale too, the child’s gaze is what gives light to the river
(Couto 2013). Light? Help, childhood…
This has been the childlike wor(l)d—impossible and contradictory—that we are

inhabiting in this writing. In this world, just like now, the beginning and the end
coincide. In this world, which Heraclitus would call aion, it is childhood that rules.
A childlike government. So it’s time for us to be quiet. To be without so much light
and so many words. To sleep and to dream. It’s time to finish—or to start. Child
readers (don’t) have the floor. We have (not) already… (hiccup!).1
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An Exercise in Sámi Philosophising:
Indigeneity, the Young Child 6
and an Ethics of Cultural Translation
Viktor Johansson
Dat ii leat nu álki/ garccastit dovdduid/ sániide

Dovddut/ máŋggalágánat/ girjjagat
Sánit/ vánit/ ovttageatdánat
It is not easy/ snare feelings/ with words
Feelings/ many/ variegate
Words/ few/ one-minded
(R.-M. Huuva 1999, p. 104; my translation)
Introduction
The snow is melting, but it still covers the ground except on roads and car parks. It
is spring-winter, one of the eight seasons in Sápmi, the land of the Sámi of Northern
Scandinavia. Children are collecting thin sticks that have fallen on top of the snow
from nearby trees. They break some sticks in half without letting them break
completely, creating fishing rods with one half and a fishing line with the other.
Other sticks become guolit (the plural for fish in North Sámi, Davvisámegiella).
When the children want to cook their stick fish there is no firewood. This is not a
hard problem. Some of the sticks that were fish are simply transformed back into
ordinary sticks again and the play fire starts burning, frying the fish.
In Sápmi, the land is continually transformed. Rivers that in winter and
spring-winter are roads for reindeer, skis and snowmobiles become uncrossable
barriers of raging water in spring and spring–summer. Some paths are for skis,
V. Johansson (&)
Department of Education, School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University, Huddinge,
Sweden
e-mail: viktor.johansson@sh.se

80 V. Johansson
some for feet, others for both. Every season gives its own sustenance to those who
know where to find it: moose and blueberries in September, cloudberries in August,
ice-fishing on the lakes in winter and spring-winter. Every season has its own
smells, creates its own sensibilities, its own thoughts, words and stories, trans-
forming its receptive inhabitants’ lives into lives of continuous seasonal change.
Furs and feathers change. Animals are clothed with the pragmatic beauty fit for the
season, keeping cool, keeping warm, kept hidden from those who are not experi-
enced enough to see. There are times for giving birth, for preparing to move to
warmer or cooler lands, for hibernation, for long wanderings.
In his book on Walden, Thoreau’s famous work of literature, Stanley Cavell
writes about the processes of philosophical thought with a similar sensibility.
Thoreau writes that “[o]ur moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in
our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it” (Thoreau 1854, I, 36).1
Commenting on Thoreau’s acknowledgement of the moulting loon and its likeness
to human animals, Cavell writes:
What the imperative means is that our moulting season, unlike that of the fowls, is not a
natural crisis. Nature does not manage it for us. So at the heart of this apparent return to
nature, it is not haphazard for him to say, “Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be
overcome” (XI, 12). Our nature is to be overcome. (Society does not have to be overcome,
but disobeyed; but what that means comes later.) At the same time, nature is the final
teacher powerful enough to show us overcoming. She is, the new Romantic might say, my
antagonist, whose instruction I must win. The times of the day and the seasons of the year
are not referred to by my instincts; nature is not my habitat, but my exemplar, my dream of
habitation. (Cavell 1992, p. 43)
My approach to the seasons of Sápmi suggests, unlike Cavell, that there is an

imperative put on us by nature. The seasons require change. Living in winter in
Sápmi is different from life in summer, for people and fowl. In Thoreau, and
Cavell’s reading of him, nature is an antagonist, something to overcome. However,
Cavell does not give us a simplistic, man-conquering-nature picture. What he is
saying is that although nature teaches us to overcome ourselves, to transform and to
change, this does not come naturally to adult humans. “It is through nature that
nature is to be overcome”, he writes (Cavell 1992, p. 44). Change means crisis.
Although we may celebrate change, we also resist it. In a sense it is unnatural for
many people to be taught by nature. Given how human societies tend to exploit and
pollute our resources, refusing to change in response to our irresponsible treatment
of the climate, it is not hard to see this. Because we can resist nature, nature itself
cannot provide a redemptive transformation for us. We are left to look to her as our
exemplar.
Reading Cavell and Thoreau, there is a sense that moulting, waking, seasons and
all of nature’s continual transformations, even Thoreau’s life at Walden, become
images in the service of spelling out a vision of philosophy and a philosophical
1
As there are so many different editions of Thoreau’s Walden, I will follow Stanley Cavell’s
reference system by giving the chapter in roman letters and the paragraph in numbers. For
example, Chap. I, paragraph 7 will be (I, 7).
6 An Exercise in Sámi Philosophising: Indigeneity ... 81
pedagogy. As if Thoreau writes about his life in Walden solely to get his readers to
ask questions. I write instead from a sense that living attentively through the sea-
sons, playing with sticks, moulting and waking to the world are not mere images of
philosophy, but are themselves philosophy. Turning to this chapter’s epigraph,
written by the Sámi poet Rose-Marie Huuva from the transformative perspective of
surviving a near-fatal illness, I would like us to remember how difficult our life with
words is. It seems as if we live a life with words, especially as they are written,
where we simply cannot say what we want to say: “It is not easy/tie down feelings/
with words”. Is life not larger than words? “Words/few/one-minded”.
Of course, this is a theme Cavell struggled with throughout his whole career as a
philosophical author. And there are ideas in Thoreau’s book that can be explored to
see how the sense of strangeness provided by our experiences of seasonal trans-
formations, of translation between our lives and the lives of children playing with
sticks, between our lives and philosophising, can be not merely images of life but
life itself.
In this chapter I will think of these scenes—the translation of the sticks, lives in
seasons of Sápmi and the difficulties of a life with words—to explore how phi-
losophy is exercised by Sámi children and how such philosophising can be trans-
lated into further contexts. These scenes will be considered in relation to how
children play at traditional Sámi activities and the philosophising lives present in
such play. In doing this, I will also explore what it means to be a scholar
philosophising from the experience of encountering Sámi children’s thoughts and
lives. I will consider how such philosophical thinking is a form of translation and
how philosophising with children can be thought of as being in a process of
translation.
Translation and Philosophising Through Mistakes:

Exercising with Pierre Hadot
Translation has, since its beginnings, been an important part of philosophy. I will
sketch out how two modes of translation in philosophy have come to help me to
orient myself in encountering Sámi children’s philosophising. The first mode,
which I have already touched upon, comes from Thoreau, and Cavell’s readings of
Thoreau. The second comes from Pierre Hadot and his approach to ancient phi-
losophy. Since Hadot, like Cavell, has taken an interest in both Wittgenstein and
Thoreau there are affinities between these two modes. I thus read them as sustaining
each other rather than as in opposition, as simply differing in their emphasis on
translation’s role in philosophy.
To sketch out Hadot’s understanding of philosophy in translation, we must begin
with his view of philosophy as a way of life. According to Hadot, “the ancients
considered philosophy as a choice which committed a person’s entire life and soul”
(Hadot 2020, p. 59). Putnam describes Cavell’s philosophy in a similar vein. “To
read Cavell as he should be read is to enter into a conversation with him, one in
82 V. Johansson
which your entire sensibility and his are involved, and not only your mind and his
mind” (Putnam 2006, p. 119). There is certainly an argument to be made that in
encounters with children’s philosophising, our whole sensibility and theirs can be
involved. In my experience, children’s thinking—whether in play or in conversa-
tion—often seems to be holistic, involving body, soul and intellect alike. When
speaking about ancient philosophy, Hadot famously describes it as a spiritual
exercise; his way of reading ancient philosophers sees philosophising as a form of
pedagogy focused on the transformation of lives. What he describes as the simple
truths of ancient philosophy are only understood by living them. “Each generation
must take up, from scratch, the task of learning to read and reread these ‘old truths’”
(Hadot 1995, p. 121). Of course, this idea of philosophy is not only found among
the ancients. Hadot finds philosophy as a spiritual exercise and a way of life in most
traditions of philosophy from ancient to modern, although it is often obscured by
the overwhelmingly predominant understanding of philosophy as a form of dis-
course or theory. However, philosophy as a way of life may be alive in poetry and
literature (ibid., p. 285).
Hadot’s understanding of philosophy affects how we understand what it means
to translate philosophical works. In every act of translation, in every movement of a
thought from one cultural context to another, there is a risk of mistranslation,
misunderstanding and meanings getting lost. Hadot notes, using examples of central
ideas that have moved throughout Western philosophy, how specific writers’ forms,
images, turns of phrase and metaphors (St Paul, St Augustine, Descartes and
Husserl are his clearest examples) become prefabricated models. Such prefabrica-
tions make mistranslations and misunderstandings unavoidable. This may seem to
be a merely negative point. Nonetheless, Hadot’s simple but crucial insight is that
mistranslations do not always lead to bad ideas. In fact, he shows that the whole of
Western philosophy can be read as a series of misunderstandings and mistransla-
tions. Accepting such a view of the history of philosophy may seem worrying, as it
introduces a certain degree of uncertainty, non-systematicity or irrationality into
how ideas are developed. Hadot writes:
The idea itself holds less interest than the prefabricated elements in which the writer
believes he recognises his own thought, elements that take on an unexpected meaning and
purpose when they are integrated into a literary whole. This sometimes brilliant reuse of
prefabricated elements gives an impression of “bricolage,” to take up a word currently in
fashion, not only among anthropologists but among biologists. Thought evolves by
incorporating prefabricated and pre-existing elements, which are given new meaning as
they become integrated into a rational system. It is difficult to say what is most extraor-
dinary about this process of integration: contingency, chance, irrationality, the very
absurdity resulting from the elements used, or, on the contrary, the strange power of reason
to integrate and systematise these disparate elements and to give them a new meaning.
(Ibid., p. 65)
Mistranslations can be creative. The irrational elements of processes of thought
become, in such processes, rational. Hadot uses Husserl as an example, who sums
up his own position after reading Descartes by quoting Augustine: “Do not lose
your way from without, return to yourself, it is in the inner man that truth dwells”
(ibid., p. 65). For Husserl we have come to a stage where the Oracle of Delphi’s
famous exhortation, “Know thyself”, has obtained a new meaning. Hadot’s point is
that such meaning became possible through Augustine reading a mistranslation of
St Paul and then developing it further according to his prefabrications. It seems as if
the history of important notions of philosophy is, in Hadot’s words, “marked by a
whole series of such creative mistakes.” (ibid., p. 75).
When thinking of philosophy as a spiritual exercise, the threat of irrationality in
such a view of translation, or perhaps we should say mistranslation, may not seem
as worrying. On this line of thought, as we go through philosophical ideas, prob-
lems, conversations and texts, reaching new understandings and meanings is not a
goal in itself. Discursive truth, although important, is not the goal for such
philosophising. The goal is instead subjective truth, living a true life. Misunder-
standing an idea or a text or a person may just be what we need in order for us to
think further, think again, ask further questions and so on. It may be just these
occasions that challenge our prefabrications. This seems to me to be something that
we can learn from taking children’s misunderstandings of their adults’ prefabri-
cations seriously.
Before taking our creative translations further we must stop and briefly consider
a critical question about this view of translation. The question is raised in Hadot’s
works, and is crucial when thinking about translations between Western philoso-
phies and indigenous philosophies. Not all mistranslations are innocent. In speaking
of Christian appropriations of Platonic philosophy, Hadot writes that “They were
the result of misunderstandings and mistranslations—in other words, bad exegesis
—of stolen texts” (ibid., p. 74). And in another context, he writes:
All the cultures of the Mediterranean world thus eventually expressed themselves in the
categories of Hellenic thought, but at the price of important shifts in meaning that distorted
the content of the myths, the values, and the wisdom of each culture, as well as the content
of the Hellenic tradition itself. (Ibid., p. 56)
Expressions such as “stolen texts” and “at the price of important shifts in meaning
that distorted” indicate a darker side of translation. We can add that translations are
often appropriated by a majority society without consideration for the meaning the
texts, stories, ideas and words have for a minority that does not get a say in how
their heritages and cultural expressions are conveyed. Translations can be
colonising, which means that there is an ethical side to translation: who says what
something means?
So, “Know thyself” becomes more than an example of translations and new
meaning. The who of the translator becomes important: who the philosopher or
writer is. As Bertacco and Vallorani (2021) put it, “[i]t is not only texts, ideas, and
languages that are translated, but human beings too” (ibid., p. 23). Hadot draws on
Wittgenstein, invoking his notion of a language game: “We philosophise within a
language game, that is to say, …from within an attitude and a form of life” (Hadot
2020, p. 34). In translation, in reading philosophy, when translating or reading
concepts, notions, terms or lines of thought, we always have as our point of
departure our own lives and the lives we live with others. When does my position
84 V. Johansson
and knowing my own position in approaching a philosophical idea become

important to the philosophising, to trying to understand? This is not only a political
positioning, but a matter of meaning—of making and receiving sense. Approaching
the philosophising, play and translation of Sámi children thus becomes as much as
anything a work on myself, of knowing myself, noting my attitudes and form of
life, my playing in language. Translation as a way of life (Bertacco and Vallorani
2021, p. 11).
Referring to indigenous methodologies, Margaret Kovach (2009) has equally
emphasised the importance of noting our own positioning. However, she adds a
further difficulty. In encountering the philosophising of indigenous children, it is
not only a matter of teachers, scholars and philosophers, indigenous or
non-indigenous, coming to know their own lives and modes of making meaning.
Kovach argues that we need to present our own positions. That is, “knowing
thyself” becomes communicative. In such contexts, bringing Kovach’s indigenous
methodologies into the context of listening to children’s philosophising would
mean that we must implicitly or explicitly communicate our understandings of our
own lives to the children. “Knowing thyself” becomes a conversation. The question
is thus both to know oneself and to get to know the other; one will be done through
the other. The question of “Who says what something means?” becomes inseparable
from “Who means something?” and “Who means something with whom?”.
Hadot suggests that when we read philosophy, and indeed when philosophising
with children, it is “impossible to understand the sense of philosophers’ theses
without situating them within their language game” (Hadot 2020, p. 34). Thus,
philosophical language cannot be understood in a uniform manner. In a manner of
speaking, philosophy is always in translation. As Hadot claims, the philosophical
exercises of the ancients were meant to put philosophers into such a process: “the
main role of philosophical language was that of placing the auditors of this dis-
course within a certain form of life, or a particular style of life” (ibid.) I am
proposing that such a view of philosophising can also emerge from working with
indigenous children’s translations in their play.
Truth is Translated: Living with Stanley Cavell
In going from philosophical translation mistakes to views of philosophising through

noting our own lives and becoming a part of further lives, we are moving towards
an understanding of philosophy and translation that emerges in Cavell’s readings of
Walden. In reading Cavell, one is struck by how his style of philosophising comes
out of reading texts in conversation with his own life. It does so in a way that
exemplifies the modes of philosophising I have suggested in letting Hadot meet
Kovach’s indigenous methodological approaches. Cavell’s book on Thoreau is an
excellent example of such a style of philosophising. This is, as in Hadot, a form of
philosophy as pedagogy, an attending to our own education:
The first step in attending to our education is to observe the strangeness of our lives, our
estrangement from ourselves, the lack of necessity in what we profess as necessary. The
second step is to grasp the true necessity of human strangeness as such, the opportunity of
outwardness. (Cavell 1992, p. 55)
Here strangeness, our own and that of others, is part of our education. Cavell later
continues: “For a grownup to grow he requires strangeness and transformation, i.e.,
birth” (ibid., p. 55). Cavell’s idea of philosophy comes from the experience of being
at a loss for words. Encountering children’s sometimes very difficult questions,
when we respond to the child, with the child, our “paths of action, the paths of
words, are blocked” (Cavell 1979, p. 125). Cavell calls this experience and the
activity it involves both philosophy and education. It is, however, an education and
a pedagogy that involves something like a process of translation. This is what he
later observes regarding his writings on Walden: “Walden can be taken as a whole
to be precisely about the problem of translation, call it the transfiguration from one
form of life to another” (cf. Saito 2019, p. 87). Cavell’s turn to Walden can itself be
seen as an investigation of philosophy as translation and an exercise in such
translation, a translation of lives.
Such an approach to Walden is introduced by Thoreau’s famous words:
The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual
statement. Their truth is instantly translated; its literal monument alone remains. (Thoreau
1854, XVIII, 6)
We have the words. The spoken utterance, the text, the expression. They are there.
But, as noted in Huuva’s poem, there is so much that is not tied down by words, by
the expression, by what we see on the page or hear from the mouth. In the face of
any form of expression we are left with its estrangement, its foreignness; even our
own expressions can become foreign to us. For Cavell, as in the quote above, this
involves both the attention to our own strangeness—that nothing we say necessarily
means anything—and to human strangeness in general, which is the necessary drive
in all speech expression and meaning making. In Cavell’s words, “the occurrence of
a word is the occurrence of an object whose placement always lies before and
beyond it” (Cavell 1992, p. 27). Here Cavell returns to Wittgenstein: “Every sign by
itself seems dead” (Wittgenstein 1953, §432). There is life beyond the monuments
of words and expressions within which they point. A life that is at the same time so
vast and strange that there is always more to what we hear and see in an expression
than we have at hand.
Immediately, this means that we recognise that we have choice over our words, but not over
their meaning. Their meaning is in their language; and our possession of a language is the
way we live in it, what we ask of it. … That our meaning a word is our return to it and its
return to us—our occurring to one another—is expressed by the word’s literality, its being
just these letters, just here, rather than any others. (Cavell 1992, p. 63)
This notion amplifies Hadot’s focus on the philosophical fruitfulness of making
mistakes when translating philosophical ideas from one form of life to another.
Mistakes can be made, and mistranslations may be small and innocent, but in
Cavell’s vision of life translations will necessarily be insufficient. We are in
86 V. Johansson
constant conversation. Every word’s meaning is both inherited (beyond our control)
and born anew in every utterance. Saying something, writing, speaking and
expressing, are themselves an acknowledgement of our separateness (ibid., p. 65).
In his reading of Walden, Cavell suggests that having a language involves both a
mother tongue and a father tongue. This is Thoreau:
Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough
even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a
memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and
the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely,
almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is
the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a
reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be
born again in order to speak. (Thoreau 1854, III, 3)
We have a language of our inheritance, that we hardly recall learning, words with a
history of meaning something: a mother tongue (or a native tongue, to avoid
Cavell’s and Thoreau’s gendered expressions). We also have the prospect of finding
further forms of expression that grow from our experience of the strangeness of our
own words. We have the prospect of meaning something by using words ourselves,
meaning something ourselves, saying something to someone. We may make use of
a father tongue, or a further tongue. This saying something, making our own use of
words, involves waiting for transformation, translation, moulting, being born again.
Cavell calls this a moment where we wait for words to be “translated from their
graves” (1992, p. 58). I read Cavell’s comment as a translation between Wittgen-
stein and Thoreau. Again, we are reminded of how Wittgenstein asks: “Every sign
by itself seems dead. What gives it life?” and responds—“In use it is alive” (1953,
§432). Raising the words of my native tongue from the dead is making use of them,
giving them life by meaning something by them. Cavell refers to this process by
again quoting Thoreau as associating this process of waiting for rebirth, of waiting
for when our words can come alive in our using them, with laying “the foundation
of a true expression” (Thoreau 1854, XVIII, 6; Cavell 1992, p. 58).
I can only wonder what life Cavell’s and Hadot’s words have when speaking
with and about the children in the Sámi pre-school: when philosophy encounters the
philosophising that occurs in the children’s transformation of sticks, as they move
between Swedish, Julevsámegiella (Lule Sámi) and Davvisámegiella (North Sámi).
The Sámi languages they inherit have been under pressure for centuries; the lan-
guages have been seen as less than by the state and the church, connected to shame.
Their grandparents and great-grandparents may have been punished for speaking
Sámi in school (ref. När jag var åtta år). One of the fundamental ideas behind
current Sámi early childhood education institutions is language revitalisation. This
idea is heard in the common promptings from teachers at the early childhood centre
when the children speak Swedish for too long: “Giella!” [“language!”] Hearing
this, the children are often quick to switch back to speaking Sámi.
Added to this life of linguistic tensions is the question of how reflections on a
language inherited, and words brought to life through use, get their own life and
meaning when encountering young children in the process of learning a language.
Is there room for a further tongue when one is in the process of inheriting a native
tongue? What does it mean to resurrect meanings when one is inheriting several
languages in the context of revitalisation? What is it to philosophise in such
contexts?
I do not ask such questions as a linguist. I ask them as an attempt to take further
and to find my own expression of the philosophical pedagogy of translation that
Hadot suggests and that I find in Cavell. I ask because I find myself positioned as a
scholar of pedagogy and philosopher among these Sámi children at this Sámi
pre-school, with these children and the lives we live.
Sámi Philosophy and Storytelling in Translation
I began by reflecting on the transitions between the seasons of Sápmi. These

seasons show us a world in translation, of possibilities of meaning shifting with the
kind of life made possible by the shifting lands. Many children are masters at
creating meaning with the places, following the seasons, bringing words, thoughts
and stories to life in response to what the land has to offer. The land speaks, and its
speech is translated into play, questions and thoughts (Simpson 2014). Many
children at Sámi early childhood centres live a life of transitioning between lan-
guages (Storjord 2008).
These moves along the land’s transformations and between languages are
reflected in early and contemporary Sámi literature and poetry (Heith 2020). The
moves are also reflected in the forms of publication that are common among Sámi
authors. First, much Sámi poetry is published in multilingual editions. Sometimes
this is done by simply creating books that contain two or more translations of the
poetry, and at other times it is done by publishing parallel editions in different
languages. This provides accessibility for Sámi readers, as many of them do not
speak or read any of the Sámi languages, but it also provides accessibility for
non-Sámi readers and Sámi readers who know Sámi languages than that in which
the poem is written. Translation thus creates a space for Sámi thinking—I consider
much Sámi poetry to be great expressions of philosophy and part of philosophical
activity—that can be pan-Sámi, a term introduced by Sámi literary scholar Harald
Gaski, drawing on and building the vitality of all Sámi groups. This Sámi thinking
can also be indigenist, speaking to indigenous communities across the world, and
cosmopolitan, giving Sámi forms of thinking and thinkers a voice in the world as
well as sharing Sámi forms of thinking (Gaski 2013). Although Sámi poetry is
frequently translated into other Scandinavian languages and English, translations
between different Sámi languages and between indigenous languages in general are
unfortunately quite rare. Still, the practice of Sámi poetry moving between lan-
guages creates new spaces for thinking about who translates and whom translations
are for.
88 V. Johansson
Second, much Sámi poetry has been written through a process of translating
between various modes of expression in ways that can add to Hadot’s, Cavell’s and
Thoreau’s philosophies of translation. Sámi written literature has since its begin-
nings been multimodal: visual art, crafts, oral storytelling, yoik and musical
expression are all part of the work. For example, Johan Turi’s work Muitalus sámiid
birra (1910), in English An Account of the Sámi (2012), adopts a written style that
has an oral tone. Turi uses drawings as explanatory and aesthetic forms of
expression (Svonni 2008, pp. 68–69). Moreover, although Turi writes in Sámi he
aims to explain what it means to live a Sámi life. He writes:
I have been thinking that it that it would be best if there were a book in which everything
was written about Sámi life and conditions, so that people wouldn’t have to ask how Sámi
conditions are, and so that people wouldn’t misconstrue things, particularly those who want
to lie about the Sámi and claim that only Sámi are at fault when disputes arise between
settlers and Sámi in Norway and Sweden. And there one ought to write about all the events
and furnish explanations so clearly that anyone could understand. And it would be pleasant
also for other Sámi to hear about Sámi conditions as well. (Turi 2012, p. 11)
In Turi’s introductory remarks, there is a movement between addressees. He is
clearly addressing non-Sámi to whom he wishes to explain Sámi life and condi-
tions, but he is writing in Sámi, which very few non-Sámi would understand. His
thus seems to be addressing Sámi and non-Sámi who already move between lan-
guages. He also addresses those whom he calls “other Sámi”, which raises ques-
tions about which Sámi lives he is describing. In a sense, Turi is trying to involve
his readers in the process of translation, in finding their own addressees within and
beyond Sámi communities and readers of Dávvisámegiella.
Turi’s book, a multimodal invocation for translation, is also a translation
between genres. Like Thoreau’s book about his life at Walden, Turi is creating his
own genre of writing in which describing, reporting and storytelling are brought
together into a unified narrative form of thinking. It is a work about Sámi and
written in Sámi, but also a book that creates a form of thinking. Turi believes that
Sámi thought finds its clearest expression in “the high mountains”, signifying, I take
it, places of importance in his own life (Turi 2012, p. 11). His work can thus be read
not only as a translation of words, but also as a translation of space. He is trans-
lating the thinking of “the high mountains” into his place of writing, thus involving
his readers in spatial translations between the places and movement along the places
of the Sámi lives that Turi describes and all the places of reading in the lives of the
reader.
Turi’s work of translation can be described as a form of literary wayfinding in
which both he and his readers become wayfinders by how words, thoughts and
places are intermingled. As Tim Ingold notes, wayfinding “is the knowledge of the
region, and with it the ability to situate one’s current position within the historical
contexts of journeys previously made, journeys to, from and around places” (Ingold
2000, p. 219). Sámi scholar of pedagogy Ylva Jannok Nutti takes Ingold’s idea of
wayfinding to be something more akin to storytelling than map-using (Jannok Nutti
2017). Wayfinding, according to Ingold, becomes a form of mapping through the
ongoing process of walking and finding one’s way while moving along the land. As
Jannok Nutti puts it, “names of the places meant nothing on their own; places only
occurred along paths of movement, so the names were told in a sequence in the
narrative re-enactment of journeys actually made” (Jannok Nutti 2017; cf. Mazullo
and Ingold 2008, p. 30). Reading Turi, likewise, is not to read a ready-made map of
Sámi life and livelihood, but to engage in a literary mapping in the process of
moving along in translation between the places in the writer’s descriptions and
stories and our own narrative and geographical places as readers.
This trans-modal form of writing has continued as Sámi culture has created its
own forms of written literature while keeping the oral literary tradition alive.
However, although much of the translational processes in Sámi literary traditions
transgress the borders between nations, cultures, languages, genres and modes of
expression, some translational processes uphold borders and create new borders.
I turn to the translation of the Sámi poet Nils-Aslak Valkeapää’s book Beaivi,
áhčážan [The Sun, My Father] (1988; 1997) to show how poetic and translational
creations and acknowledgements of such borders can be a part of a decolonising
pedagogical practice in work with children’s philosophising.
Like Turi, Valkeapää (or Áillohaš, as he sometimes calls himself) moves
between modes of expression in his work. He experiments with yoik (a Sámi form
of singing) alongside jazz musicians; in his poetry, he uses figures from Sámi oral
storytelling and pre-Christian religions mixed with experiences from his travels
among indigenous peoples in many places of the world in conjunction with his own
visual art and others’ photographs. All his major works of poetry have been pub-
lished in translations into Swedish, Norwegian and English—all except Beaivi,
áhčážan, which has been published only in a highly reduced form. Beaivi, áhčážan
has been described as a (pan-) “Sámi family album”, “evoking a collective identity,
a ‘we’ that shares a history, homeland, and cultural identity” (Heith 2020, p. 51).
However, the many photographs of Sámi people, dwellings and craft that Valk-
eapää collected from various museums and archives all over the world are included
only in the original Sámi version of the work. In translation, the family album is
locked. A border is created. So, the process of translating Beaivi, áhčážan bridges
gaps between those who know Dávvisámegiella and those who do not, but through
such bridging a threshold is also created. Non-Sámi readers are simply not invited
to see the whole house. Thinking, like translation for Cavell and Thoreau, can
become both a process of reaching and finding one another and a form of getting
lost, not knowing where to go on. Like the wanderer who faces a river, not knowing
where it is safe to cross it.
In turning to Sámi literature, I have avoided analysing particular quotes. I have
rather tried to think with and learn from the processes of translation, seeing
philosophical points in the exercise of moving between modes of expression and
different languages, not in the particular expression. There are of course also
philosophical points made in the particular thoughts in what is said or written.
I have been trying to demonstrate forms of thinking in Turi, Valkeapää and our
reading of them; forms of thinking that live through descriptions of lives, in the
retelling of stories (like Turi) and in living in the in-between of translation.
Description here becomes a form of contemplation, a form of philosophising, not
90 V. Johansson
material to analyse or critique (Burley 2020; Phillips 2001). D. Z. Phillips has

developed a contemplative hermeneutics in which philosophy (of religion, in his
case) directs its interest towards the possibilities of sense in human life in order to
“inspire wonder” as an “essential part of philosophical enquiry” (Phillips 2001,
p. 23). The philosophy of contemplative hermeneutics creates thick descriptions of
how “people have thought about human life in different ways”, including all the
problems, possibilities, solutions and answered and unsolved questions (ibid., p. 24;
cf. Burley 2020, Chap. 2). The aim is to learn from remaining in wonder at and
upholding humility towards these varieties of sense in human life. Phillips’ con-
templative hermeneutics as a method for philosophy of religion shares with Toril
Moi’s (2017) ordinary-language philosophy of literature the aim of seeing the
richness of meaning in practices, texts and everyday conversations. We let them
teach us how to read, listen to and wonder at their meaning on their own terms. In
considering the intra-relationality of the translation and migration of Creole liter-
ature, Bertacco and Vallorani suggest that translation (I would say philosophy as
translation) “demand that we set aside preconceived notions of language that are
inapplicable to many literary context—not just postcolonial ones—and that we
learn, from the texts, how to read” (Bertacco and Vallorani 2021, p. 66). I have
suggested that in a Sámi context Turi and Valkeapää (and many other authors) can
teach us just that.
In thinking with and through descriptions of Sámi poetical philosophy and life
and Sámi children’s thinking—adopting a contemplative hermeneutics in working
with children’s philosophy—I have tried to lay the ground for thinking philo-
sophically with Sámi children. This ground works simultaneously on several nec-
essarily intertwined planes: (1) a pedagogy of philosophising with children;
(2) exercising our listening and acknowledging children’s philosophising; (3) cre-
ating contemplative descriptions of (1) and (2); (4) philosophising through the
issues that emerge in creating the contemplative descriptions from (3).
Writing with Sámi Children and a Decolonising Ethics

of Translation
Sámi children are colonised in several ways when we put their philosophising in
translation as I have been doing. First, there is the general colonising of childhood.
This includes the colonising of the notions and conceptions of childhood. In phi-
losophy for children (P4C), and in early childhood research, there are presuppo-
sitions about what it means for children to philosophise: presuppositions that grow
out of Western white privilege (Chetty, 2018). Likewise, to take the Swedish
context as an example, there are conceptions of childhood in Storsvensk (Great
Swede or Majority Swede) culture that remain part of national curricula. These
conceptions form intrinsic parts of early childhood discourses that affect views of
childhood in Sámi early childhood institutions in ways that suppress Sámi con-
ceptions of childhood. Children are also colonised by more general adultism, which
is strengthened by a reliance on Western notions of adulthood and childhood. These

Western notions involve assumptions regarding children’s and adults’ abilities to
philosophise, think and express thoughts, and what kinds of expression are given
prevalence (Murris 2016, Chap. 10; Murris and Reynolds 2018).
Second, there are Western conceptions of philosophy and philosophical thinking
within which non-Western notions of thought and ways of thinking are silenced
(Van Norden 2017). Here translation between cultural and geographical settings
becomes an important part of philosophising. In my attempts to understand Sámi
children, I have tried to move into a space in which my words in describing our
work together emerge from the processes of translating. They emerge from the
spaces of their lives into my life as the scholar of pedagogy and philosophy of
education, as a Storsvensk from Sweden’s capital.
I make mistakes in translation, but realising the gaps between my life and the life
of the Sámi children, I wonder if they are really my mistakes to make. Such
mistakes may be fruitful for academic philosophising and the development of fields
of thought in pedagogy and philosophy, as Hadot suggests. However, we run the
risk of colonising these children’s thoughts by translating words, thoughts and
actions.
In thinking over these issues, I will describe one of the main events of the day I
referred to above.
My fellow researcher and I invited Sámi tradition bearers to the Sámi early
childhood centre to hold activities with the children. On one occasion,
teachers, tradition bearers and children prepared reindeer meat to make
suovas. This word literally means “smoke” but is used as shorthand for
suovasbiergu, “smoked meat”. In the afternoon, the teachers had prepared a
lávvu, a Sámi tent, for smoking the meat. While one the teachers held up a
piece of birch wood and showed the children its different parts, the different
layers of beassi [birch-bark], and how it can be used, one of the boys was
overtaken by curiosity and sneaked under the canvas of the tent. Another
teacher told him off and asked him to come out. He came out of the lávvu, but
as soon as the teachers turned their focus elsewhere, he sneaked around it and
under the canvas again. Once again, a teacher told him to come out and wait.
One of the teachers took some of the wood and went into the lávvu to light the
fire. The boy sneaked off into the lávvu again. His voice was heard from the
lávvu, “Wow, hot!” Then a little later, “Wow, it’s really hot”.
As the children entered the lávvu, the boy repeatedly told them to be
careful, because “the fire is hot”. The children soon forgot his warnings and
the teachers’ warnings; fascinated, they moved closer and closer to the fire.
One of the girls asked, “Why are we making a fire?”. A teacher pointed at the
meat they had prepared and simply answered, “Suovas”. As if she had just
needed that reminder, the girl nodded and turned her attention the ongoing
conversations.
92 V. Johansson
While hanging up the meat along the centre pole of the lávvu, the children
and teachers were speaking Sámi. They were too advanced and too fast for
me to keep up with their conversations. I assumed they were talking about the
meat and the fire, but my Sámi speaking colleague later told me that much of
the conversation was about a fly that one of the children had found in their
home which kept coming back, and whether it was the same fly or some other
fly that kept coming back.
While I was concentrating to understand as much as possible about what
was going on, a boy turned to me with a small stone. He quietly spoke in
Swedish: “Do you want to smell it?”. He held the stone towards me. “It
smells like smoke”. He then turned to the other children and let them smell
the stone, now speaking in Sámi.
The teachers instructed the children in how to hang the meat on small
metal sticks sticking out of the centre pole of the lávvu. “It is like a
merry-go-round”, one of the children thought.
Elsewhere I have argued that philosophy in early childhood often takes us to the
most fundamental questions of what it is to be in a world, of what makes things
before us exactly those things (Johansson 2019, 2018). This is a form of philo-
sophical inquiry that is multimodal in much the same way as suggested by Sámi
authors like Turi and Valkeapää. It involves hands touching, tongues tasting, noses
smelling, playing with things, thoughts and words, as much as it does the discursive
reasoning, speech and writing that are more common in adult philosophising. By
noticing this, we can start to hear, feel and see philosophising in the above passage.
We see that the children move their attention from one thing to another, keeping
their mind on the activity (smoking meat) while exploring much else. Our attention,
on the other hand, could turn to the children translating our conceptions of
philosophising.
Nonetheless, there are mistaken translations. Not only do these mistakes call
teachers and scholars to philosophise, they also keep us humble. I therefore ask:
what am I missing, as I do not understand much Sámi? What will teachers miss,
when they are not immersed in the world that the children are constructing in these
activities?
My insufficient ability to understand Davvisámegiella is important here. But it is
clear that understanding the language, although crucial, is only one aspect of
contemplating the meaning of what children are doing. In decolonial pedagogical
processes, the minds of teachers and scholars need to be translated. As Kovach
suggests, “[i]t will take a lot of immersion to retrain our minds” (Kovach 2009,
p. 61). By combining Cavell’s and Thoreau’s practice of philosophy of/as trans-
lation with philosophy as contemplative hermeneutics and Kovach’s call for
immersion, we can engage in philosophising as translation as a form of immersion.
Working with children’s philosophising thus becomes not only a matter of bringing
issues common in the Western philosophical tradition to the children, or of seeing

such questions emerging in what the children are doing. It means approaching the
children humbly, acknowledging them as people who are making sense and cre-
ating ideas and practices that mean something. Immersion means living with and in,
taking expressions seriously, listening to what is meant. This is a decolonising
translation of our minds as our lives are transformed, as our minds and lives melt
like the snow that transforms the winter land into the new world of spring.
A World in Translation
I began this chapter by describing Sápmi’s landscapes in transformation and

translation, and Cavell’s discussion of the difficulties (in philosophising, in culture
and in human life) of translating our own lives and thoughts. The humility I
suggested needs to be part of decolonising our minds when engaging with chil-
dren’s philosophising. However, humility like this happens in a place, with people
at a place. In Sámi traditional practices, humility was shown not only towards
people, but also by asking for permission from the land to stay at a place and do
what was planned. Likewise, gratitude was shown while dwelling, if just for a short
while, in a place and when leaving it (Jannok Nutti 2017; Oskal 2000). I translate
this to think of the humility in approaching children’s philosophising as also a
matter of being humble and grateful to the place, the land, nature, where such
philosophising happens. I thus decolonise my assumption that philosophy is a mere
human endeavour.
Let me conclude by poetically positioning myself along the paths of my
philosophising with the experience of encountering the Sámi children’s thinking at
the early childhood centre. I am in a process of decolonial translation. My own
family heritage goes back for centuries of farmers and blacksmiths from several
areas in the Southern parts of Saepmie, Sápmi in Åarjelsaemiengïele (South Sámi).
It is unclear if any of them were Sámi or spoke any of the Sámi languages.
However, working philosophically in Sápmi/Saepmie has involved me in a form of
translational transformation. Something is translated. Perhaps, further, immersed
and, perhaps new forms of attention grow out of further forms of living and making
meaning. So, when Cavell says that education does not come naturally for the adult,
I take the chance to learn from the Sámi children’s thought, to let my nature
transform into a further nature. But I am also realising that my immersion in Sámi
thinking and places is a re-immersion, a return to something like childhood, an
(unnatural) education for a grown-up (Cavell 1979, p. 125). A form of spring.
A Thoreauvian moulting season, returning every year. In the words of South Sámi
yoiker and singer Marja Mortensson, from the song Aarehgïjre (Early Spring),
realising with Huuva’s epigraph that letters on the page do not convey the sounds of
singing:
94 V. Johansson
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Personality Traits, Habits, and Virtues:
A Moral Education Proposal 7
Félix García-Moriyón and Tomás Miranda-Alonso
Concept of Goodness
Human beings are born with a genetically inherited biological endowment that
makes us unique and, in a certain sense, conditions our life. This biological con-
figuration with which we are born is often called temperament. How we are
therefore depends, in part, on our innate temperament.
From birth, babies interact with their environment, and throughout their life
acquire certain predispositions toward ways of reacting to stimuli. These predis-
positions are called habits. They are acquired through learning processes based on
the repetition of certain behaviors. Habits shape each individual’s personal way of
being, and the integration of these habits constitutes their character: that is to say,
the set of their personal qualities. The integration of habits that a child acquires
explains the unity and strength of their character. The lack of integration of these
habits may cause a weak, unstable, and unstructured character. Through learning
and the acquisition of habits, an individual can transform their biologically inherited
constitution, that is, their temperament (Miranda 2019). The complex set of tem-
perament and character is what we call personality.
As virtues are a class of habits, they do not arise by nature. That is, we are not
born with them: they are rather acquired through the repetition of acts. Nor are
virtues produced against nature: their growth takes into account our own nature.
We are not born virtuous; we become virtuous with effort, although we are born
with the predisposition and natural aptitudes to acquire virtues through the repeti-
tion of acts. Virtues are habitual dispositions to act well in a moral sense, and we
acquire them through exercise and learning.
F. García-Moriyón (&) T. Miranda-Alonso

Facultad de Formación del Profesorado Y Educación, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid,
Francisco Tomás Y Valiente 3, 28049 Madrid, Spain
e-mail: felix.garcia@uam.es

98 F. García-Moriyón and T. Miranda-Alonso
According to Plato and Aristotle, a virtuous human being is one who controls his
passions, desires, and impulses by means of reason. The word “virtue” comes from
the Latin “virtus,” which means “vigor,” the strength of things to cause their effects.
If a plant can cure diseases by its nature, we say that it has therapeutic virtues.
Similarly, in a human being, virtue is what makes a person realize what they are—
their human nature. However, the Greek word that corresponds to “virtue” is
“areté,” which means “excellent quality.” Someone is called a virtuoso of the
violin, for example, when she is able to play violin music in an excellent way. In
this sense, we say that human beings are virtuous when they do well the function
that is proper to them—when they live well and act well, morally speaking.
Traditional studies based on Plato and Aristotle identified the major virtues.
These are called cardinal virtues because they are the axis around which the others
pivot. The cardinal virtues are:
• Prudence: this consists of practical wisdom, oriented to action, that allows us to

know how to deliberate and decide well in every situation. It is aided by
knowledge and science.
• Justice: for Aristotle this is a virtue that encompasses the other virtues. It consists
in the observance of the law, and regulates the fair distribution of duties and
rewards in society and interpersonal relationships. It is oriented towards the
common good of society.
• Fortitude: this is the capacity to overcome work, suffering, and pain. It also
refers to integrity or strength of mind, as well as to the capacity for self-control.
• Temperance: this consists of self-control and self-mastery.
The “kalokagathía” (“kalós”: beautiful, handsome; “agathós”: good, virtuous)

was the ideal of education for many Greeks. Like Plato (2000), they considered that
this ideal consisted of the human being advancing along the path of truth, beauty,
and goodness. This was a path that teachers and disciples had to walk together.
The moral dimension of our conduct must be guided by prudence. Therefore,
Aristotle affirms that virtue is a middle point (the golden mean) relative to our-
selves, determined by reason and by what a prudent person would decide: “at the
right times, about the right things, towards the right people, for the right end, and in
the right way.” Virtue lies between two extremes, both of which are vicious
(Aristotle 2002, Book 2). Thus, fortitude or courage lies in the middle ground
between cowardice and recklessness. An individual who was “too” courageous
would cease to be courageous and would become a daredevil. The person who
jumps into the water without knowing how to swim, to save someone who is
drowning, is not brave but reckless. The virtue of generosity, likewise, is in the
middle ground between avarice (defect) and prodigality (excess).
Virtues are those qualities that human beings must have in order to live fully as
human beings. However, human beings only realize themselves with others; we
become human in society. Therefore, as the Spanish philosopher Victoria Camps
(2019) writes, in order to live well together (that is, with justice) we must cultivate
some public virtues. These virtues, necessary for a fair, free, and egalitarian
7 Personality Traits, Habits, and Virtues: A Moral Education Proposal 99
democracy, are solidarity, responsibility, tolerance, and competence. Virtue does

not consist in repressing and annulling our desires and feelings to let ourselves be
guided only by reason, but we do need intelligence to guide our impulses and
feelings towards the good (Marina 1998). A critical moral imagination should be at
the basis of our self-understanding and of our moral deliberations when we seek, for
example, to solve moral dilemmas that arise in the course of our lives. We need an
imaginative rationality that is at once intuitive, critical, exploratory, and transfor-
mative. A critical moral imagination must also form the basis of our understanding
of ourselves, others, and institutions (Johnson 1993). Literature can stimulate in
children and adults the type of narrative imagination that fosters an essential virtue
in citizens’ education: compassionate understanding and empathy. Literature can
also help citizens to eliminate unfounded prejudices in the way they see others and
develop their capacity to recognize and respect those who do not think or feel as
they do (Nussbaum 2001). Some novels contribute to the creation of a paradigm of
ethical reasoning that is context-sensitive without being relativistic. In such a
paradigm, concrete prescriptions are established that can be universalized by
translating a general ideal of human prosperity to a concrete situation.
Along these lines, cognitive-social theory makes a significant contribution to the
study and understanding of moral functioning by highlighting the affective elements
of the moral personality (Hoffman 2000). The personality is thus understood as an
organized, coherent, integrated, and stable cognitive-affective system (Lapsley and
Narvaez 2004). We can say that a good person is one who achieves a creative and
active balance in their relationships with themselves, the people with whom they
live, and the world in which they live. A good person is characterized by their
development of a mature moral affectivity, an ability to reason well, knowledge of
the world in which they live, and acting well (García 2008, 2009).
Narvaez and Lapsley (2013) affirm that the first years of life are very important
because they provide the environment in which the emotional systems and self-
regulative capacities that underlie social interactions and support the emergence of
virtue will develop. This theory of human development, which describes virtue in
terms of habituation, coincides with Aristotelian theory. Aristotelian theory fits well
with contemporary psychological theories on the learning and development of
virtue (Narvaez 2006).
Thanks to education, we can channel our temperament and form our character.
From there we can choose and configure our personal way of being—our per-
sonality. Although the terms “character” and “personality” are often used inter-
changeably, we will understand “personality” here to be the dynamic organization
of an individual’s temperament and character. Our habits shape our personality,
which is formed through the repetition of actions that we carry out in accordance
with the life projects that we choose and the principles and values that guide our
behavior. All these things depend on the type of person we aspire to be. We can
therefore say that how each of us is depends (a) on our innate heritage, (b) on the
character we have acquired through learning processes, and (c) on what we have
decided and chosen to be.
Although occasionally we can achieve what we want thanks to luck, we can

generally say that we cannot achieve anything worthwhile without effort. It is also
true that some people must work harder than others to achieve the same result. The
application of effort is a necessary, but not always sufficient, condition. There are
times when more conditions are required, such as the use of intelligence to choose
our goals or the means with which to achieve them.
In Dewey’s view, moral values and principles do not form a separate and
independent realm; they are an integral part of the normal course of life. It is not
therefore possible to postulate the existence of a source of moral knowledge (moral
conscience) as a separate faculty. All knowledge represents results obtained by the
operation of natural impulses and habits in relation to the environment. Moral
judgments and beliefs thus have a distinctive natural and empirical character.
Morality considered as a science consists of knowledge that is empirical and
objective, but also hypothetical and evolving: life is a process in motion, in which
former moral truths become useless. Moral science consists of physical, biological,
and historical knowledge placed in a human context that illuminates, guides, and
gives meaning to human activities (Dewey 1957).
Moral deliberation is always present, at least implicitly, when (a) there is an
excess of preferences, (b) there is conflict between them, (c) the means to achieve
the ends are not clear, and (d) the elements to be taken into account are not well
known. A problematic situation sometimes arises in the course of action, caused by
conflicting impulses and habits; moral deliberation must then seek a way of acting
that will reestablish the meaning of the action. Imagination and moral deliberation
consist in experimenting mentally with various possible courses of action, weighing
the values at stake, considering the possible combinations of habits and impulses,
and taking into account the objective consequences.
Dewey distinguishes between reasonable choices and foolish choices. A choice
is reasonable when it unifies, organizes, and harmonizes conflicting tendencies, and
thus liberates activity. Observation and study of each situation allow us to find the
meaning of the action; moral choice consists in choosing the good that gives
meaning to the action and allows its development. However, the end of the moral
good must not be understood as something external to the action itself. Goodness
and happiness, Dewey goes on to say, are found in the meaning that pertains to an
activity when the confrontation between conflicting impulses and habits results in a
unified and ordered action. Goodness and happiness do not lie in future pleasures
but are found in the meaning of the activity. They depend on the proportion, order,
and freedom that thought has introduced. Perfection is not to be understood as a
final goal, but the ongoing process of improvement, refinement, and the path to
maturity. In other words, growth is the only moral end (Dewey 2015).
The mere knowledge of what is right in the abstract or the simple intention to
follow the right in general are never substitutes for the power of trained judgment. It
is not enough to have excellent judgment, as we can act unguided by it. It is not
enough to have only the strength to ensure execution of our actions despite the
obstacles. We must also have emotional responsibility, because reason and emotion
are constitutive of good moral judgment (Dewey 2020).
Moral Education
Dewey denies that education has an end beyond itself. Life is development, but
growth is not to be understood as a movement towards a fixed goal. Education
should therefore not be understood as a “separation,” but as the reconstruction of
experience that gives it meaning and increases the subject’s ability to direct the
course of subsequent experience (Dewey 1957). The purpose of education is to
enable people to develop continuously; however, this is can only be true when
social relations are balanced and when no social group imposes its ends on the other
groups. Only when the individuals who make up the different social groups actively
participate in the direction of common affairs does human nature develop; only
truly democratic societies enable the full development of human nature, therefore
(ibid.). Otherwise, the human being lives an alienated life and is not realized as such
a human being. The school becomes a form of social life, a community in minia-
ture. Learning must be accompanied by acting; the school must be a community of
deliberation and action that is in intimate interaction with social groups outside the
walls of the school. Any education that develops the capacity to participate in social
life is moral (Dewey 2018).
The work of the school cannot consist of the mere training of citizens. The child
forms an organic whole from the intellectual, social, and moral points of view as
well as from the physiological point of view. The moral end that determines edu-
cational activity must therefore be formulated in an organic, living way. We must
see the child as a member of society; we must demand that the school make them
able to understand their dependence on society and accept this solidarity (Dewey
2010). Moral education must focus on this conception of the school as a way of
social life. The best and deepest moral preparation is precisely that which is
acquired by entering into proper relations with others, forming a community of
work and thought. Education systems, in so far as they destroy or neglect this unity,
make it difficult or impossible to acquire a genuine and systematic moral education.
The child should be stimulated or oriented in their work through community life
(Dewey 2011).
Dewey exerted a great influence on Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp, creators of
the Philosophy for Children (P4C) educational project. Dewey identifies forms of
morality and education which do not consist of training. True education is liber-
ating. However, when a child is conceived of as a being that must be molded like
clay and on which habits and ideas must be imposed, we are training them instead
of educating them. We are reproducing an “unnatural” society, in the sense that the
alienated condition of the human being is being perpetuated. Moral education
cannot be reduced to the transmission of a set of values, as it is more important to
help children to achieve an integral and balanced development of the personal
dimensions that make it possible for them to face moral problems successfully. The
purpose of ethical research is to reflect critically, openly, and publicly in commu-
nities of philosophical dialogue on the values, patterns, and practices by which we
live. This dialogical form of ethical research, when conducted in an atmosphere of
mutual trust, respect, sincerity, and impartiality, can contribute more to forming
moral responsibility and intelligence in children than any other system that merely
familiarizes them with “norms” and insists that they “do their duty” (Lipman and
Sharp 1985).
In many moral education programs, we find a dichotomy between facts and
values. This dichotomy often leads teachers to believe that value education can be
treated as an autonomous discipline, separate from the other areas of the curriculum
in the same way that facts are supposedly separate from values. It is as if they are
two different things, with the facts being “objective” and the values being “sub-
jective.” The result of treating values in themselves, separate from everything else,
is to turn them into dead abstractions. Even worse, this approach involves children
in endless discussions about what we “want” or “wish,” rather than “what really
matters to us” (Lipman et al. 1980).
Lipman and Sharp’s educational proposal consists of establishing spaces for
reflection about the type of person that children and adolescents want to become
and on the type of society in which they want to live. This reflection can take place
through dialogues in which they inquire with their teacher into the moral principles
that they consider valuable and that allow them to live a good life. To do this, the
classroom has to become a community of philosophical inquiry (CPI) in which
students and the teacher listen to each other with respect, build their ideas on those
of the other participants, question their own beliefs and prejudices in the light of
their mutual criticisms, contrast the arguments with which they support their
opinions with others’ views to find better reasons, help themselves to make infer-
ential processes from what is stated, and strive to identify their own and others’
assumptions. These behaviors include cognitive and affective dimensions related to
personal maturation. They represent a powerful mechanism of socialization, and are
closely related to the construction of the moral subject.
The dialogue that takes place in the CPI requires, as a necessary precondition, an
attitude of recognition and respect for certain values that are already implicit in any
process of sincere dialogue. At the same time, the exercise of dialogue contributes
to the development and entrenchment of these attitudes, which have a moral
character. For dialogue to be possible, the following are necessary: (a) recognition
of all the participants as persons who have dignity and therefore deserve respect,
(b) recognition of the right of every person in the community to speak and to be
heard if they consider that they have something relevant and reasonable to say,
(c) commitment to reach agreements based on the reasons given, and (d) care for
individuals and the processes of dialogue, in order to achieve together personal
growth and growth of the community itself. The CPI makes a certain way of acting
in the world possible. It constitutes a means of personal and moral transformation
that may lead to a change in the meanings and values that affect the daily actions
and judgments of all the participants (Sharp 1991). Participation in the CPI helps to
forge its participants’ characters. It forges them so that each person feels morally
upright and acts in a way that is moved by the conviction that it is possible to build
reasonable and just forms of coexistence. Dialogue also enables agreements to be
reached regarding universalizable values that must be the basis for this type of
desirable coexistence. This “moral education” is achieved, in part, thanks to the

experience that happens in the CPI by establishing in it relations of sincere dia-
logue, mutual respect, and cooperative research free of arbitrariness and
manipulations.
Through dialogue, two fundamental values of a person’s moral dimension are
also developed: autonomy and solidarity. Such values are not learned through
attendance at conferences or lectures or by reading books. They are rather learned
through practice, by creating conditions that allow children to gain skills and
practice in acting critically, fairly, reasonably, and imaginatively. The members of
the CPI not only ensure the respect of the procedural rules of argumentative dia-
logue, they also take care of each other by working towards the growth of indi-
vidual members and the community as a whole. This attitude presupposes openness
to being transformed by the other. Such trust enhances assertiveness and autonomy.
The CPI, as reflective community action, is a praxis—a way of acting in the world.
It is a means of personal and moral transformation that inevitably leads to a change
in the meanings and values that affect the daily actions and judgments of all
participants (Sharp, 1991). It is a means of personal and moral transformation that
inevitably leads to a change in the meanings and values that affect the daily actions
and judgments of all participants (Sharp, 1991).
In P4C, moral education also includes character education as one of its funda-
mental elements. There are no significant disagreements regarding the virtues that
make up a person’s character. Lipman (2008) recognizes that honesty, loyalty,
responsibility, and other virtues are universally recommended, as are other virtues
mentioned by Bennet in The Book of Virtues or by Lickona in his book Educating for
Character: How our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility. P4C, in
addition to dealing with character formation, also recognizes the need for children to
examine and discuss the problematic issues they encounter. If it turns out that the
educational proposal put forward by P4C—whether it is called “deliberative dis-
cussion,” “ethical research,” or “moral reasoning”—works, students will have the
opportunity to discover for themselves those values that we have discovered in
previous generations. This, if anything, is the purpose and meaning of the com-
munity (Lipman 2004). However, some have noted a more conservative approach in
the character education promoted by Lickona and others. This approach seeks to
ensure that students develop their characters in conformity with classical virtues,
especially those of Western thought. P4C develops a more critical approach, how-
ever, which is strongly linked to democracy and personal autonomy. In recognizing
this problem, the relationship can be seen as complementary (Peterson 2015).
Lickona (2003) presents eleven principles that can serve as criteria for schools
and other groups to follow when planning character education and evaluating
programs, books, and resources. Here are eight of these principles:
1. Character education promotes basic ethical values as the basis of good character
and argues that there are some widely shared fundamental ethical values (such
as care, justice, responsibility, and respect for oneself and others) that form the
basis of good character.
2. Good character encompasses the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects of

moral life.
3. Effective character education must promote core values at all stages of school
life.
4. The school should be a community in which its members care for each other and
strive to establish fair and caring relationships among themselves.
5. To develop character, students need opportunities for moral action.
6. Effective character education includes a meaningful and stimulating academic
curriculum that respects all students and helps them to succeed.
7. The school staff must become a learning and moral community.
8. Any evaluation of character education should take into consideration the char-
acter of the school, the performance of school personnel as character educators,
and the extent to which students exhibit good character.
Kohlberg’s moral stages theory on the one hand and character education on the other
are two paradigms of moral education that have sometimes been presented as dif-
ferent. Kohlberg, who set the paradigm for moral development research between
1950 and 1980, was inspired by Kantian deontological ethics. According to him, the
goal of moral education is to cultivate powers of reasoning, judgment, and
decision-making so that children can grow from the heteronomous to the autono-
mous moral stage. Character education, on the other hand, is based in the Aris-
totelian tradition, which is concerned with the development of virtuous traits that
lead to a good life for each and every person. These models maintain a different
pedagogical strategy, yet the two ethical frameworks are not entirely opposed to each
other. It is true that in Kohlberg there is a certain cognitive bias giving special value
to the development of moral reasoning, but he also believed that his program had to
be applied within the framework of a school as a just community committed to a
democratic model o community living (cf. Power et al. 1989). Besides, Kant was
also a virtue theorist: Kantian deontology can promote prescriptions that guide
action as well as character education. Conversely, although Aristotelian virtue theory
may have inspired the modern resurgence of character education, that does not
prevent character educators from also being concerned with correct behavior based
on the ability to make good moral judgments and decisions that are as well-argued as
those of any follower of deontological ethics (Lapsley and Yeager 2012). The dif-
ferences between these two models of education disappear in practice.
Narváez (2006) introduces a third paradigm of education: integrative ethics
education (IEE). This paradigm offers a holistic approach to ethics education that on
the one hand recognizes the goal of cultivating the reflective reasoning and com-
mitment to justice necessary for the development of democratic communities, and
on the other hand recognizes that the requirements of citizenship in a pluralistic
democracy and the ability to participate in deliberative democratic procedures
depend on having a certain character. Integrative ethics education is presented as a
view that draws on the best of these two traditions, but also incorporates insights
from cognitive science, best practice instruction, and the ancient Greek notions of
techne and eudaimonia.
The IEE model incorporates four steps:
1. Establishing a caring relationship with each student.

2. Creating a climate that helps to achieve ethical character.
3. Teaching ethical skills both inside and outside the curriculum using a pedagogy
that allows one to move from novice to expert. This requires developing
appropriate intuitions and sophisticated deliberations in at least four areas:
ethical sensitivity, ethical judgment, ethical care, and ethical action.
4. Fostering student self-regulation, keeping in mind that self-regulation requires
exercising the deliberative mind to assist the intuitive mind.
The IEE model provides an intentional, holistic, comprehensive, and empirically

grounded approach to the development of moral character. The model is based on
ancient philosophy and current scientific knowledge about human flourishing,
which necessarily includes individuals and communities. No one survives or thrives
alone; human beings need others because we are biologically programmed for
sociability and love (Narvaez and Lapsley 2005).
Relationship Between the Ethical Treatment of Goodness

and Psychology of Moral Development
The above allows us to see that current moral psychology takes a global approach to
moral growth. On the one hand, the line of thought that focuses on moral dilemmas,
with special emphasis on the cognitive dimension (as in Georg Lind’s Konstanz
Method), is still very present. Philippa Foot’s philosophical contribution—both
claiming a more cognitive and virtue-centered ethics and highlighting dilemmas
through famous thought experiments such as the Trolley problem—is also very
important (Foot 2002). P4C follows those complementary approaches: it simulta-
neously maintains the cognitive dimension of ethical inquiry, character education,
and a strong commitment to democracy, education, and freedom. These elements
are very clear in the two teacher manuals focused on moral education, which have
very revealing titles: Deciding What to Do and Ethical Research.
On the other hand, examining naturalistic conceptions of moral maturity allows
us to go beyond simple themes of principled reasoning. This makes it possible to
analyze aspects of moral character and virtue that enlarge our understanding of the
mature moral agent (Dewey 2018; Walker and Pitts 1998). Some recent approaches
from the field of psychology support our hypothesis. First, there is a consensus
concerning the model of the five major personality factors. There even exists a
hierarchical organization of those five factors that allows us to talk about a general
factor (P). P is also correlated with Emotional Intelligence (EI), considered as a
personality trait (Pérez and Sánchez 2014). EI contrasts with another general factor
(p) of psychopathy, which is strongly associated with what is called antisocial

personality or evil (factor D) (Moshagen et al. 2018). In the same vein we can point
to important research that distinguishes between cognitive dimension C, which
indicates a good level of cognitive competence, and cognitive dimension c, which
indicates a low level. The research establishes a correlation between expectations of
leading a better (or worse) life and being closer (or less close) to C than to c: the
level of cognitive competence predicts different existential expectations (Abramo-
vitch et al. 2021).
Psychological research strongly suggests that personality traits predict people’s
behavior (Soto 2019), leading us to postulate that we can and should take those
traits into account when offering an educational proposal aimed at improving
people’s moral behavior. This suggestion is reinforced by the malleability of per-
sonality traits throughout one’s life span, although that malleability decreases with
age. It is logical to suppose that malleability is greater in childhood and adoles-
cence, yet it is also seen in adulthood; it is possible to intervene at all stages to cause
changes in personality and behavior. Such malleability can be problematic, how-
ever, as it is also possible to backslide to lower moral stages. This backsliding may
take place, for instance, if someone’s social and political environment worsens
(Colom 2018). We should distinguish, however—whether we are speaking of
cognitive or affective dimensions—between having a high command of procedural
competences (such as mastery of argumentation and rhetoric or good manners) and
whether these dimensions become habits of character or virtues. In other words, we
should distinguish between the pretense of having competencies and actually
having them. Some authors even believe that it is context or situation, rather than
personality traits, that really predicts behavior—or at least that the issue is complex,
and we must observe behavioral coherence on the one hand and personality traits
and contexts on the other (Cervone 2005). However, we must never forget that a
prediction does not imply an affirmation that something will necessarily occur, but
only indicates a degree of probability. This makes it possible to overcome the
radical opposition between personality traits and contexts. The relationship between
the two is rather circular or reciprocal.
It is thus not easy to establish a close link between personality traits and moral
virtues. This task meets with resistance within the fields both of moral philosophy
and psychology—although the approach is gaining increasing influence (Reimer
et al. 2008). Psychologists, especially those from the field of differential and clinical
psychology, are particularly careful not to explicitly identify psychological traits
with moral traits. Talking about a psychopathology or a cognitive dysfunctionality
is not the same as talking about goodness or evil, although the literature on this
topic usually links evil to psychopathy (Itzkowitz and Howell 2020). Similarly,
penal systems tend to exempt persons with limited cognitive abilities from liability
and consider that some psychopathologies may be at least partially exempt from
criminal liability (Steinberg 2019).
It is also clear that “a number of broad dispositional traits appear to have
implications for the moral personality. Certain dispositional profiles—high con-
scientiousness and agreeableness, and at least moderately high openness to
experience—tend to be associated with patterns of behavior and thought indicative

of high moral functioning” (Lipman 2003, p. 15). As we explained above, Narvaez
and her colleagues’ approach is important, precisely because they seek to establish a
bridge between an Aristotelian theory of virtues and moral psychology. This work
is focused on overcoming a deontological approach to morality, such as Kohl-
berg’s, which is influenced by Kantian ethics, and a more utilitarian approach, such
as that which is found in the work of those who rest moral behavior on the ability to
predict consequences at the time of making decisions. Aristotelian ethics provides
an integrated understanding of moral growth that accounts for the above aspects,
but moves towards the achievement of personal fulfillment, or “floruit,” according
to classical authors.
In addition to deontological ethics and utilitarian ethics, character education
programs as proposed by Reilly and Narvaez (2018) must also include the
dimension of virtue ethics. Virtue is related to human flourishing and development.
In this way, Reilly and Narvaez aim to constructively relate psychological research
to philosophical conceptions of virtue. Psychological studies are oriented toward
the three factors of virtues: (a) they are consolidated by habits, (b) they are situated
in a middle ground between two extremes, and c) they intervene in the development
of the human being. The philosophy of virtue, supported especially by Aristotle,
can benefit psychological research and vice versa.
According to cognitive science, dispositions to act are based on schemas, i.e.,
generalized knowledge structures that relate emotion, cognition, and action, and
which have developed from experience. “Habitus” as understood by Aristotle
conforms to the view of philosophy, which describes virtue as skill development, to
the view of educational and developmental psychology, which refers to the devel-
opment of expertise formed through extensive skill development, and to dynamic
moral psychological theory (Narvaez and Lapsley 2005; Narvaez et al. 2004).
Most research in moral psychology has focused on the activity of the neocortex,
which is related to deliberative reasoning, and has disregarded the systems
underlying it. The Triune Ethics Theory (TET), proposed by Narvaez, is derived
from psychological, evolutionary, and neurological sciences; the theory highlights
the importance of the limbic system and the structures related to information, its
processing, and moral behavior (Narvaez 2008). Inspired by theories of brain
evolution, TET proposes three moral systems, or fundamental ethical motivations:
(a) the ethics of security, concerned or centered on safety, survival, and thriving in
an environment, (b) the ethics of connection, focused on social ties or affective
relationships with others, and (c) the ethics of imagination, focused on creative
ways of thinking and acting socially.
Moral decisions are the product of complex reflections and deliberations: dis-
cernment of principles, formation of judgments, and assessment of the rules to be
applied. The moral subject has to take into account the demands of duty and the
consequences of their actions. Moral autonomy and moral freedom are based on the
rational ability to discern choices, make decisions, and execute intentions. In a large
part, moral behavior is intuitive, governed by unspoken processes. This does not
mean that it cannot be educated. The educated moral intuition is configured
similarly to how expertise in any field is formed. We are talking here about an
expert who is able to make decisions in an intuitive and automatic way. Studying
expert skill formation could help us understand how educated moral intuition is
formed in children.
The Narvaez IEE model articulates an expertise model of character development
and education. According to this model, character is a set of skills that can be
cultivated to high levels of expertise. This idea is not new; Plato believed that the
just person is like a craftsman who has specific and well-developed skills that have
been cultivated through training and practice. In The Republic, Plato repeatedly
draws an analogy between the practice of professional skills and the practices of a
just person.
Narváez and Lapsey (2013) have identified skills characteristic of people who
have good character. These skills extend James Rest’s four psychologically distinct
processes (ethical sensitivity, ethical judgment, ethical motivation, and ethical
action) by outlining a set of social, personal, and citizenship skills. The four-process
model provides a comprehensive understanding of the moral person, who is able to
demonstrate keen perception and perspective-taking, skillful reasoning, moral
motivational orientations, and skills for completing moral action.
Experts in ethical sensitivity skills, for example, are able to “read” a situation
more quickly and accurately and determine what role they can play. Experts in
ethical judgment skills are more proficient at solving complex problems, quickly
see the crux of the issue, and apply many schemes of reasoning about what to do.
Experts in ethical motivation skills are able to maintain their focus on prioritizing
the ethical ideal. Experts in ethical action skills are able to stay focused and take the
necessary steps to carry out ethical work.
In the 1980s, especially in Anglo-American educational environments, the
‘Capability Approach’ emerged, inspired by the work of Amartya Sen and Martha
Nussbaum. This new model is not exclusively oriented toward achieving what is
useful in providing subjective satisfaction, but instead regards the development of
human capabilities as an essential ingredient for the achievement of human fulfill-
ment, and an indicator of what a person can become or do (Amilburu 2015). This
educational proposal is broader than the proposal that is limited to favoring the
acquisition of competencies. The latter proposal is aimed at the mastery of useful
skills for the development of professional work and is susceptible to empirical
measurement. The Capability Approach, instead, focusing as it does on the devel-
opment of human capabilities, takes into account the things that are relevant to
producing personal and social welfare: that is, the conditions that have to be in place
for a society to be minimally fair. This is why “there is no lack of authors who
applaud the model of the development of human capabilities at a time when the
educational landscape seems to be dominated by the mercantilist mentality and the
interest in the acquisition of competencies oriented to professional development”
(ibid., p. 37).
The P4C approach to moral education encompasses all we have presented above,
taking in contributions from moral psychology and moral philosophy. Focusing
initially on the improvement of reasoning skills and critical thinking, it was clear
from the very beginning that higher order or complex thinking was a combination
of critical, creative, and caring thinking. The first of these, critical thinking,
underlines cognitive skills and informal and formal reasoning. The third, caring
thinking, underlines the moral dimension of thinking and personal behavior.
Instrumental rationality recognizes those means that “work” efficiently to achieve
ends, but it should be accompanied by value rationality that recognizes ends that are
“right,” legitimate in themselves. “Knowing how” is not enough. We also need to
know the why and the what for; the “why” being the values or principles that guide
the action, and the “what for” being the ends we are seeking.
In researching the impact of the practice of the CPI as understood by the P4C
program, four high school philosophy teachers and a professor of differential
psychology worked together. We accepted Royce and Powell’s theory as a frame of
reference and selected 39 personality dimensions: 23 in the cognitive area and 16 in
the affective area. Of these, 17 are basic dimensions, 10 belong to the area of style,
and the remaining 12 to the area of values (García et al. 2002). We found that they
are all enhanced by the program and are relevant to the achievement of critical
thinking (induction, cognitive complexity, abstraction, etc.), creative thinking
(fluency, originality, sensitivity to problems, etc.), and caring thinking (self-
awareness, cordiality, reflexivity, strength of self, etc.).
We should be aware that the relationship between personality traits or dimen-
sions, as defined in psychology, and virtues, as defined in ethics, is complex. It is
important not to jump to conclusions. The boundary between an illness (psy-
chopathology) and moral behavior (goodness or evil) is not entirely clear (Itzkowit
and Howel 2020), and we should be cautious. We have already seen that there is a
value dimension in personality traits, especially the two larger ones: the P factor,
which seems to indicate a personal stability preferable to any other combination of
traits or dimensions, and the p factor, which indicates certain personality problems.
The boundary between health and goodness is a delicate one and should neither be
confused nor separated. This point may be much clearer in the D factor, which is also
called Machiavellianism; it is linked to studies of particularly malign psychopathic
persons. Similarly, the correlations between a high (factor C) or insufficient (factor c)
cognitive competence and a more or less favorable life seem to be clear.
Exploring this working hypothesis is important to improving an education aimed
at people’s moral growth. From this perspective, we have initiated an investigation
that aims to bring some clarity to the issue, although it is currently paralyzed by the
limitations imposed by the pandemic on the normal development of education in
Spain (García Moriyón et al. 2020).
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P4C and “Self-Education”: How Can
Philosophical Dialogue Best Solicit 8
Selves?
Susan T. Gardner
I could be friends with a robot.

Aiden, The Thinking Playground CAMP, 2014
Educating Selves
Everyone in this room is a robot except for one, and you know who that is!
Such an exhortation at the beginning of a P4C camp session1 dedicated to exploring

the “other minds problem” turned out to be a slick way to excite youngsters’
interest, as it immediately laid bare the problem with “other minds,” namely that
they are invisible. The ensuing dialogue, which focused on the difference between
being a friend with another human and being a friend with a robot exposed the
problem as having more layers of complexity. That is, participants quickly decided
that the important question was not whether or not a robot had a “mind,” but
whether or not a robot had a “mind of its own”; whether a robot could make its
“own” decisions; whether a robot could be said to have a “self” with which to be
1
The Thinking Playground https://www.thinkingplayground.org/ is a summer P4C camp for
children ages 7–12, jointly sponsored by The Vancouver Institute of Philosophy for Children
https://www.VIP4C.ca and The University of the Fraser Valley.
S. T. Gardner (&)
Capilano University, Vancouver, Canada
e-mail: sgardner@capilanou.ca

114 S. T. Gardner
friends. In comparing robots to animals, many in the group came to the conclusion
that though animals clearly have minds in the sense that they can see and hear and
solve problems, etc., since animals like frogs, squirrels, and rats are completely
determined by their instincts, they could not be said to have “minds of their own,”
i.e., they could not be said to have “a self,” in the self-determining sense. They thus
concluded that both minds and selves are invisible, but that the latter, i.e., whether
robots have “selves” ought to be the focus when trying to decide if one could really
be friends with a robot because surely you could not be a friend with a robot unless
the robot could decide for itself whether it wanted to be friends with you.
This intriguing fact, i.e., that we cannot see another’s mind or self, finds its way
into a number of Hollywood productions. The plot of Stepford Wives, produced in
2004, revolves around the indistinguishability of “selfless” (not so nice) robots and
“selfed” humans, while Her, produced in 2013, presents an intriguing case of the
possibility of falling in love with a “selfless” operating system.
Though central to metaphysics, and exciting for entertainment, this fact, that
selves are invisible, has received insufficient attention in the field of P4C, and
virtually none in the field of education in general. This may not be surprising as the
enthusiasm to enrich “minds” both with essential information as well as with
critical, creative, and cooperative inquiry skills, may blind educators to the fact that
their initiatives (even those that are dialogical) may not touch how children view
themselves, nor how they ought to function in the world as they find it. This
tendency to over-focus on empowering intellectual competence, in turn, can be
reinforced by the need to utilize evaluative tools that are designed to measure easily
accessed intellectual skills, e.g., The New Jersey Test for Critical Thinking.
This is not to say that the importance of “educating selves” (as opposed to
enriching minds) has not been argued. John Dewey, for instance, in his book
Democracy and Education, argues that, rather than focusing on information transfer
or even skill enhancement, it is absolutely critical that schooling systems recognize
that, whether they like it or not, they are in the business of self-creation (cf. Dewey
2007b). Charles Taylor makes a similar call in his books Sources of the Self: The
Making of The Modern Identity (Taylor 1989), as well as in Multiculturalism: The
Politics of Recognition (Taylor 1994), with the latter focusing on overhauling the
modern university curriculum so as to make it more representative. And David
Kennedy, in his book The Well of Being: Childhood, Subjectivity, and Education
(Kennedy 2006), argues for the importance of schools creating an environment that
nurtures the transformation of the self from one that is rigid, and presumably highly
defended, to one that is quite literally a “self-in-progress”—what he refers to as an
“intersubject,” with “no developmental terminus beyond a continuously receding
horizon of ultimate integration” (ibid., p. 24). I, myself, have made a similar plea in
a paper entitled “Taking Selves Seriously” (Gardner 2011a).
Since few in the field of P4C would disagree with the importance of educating
selves, its lack of focus in general practice may be due to the “robot problem”
referred to above. That is, many in the field may simply assume that when bodies
show up, selves do as well, particularly when the educational strategy is dialogical.
It is this assumption that is problematic, and it is this assumption that will be the
8 P4C and “Self-Education”: How Can Philosophical Dialogue … 115
focus here. Specifically, it will be suggested that we ought to assume the reverse;
that for all kinds of reasons (discussed below), selves may not show up in dialogue
(witness the absent “self” of a robot therapist2) unless specific strategies are
undertaken to invite selves to the table.
It will be argued here that this notion that “selves may or may not be present,” if
kept at the forefront, will alert educators to the need for undertaking strategies to
ensure:
1. That educators summon selves to the table (through “through-and-through,”

“trapeze” and genuinely relevant questions);
2. That educators ensure that selves feel “seen” (through questioning for clarity
and depth and responding for connection) and, hence, stick around; and
3. That educators themselves show up as who they really are, rather than as
technicians, or even as the lead inquirers, which carries the unusual implication
that every facilitator will be utterly different from any other.
Of course, the central question is: Why should educators care if selves do or do
not show up? The answer is that if selves do not show up, selves cannot be
educated. So, if ethical development, or democratic citizenship, or authenticity, or
whatever, is on the educative menu, a critical ingredient must be the inclusion of
strategies that ensure that all parties are truly present, in body, mind and self. And
this is true even for potentially ethically formidable education practices such as
Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) with its pedagogical anchor, the Community
of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI). Facilitators must keep in mind that even though a
CPI is thoroughly dialogical, and even though there may be a lot of “talking” going
on, selves can still be absent unless particular care is taken to solicit their presence.
On the other hand, since dialogue, though not sufficient, is nonetheless necessary to
ensure the presence of selves, and since dialogue is inherent to the practice of
P4wC, it will be suggested that those in the P4wC community ought to feel
compelled to embrace the burden of soliciting selves precisely because they are in a
unique position to do so.
To Be Is to Be Perceived: To Be Perceived Is to Be Engaged
It is crucial that we begin our analysis with an all-too-brief account of George

Herbert Mead’s depiction of the development of the self. Mead (1934) argues that
the self develops as a result of interpersonal dialogue. It is important to note that
Mead is not arguing just that one’s self-evaluation is influenced by the judgment of
2
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/sep/17/ellie-machine-that-can-detect-
depression; https://thebolditalic.com/the-rise-of-the-robot-therapist-459b20f770a9; https://www.
psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/media-spotlight/201411/the-rise-the-robot-therapist; https://www.
apa.org/monitor/2015/06/robo-therapy; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6532335/.
116 S. T. Gardner
others; he is, rather, arguing quite literally that self-consciousness as such develops
because of, and only because of, social interaction. Without interaction, in other
words, there is no self-consciousness—a theory that is empirically supported by
experiment carried out by Gallup (1977) that showed that the self-consciousness
evident in chimps, as measured by mirror-related activities, is absent in chimps
raised in isolation. According to Mead, then, self-consciousness, rather than being
some mysterious metaphysical exudate of the brain, is rather an awareness (or a
seeing) of one’s behaviour through the fact that it is perceived and valued either
positively or negatively by others, i.e., through the fact that one is engaged with the
other. This is the principle that will underscore most of what follows.
On the basis of this anchor, let us move to the strategies needed for educating
selves, i.e., (i) that children’s selves, not merely their bodies and minds, need to be
summoned; that (ii) children need to feel seen by others; and (iii) educators must
themselves be engaged.
Children Need to Be Summoned
Since the self is such that it becomes present as a function of being perceived, in
order for participants in a CPI to bring themselves to the table, they need to see their
selves (not merely their bodies and minds) as being summoned. This summons is
very much a function of the question that grounds the CPI. In particular, it is critical
that (a) the question must be a “real” question (one that will be referred to as a
“through-and-through question”); (b) the question must be contentious (one that
will be referred to as a “trapeze question”); and (c) the question must be one about
which participants genuinely care (rather than being some academic exercise).
(a) A through-and-through question
Much has been written about the critical importance of the question around
which a CPI gathers. P4C founder Lipman insisted that the question be picked
by participants, thus ensuring the possibility of genuine interest (cf. Lipman
1988, pp. 156–57). Such a practice, however, can be problematic. As Jana
Mohr Lone points out in her book The Philosophical Child (Mohr Lone 2012),
asking good questions takes practice; indeed, one could very well argue, as
Mohr Lone does (cf. ibid., p. 29), that one of the primary goals of P4C is
precisely to educate participants to ask themselves good questions. If such is the
case, then clearly asking participants to supply the inquiry questions at the
outset seems like putting the cart before the horse. Much dispute remains with
regard to this issue, something Wendy Turgeon portrays in her article “The Art
and Danger of the Question: The History of the Question and Its Place Within
the Practice of Philosophy for Children” (Turgeon 2015). However, whatever
one’s view about supplying or soliciting questions, there is one thread that
binds most P4wC practitioners, and that is that the question must be a genuine
or “real” question for both the participants and for the facilitator; one that will
be referred to here as a “through-and-through question.” This is so because, in
the normal course of events, students are pummeled with “fake” or one-way
questions, i.e., questions which are just traps to see whether the victim’s answer
can match up to that of the poser, e.g., “What is the capital of France?” In such
situations, it is hardly surprising that students attempt to protect themselves
from ridicule by limiting self-exposure. They will keep who they really are
hidden from view.
In order to ensure that mere lip-service is not paid to the importance of a

through-and-through question, i.e., in order to avoid the seduction of invisible
indoctrination, I would argue that it is imperative that the facilitator eschew any
topic, whether brought to the table by a participant or by the facilitator, about
which there is a fairly settled view. In this regard, facilitators (indeed all
so-called question-askers) must be alert to the temptation of fielding moralizing
questions, e.g., “Is bullying alright?” or “Is it okay to cheat on an exam?”; these
tend to be particularly appetizing as they seem like nice little traps for ensnaring
victims, i.e., ways to insert values. Their obviousness, though, ought to sound
the alarm. Most victims will eventually figure out that these are not real
questions about which they are being asked to inquire. Most will surmise that
they are being asked, rather, to serve as receptacles for the views of others. The
result of not being summoned as autonomous thinkers will be that most will put
themselves, as it were, on hold, and just try to play the game according to the
perceived expectations of the poser.
Aside from the obvious non-through-and-through questions, there are other

non-through-and-through questions that are not so transparent, and hence, for
that reason, (at least it seems to me) even more dangerous. These are questions
that focus on topics about which particular facilitators have fixed views. Since
the fixity of these positions is idiosyncratic, that invitations to inquire are “fake”
may not be immediately obvious. Indeed, it may take some time and a variety
of subtle and/or not-so-subtle moves on the part of the facilitator before it
becomes evident to participants that they are being herded toward the “correct”
position. At this juncture, a sense of genuine betrayal is warranted; what looked
like a summoning of selves was, in truth, a surreptitious maneuvering to
summon canvases onto which scripts could be painted. None of this is to say, of
course, that none of us ought to have strong or even fixed beliefs. This is to say,
rather, that if the facilitator aspires to be a co-inquirer, she ought to avoid
facilitating inquiry with regard to the topics about which she has a settled
opinion. Thus, for instance, hard core animal rights vegans ought to avoid
attempting to facilitate an inquiry into the question of whether or not it is okay
to eat meat or put animals in zoos, just as a died-in-the wool conservative ought
to avoid the questions as to which political party ought to be elected. While
these are important issues, and may indeed deserve defence, they are not
suitable inquiry topics for facilitators with cemented positions, as such cement
118 S. T. Gardner
will almost inevitably stonewall genuine inquiry and hence preclude the pos-
sibility of genuine self-involvement.3
(b) A “trapeze” question
One way that Gadamer characterizes an “experience-enhancing question” is

that it is one that can clearly elicit reasonable support for both sides of an issue
(cf. Gadamer 2004). Specifically, he says “the significance of questioning
consists in revealing the questionability of what is questioned. It has to be
brought into a state of indeterminacy, so that there is an equilibrium between
pro and contra” (ibid., p. 357). “Knowledge always means, precisely, consid-
ering opposites” (ibid., p. 359).
For children in P4wC camps mentioned above, these are described as “trapeze
questions,” i.e., for a question to be fruitful, you need to imagine swinging from
one side of the issue to the other; you need to be able to imagine, for example,
that you might say “yes” to the question of whether or not it is important to
have winners and losers in a competition, but that, on the other hand, you might
say “no.” They are reminded that, from a phenomenological point of view, that
is what thinking “feels like.”
Peter Worley, founder of The Philosophy Foundation in the UK, has stirred up
lively discussions amongst P4wC practitioners by advocating a somewhat
similar strategy (Worley 2015), though he uses the more controversial term of a
“closed” question, by which he means one that is “grammatically closed,” i.e.,
one to which one could initially answer either “yes” or “no.” This is contro-
versial as, intuitively, one supposes that “open questions” such as “What is
required of friendship?” or “What does it mean to have inner beauty?” seem
more amenable to philosophical musings. But that is precisely the problem;
wide-ranging musings that go this way or that, or any old way, can result in an
amorphous discussion that can easily be carried out without bringing oneself to
the table. Closed questions, on the other hand, like the infamous trolley car
dilemmas (cf. Thomson 1985) (e.g., would you push a person onto the track if
such an action would stop a runaway trolley that was about to dismember five
others?), require one to make a decision. Since you must answer yes or no, you
have to, in essence, commit yourself, if only in your imagination, to either
shoving another to his death, or helplessly watching five people die, when an
3
Aside from avoiding the topic altogether, another way of handling such a situation is for the
facilitator to declare her allegiance at the outset, so that participants know that what is to follow is
not a genuine inquiry for the facilitator. Thus, for instance, a group that this author was facilitating
picked the question of “whether it was okay to hit a child.” The author shared with the group her
“cemented” view that hitting a child was always wrong but agreed to facilitate the discussion if
that was the wish of the group—which it was. Though an interesting discussion ensued, since the
facilitator, at no time, could seriously and sincerely consider the merits of the opposition, the
dynamic of the dialogue was such that it could not clearly be called a “community of philosophical
inquiry”.
action of yours could have prevented it. In his book Moral Tribes, Joshua
Greene outlines in detail the various MRI’s done on people presented with
similar scenarios that clearly show a self in conflict with itself, i.e., you can see
yourself implicated in the answer that you give (cf. Greene 2013). If you have
had to say yes or no, you have had to take a stand. Thus, inevitably, you
become present to yourself in any ensuing discussion.
(c) A question about which participants care
According to Peirce, genuinely reflecting on the merits of opposing viewpoints

requires that one begin with a genuine sense of doubt about one’s own position
(cf. Pierce 1955). Specifically, he says that it is only the irritation of doubt that
causes the struggle to attain a state of belief—a struggle that he calls “inquiry”
(ibid., p. 10). And elsewhere, he reiterates that the action of thought is only
excited by the irritation of doubt, which ceases when belief is attained (ibid.,
p. 26). John Dewey makes a similar point in his book How We Think when he
says that a necessary precondition of reflective thought is a state of perplexity,
hesitation, or doubt (Dewey 2007a, p. 9); that thinking only begins in what may
fairly be called a forked-road situation. This is so because “as long as our
activity glides smoothly along from one thing to another, … there is no call for
reflection. Difficulty or obstruction in the way of reaching a belief brings us,
however, to pause” (ibid.). And Dewey goes on to say, “General appeals to a
child (or to a grown-up) to think irrespective of the existence in his own
experience of some difficulty that troubles him and disturbs his equilibrium, are
as futile as advice to lift himself by his boot-straps” (ibid., p. 10).
All of the above suggest that, unless participants are already “on the road” for
which the question creates a fork, or unless the possibility of a swing to the
other side seems genuinely troubling, there will be no self-investment. This, in
turn, suggests that though abstract questions such as “whether numbers really
exist,” “whether a child’s squiggle could be counted as art,” or “whether the
ship of Theseus is the same ship at the end of the journey,” may well be terrific
exercises in swinging thinking around (philosophy is fun, after all!), selves will
remain untouched.
If we are to view P4wC as something more than cognitive upgrading, if we are

to embrace its capacity to educate selves, then the topics on which inquiry
focuses must be issues about which participants genuinely care. Such genuine
care is part of what Lipman calls “caring thinking” (cf. Lipman 1995).
Specifically, he says that “thinking that values value is caring thinking” (ibid.,
p. 6) and that “When we are thinking caringly, we tend to what we take to be
important, to what we care about, to what demands, requires or needs us to
think about it” (ibid., p. 7). And he goes on to say that “Without caring,
higher-order thinking is devoid of a values component. If higher-order thinking
does not contain valuing or valuation, it is liable to approach its subject matters
apathetically, indifferently, and uncaringly, and this means it would be diffident
even about inquiry itself” (ibid., p. 12).
120 S. T. Gardner
Children Need to Feel Seen
Once selves have been summoned to the inquiry by through-and-through trapeze

questions that focus on issues about which participants genuinely care, it is critical
that the facilitator, thereafter, engage in communicative moves of the sort that entice
participants to stay at the party. After all, if awareness of one’s self is a function of
the degree to which one feels perceived by others, then facilitators must engage in
strategies to make that visibility apparent. Specifically, it will be suggested that, as
far as it is appropriate within the confines of the inquiry, the facilitator ought to (a)
question for clarity, (b) question for depth, and (c) respond for connection. We will
deal with each of these in turn.
(a) Questioning for clarity
In supporting the claim that a facilitator ought not to hesitate to question for
clarity, I have argued elsewhere that:
since a facilitator cannot possibly facilitate a discussion unless she understands the points
that are made by contributors, she must be prepared, contrary to the “facilitator-reticence”
more commonly advocated, to question contributions until she herself experiences some
hesitancy (Gardner 2011b, p. 357).
This suggestion, that facilitators ought to question to clarity, may be alarming

to many. Since participants in CPIs are anything but expert in terms of artic-
ulating what it is that they want to say, the admonition that the facilitator ought
to question to clarity will appear, to many, to be overly intrusive. The worry
may be that participants, in an effort to ensure that they are understood, may
tend to speak to the facilitator rather than to the group. This is why whether
selves are present or not is such an urgent question. If the goal of the CPI is
merely or even mostly an intellectual enterprise whose goal is to enhance
critical thinking powers, then having a loose rein except to correct argumen-
tative errors seems warranted. However, if educating selves is the goal, then
capturing selves as they begin to appear by enhancing their clarity is essential,
even if this requires the facilitator’s active involvement.
(b) Questioning for depth
Having made the case for clarity, the case must now be made for going one step
further. Aside from attempting to understand any given utterance, the facilitator
ought to keep in mind the larger goal, and that is to get a glimpse of the utterer.
In his book Truth and Method (Gadamer 2004), Gadamer, says that “under-
standing is always more than merely re-creating someone else’s meaning”
(ibid., p. 368); that “a person who wants to understand must question what lies
behind what is said.” (Ibid.) And “If we go back behind what is said, then we
inevitably ask questions beyond what is said” (ibid., p. 363)—we move into
“the horizon of the other.”
The article “Authenticity: It Should and Can Be Nurtured” (Gardner and

Anderson 2015) makes a similar point: in order to unleash the “agent power” of
participants, facilitators, must get into the habit of asking the “second why”
(Gardner 1996) so as to inquire how what is said (or done) fits into the pattern
of who the person intends to become. Thus:
if, for example, the teacher asks Johnny why he hit Frankie, and Johnny responds that he hit
Frankie because Frankie hit him, the teacher needs to ask again, but why did you think that
hitting Frankie in response to him hitting you was a good idea? This is exactly the sort of
language—this is exactly the sort of question—that gives birth to the kind of justificatory
reflection that focuses on self-creation (Gardner and Anderson 2015, p. 397).4
This sort of second-layer questioning is “liberating” in the sense that this

“utterer-,” as opposed to “utterance-focus,” foregrounds the self and thus brings
it more into the focus and hence control of the agent.
Within the confines of a CPI, whose focus must also always be on the adequacy
of the reasoning behind the utterance, advocating this sort of “person-
perception” is a tall order and can only be accomplished more or less suc-
cessfully. However, that the goal will always exceed the grasp should not be an
excuse to shun it altogether. As long as the facilitator recognizes that
person-perception is, to a greater of lesser extent, part of her mandate, then she
will at least not be shy or reticent to question in a way that, in more traditional
academic circumstances, might seem inappropriately personal.5 This, along
with other strategies (such as making it a cardinal rule that everyone know
everyone else’s name) will help create an environment in which participants
recognize that their selves are welcome.
(c) Responding for connection
Daniel Siegel, writing from the point of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB),

i.e., a field that studies how interpersonal interaction affects the structure of the
brain, argues that interpersonal communicative interaction—both early in life
and throughout adulthood—play a central role in shaping the brain and, along
with it, the ever-emerging mind (cf. Siegel 2012). Siegel stresses that what is
important in shaping our identities is not just that we are involved in rela-
tionships per se, nor that we engage in interpersonal communication per se.
What is important is that we are involved in “contingent communication” (ibid.,
4
Or within a CPI which focuses on the question of “why Gus said to Kio that her work was
better,” a facilitator follow-up to the assertion that “Gus probably did it to make herself feel better”
might be “Does saying negative things make us feel better? If so, why does it make us feel better?
If it doesn’t make us feel better, why do we do it? Can anyone think of a personal experience that
might help us understand this issue?”.
5
In the discussion referred to in fn3, for instance, when a participant said that he thought that
spanking was okay because it changed behaviour, he was asked why he thought changing
behaviour “in that way” was okay. This led to a discussion of his own up-bringing which
subsequently led to extremely personal accounts by many of the participants, and even a few tears.
122 S. T. Gardner
p. 34), by which he means that we respond to one another in a way that

suggests that the other is seen as having an internal centre of subjective life
worthy of attention (ibid., p. 105); that, in communicating with the other, we
are attempting to see the other’s minds—what Siegel refers to as “mind-sight”
(ibid., p. 34). An integrated sense of self, or what Laing (1972) would refer to
as a self “undivided,” requires, according to Siegel, integrative communication,
i.e., communication that integrates us with one another, which, in turn, allows
integrative neurophysiological changes to occur throughout life.
In discussing “contingent communication,” Gardner and Anderson (2015) cite
R.D. Laing who articulated a similar theory some fifty years earlier. Thus, they
note that:
R.D. Laing (1969) argued that how we communicate with one another can either have a
confirming or disconfirming impact on one another’s identity, i.e., it can help or stultify the
process of self-creation. To illustrate his point, he used the example of a 5-year old boy
running to his mother saying “Mummy, look what a big worm I have got” (p. 102). The
mother responds in a disconfirming or stultifying way in saying, “You are filthy—away and
clean yourself immediately.” (Gardner and Anderson, p. 398)
They go on to argue that:
What is important to note about this example is that Laing is not faulting the mother for not
showing delight in being presented with a worm. Laing, rather, is faulting the mother for
not seeing the boy by acknowledging the boy’s agency. Specifically, Laing says of the
mother that she fails “to endorse what the boy is doing from his point of view, namely
showing his mummy a worm” (p. 103). Instead of using such “tangential” responses, Laing
argues that we ought instead to use confirmatory responses. He describes a confirmatory
response as a direct response; it is “to the point,” or “on the same wavelength as the
initiatory or evocatory action” (p. 99). Laing stresses that a confirmatory response need not
(importantly) be in agreement, or gratifying, or satisfying. Rejection can be confirmatory if
it is direct, not tangential, and recognizes the evoking action and grants it significance and
validity. (Gardner and Anderson, p. 398)
Against the more typical background assumption that facilitators stay out of the
way of CPI interchanges (Kennedy, for instance, speaking rhetorically, talks of the
facilitator being “killed and eaten” by the group (Kennedy 2004, p. 753), Gardner
and Anderson (2015) bring up the above issue in order to make the point that it is
critical that facilitators not be reticent about getting involved in a CPI dialogue. This
is the point that is being made here. That is, aside from questioning for clarity, and
aside from questioning for connection, it is perfectly legitimate for facilitators to
respond in a way that says simply “I hear you.” It is perfectly legitimate for
facilitators to say e.g., “So you are telling me that …,” or “so you disagree with
John when he says …,” before passing it off to the rest of the group to respond.
The moral of all of the above, in other words, is that if the transformation of
selves is part of the goal of the P4C enterprise, then the responsibility lies with the
facilitator not only to summon selves to this communicative adventure, but to be
involved in such a way that selves stay engaged. This will require much more than
simply being a gate keeper for whose turn it is to respond, and much more even
than ensuring that the quality of thinking is maintained. It is important for the
facilitator to be keenly aware of the importance of selves (not merely talking
bodies) getting involved, to know how to summon and maintain a “self-welcoming”
atmosphere, which ultimately requires not only questioning for clarity, questioning
for depth, and responding for connection, but, as well, that the facilitator bring
herself to the party. It is to that topic that we shall now turn.
Educators Need to Show up
Though attachment is a concept that is usually discussed as applying (or not) to a

parent–child relationship, it could just as easily be used to measure the success of a
relationship between a teacher and student—or for our purposes, a facilitator and
child—at least in its ability to conjure selves. With regard to the former, in their
book Hold On To Your Kids, Neufeld and Mate argue that adults are losing the
power to “hold on to our kids” precisely because that power comes not from
technique, but from the quality of the adult-child relationship that is presently under
threat due to both parents working, divorce, mobility, technology, etc. (cf. Neufeld
and Mate 2005, p. 50)—and with regard to the educational adult-child relationship,
they might have added an over-focus on the specifics of getting the practice right.
Since this power to bond with our children is subtle, its absence will not be obvious
to those who mistake it for force, obedience, or even learning outcomes.
The conundrum is, of course, that it is not at all clear how we can relate to our
children if we cannot see them. But, on the other hand, it is not clear how we can
see them if we ourselves do not show up.
And the problem becomes even more complex if we believe Buber (1958) when
he tells us that whether or not we form a relationship with another is not entirely up
to us; that genuine I-Thou relationships are formed in the “in-between.” The most
that any of us can do, in other words, is to walk to the middle of the bridge and call
out to the other in the hope that they will come forth. Walking to the middle of the
bridge, in other words, is what is required of the facilitator who wishes to meet
other selves so that they might benefit from the educational experience: from the
inside, she must be genuinely engaged not only in the process, but with the par-
ticipants—one with another—selves together.
A facilitator must keep in mind that just as she may mistake the presence of
bodies for the presence of the selves of the CPI participants (see introduction), so
she may mistake the fact that she shows up in body inevitably entails that her “self”
shows up as well. This is not necessarily so. To “be there” as oneself is to be
engaged, not as a technician, nor even as the lead inquirer; but to be there as the
person that one is. This means that every facilitator will be utterly different from
any other. This is scary stuff, as the corollary of this dictum is that one cannot keep
a vision of some expert inquirer in one’s mind and just try one’s best to follow her
moves. This means, rather, that just as every person is unique, so every facilitator’s
124 S. T. Gardner
“approach” will likewise be unique. This means then that, with regard to advice as
to how best run a CPI, one must follow the wise words of Ludwig Wittgenstein:
Once one has climbed up the ladder, one must then throw it away (Wittgenstein
1961, p. 151). Once one gleaned all one can about the mechanics or the necessary
conditions of running a successful CPI,6 one must then show up as the person one
truly is: as the person who laughs at what is funny, as the person who is surprised—
even shocked—by what is surprising or shocking, and generally as the person who
is clearly intent on being herself, so that others, too, may be comfortable in bringing
themselves to the table.
When talking about training teachers, Neufeld and Mate mirror this point when
they bemoan the lack of focus on “attachment” in departments of education (cf.
Neufeld and Mate 2005, p. 34). As a result, educators “learn about teaching subjects
but not about the essential importance of connected relationships” (ibid.). They
argue that “There is a misconception with regard to techniques” (ibid., p. 55) in the
sense that there is “an artificial reliance on experts.” “What matters is not the skill
but the relationship. Attachment is not a behavior to be learned but a connection to
be sought” (ibid.).
The Risk of Being Present
Given that being is being perceived, and given that existence, at least to most, is a
positive experience, one would have thought that solicitation of selves (so that they
might develop and grow as Dewey, Taylor and Kennedy suggest by substituting
ever more adequate self-representatives), at least if one used the sort of the edu-
cational strategies suggested here, would be a relatively easy matter. This is not
necessarily so.
While from an objective view, selves clearly benefit from acquiring ever more
adequate, ever more fluid self-representations, leaving behind an old self attached to
old ideas is a treacherous business. When one jumps off a trapeze platform, it is not
inevitable that one will land on the other side safely. This is uncertain territory, and
recent findings in neuroscience have confirmed that most of us abhor uncertainty. In
On Being Certain: On Believing that You Are Right Even When You Are Not,
neurologist Robert Burton outlines studies of the brain that show the feeling of
certainty has an addictive power similar to that of cocaine; both activate the limbic
system, the brain’s primary reward system (Burton 2008, p. 24).
6
In The Thinking Playground (http://thinkingplayground.org/),“the twelve rules of life,” or the
necessary conditions for running a successful CPI have been articulated as follows: 1. Fun—the
message is always that reasoning is fun. 2. Relevant question—based in a felt problem. 3.
Investigate for reasons- help participants find their reasons. 4. Repackage disagreement-so you
disagree with x said, right? 5. Aware of campers—names, no cell phones, etc. 6. Contingent
communication—mind sight. 7. Genuine inquiry—no hidden indoctrination. 8. Authenticity—
bring yourself to the table. 9. Silent voices—attempt to involve everyone (community). 10. Model
disagreement—if none arises.11. Translate into real life—how might this dialogue affect your
life? 12. Hidden premise—so you are saying that (hidden premise).
Thus, even if facilitators ensure that the question that grounds the inquiry is a
through-and-through, trapeze question about which the students care, and even if
the facilitator questions for clarity and depth, and responds for connection, and even
if the facilitator brings herself genuinely to the table in order to meet other selves in
the in-between, those other selves may still hunker in their shells, content in the
safety to stasis. Reponses such as “I believe that winning is the only important thing
in a competition and that is just the way I think,” or “Nothing will convince me that
it is not okay to hit back if someone hits you,” can be viewed as a participant “in
essence” saying “I am who I am who I am: To nudge me into trying on different
positions and different selves is tantamount to nudging me toward self-destruction.”
Thus, more than the above may be required to coax selves into the educational
arena. We may need to add to our arsenal that facilitators quite literally explain to
participants, before beginning a CPI, why autonomy (which is only possible
through being open to opposing views) is imperative for the very existence of the
self (Gardner 2009).
For now, though, the point is not so much to argue for specific self-conjuring
strategies (though these are important), but rather to argue for the more fundamental
truth, namely that the mere presence of bodies (or even minds) does not indicate the
presence of “selves,” and that mere talking in no way indicates self-engagement.
The point here is to alert facilitators that what otherwise might seem like a suc-
cessful CPI with “whole youngsters,” may actually be a CPI with robots (either
literally or figuratively). It is to alert facilitators that the way we teach and speak to
children can either enhance the growth and integration of their evolving selves and
it can do the reverse. It is to alert facilitators that for dialogical teaching to enhance
personal power as well as reasoning skills it must be more than just dialogue; It
must embody a kind of communicative interaction that, at the same time, enhances
autonomy anchored in reasoning.
So the final message is the following: Since educating selves can be done at the
same time as educating minds (e.g., nurturing reasoning skills), and since a CPI
(unlike other educational strategies), in its dialogical structure, has the unique
potential to solicit and hence educate selves, and since such “self-education” is an
education for “making a life,” rather than the more common educative concern of
educating for “making a living” (Postman 1995, p. x), it could be argued that
facilitators who do not activate the unique power of a CPI to enhance personhood
are remiss in their responsibility to their charges. And though the self-soliciting
efforts of the sort described above may not always be successful, this may be the
best we can do. Let us at least strive for that best.
References
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Burton, Robert A. 2008. On Being Certain: On Believing That You Are Right Even When You Are
Not. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
Dewey, John. 2007a. How We Think. Stilwell, KS: Digireads.com Pub.
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Dewey, John. 2007b. Democracy and Education. Teddington, Eng: Echo Library.
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Marshall, 2nd ed. New York: Continuum.
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Gardner, Susan T. 1995. Inquiry is no mere conversation: It is hard work. The Australian Journal
for Critical and Creative Thinking 3 (2): 38–49.
Gardner, Susan T. 1996. Inquiry is no mere conversation: It is hard work. Analytic Teaching 16
(2): 102–110.
Gardner, Susan T. 2009. Thinking Your Way to Freedom. Philadelphia: Temple.
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H. Karfriedrich, E. Marsal, T. Dobashi, and P. Schweitzer, 79–89. Berlin: Lit Verlag.
Gardner, Susan T., and Daniel J. Anderson. 2015. Authenticity: It Should and Can Be Nurtured.
Mind, Culture, and Activity 22 (4): 392–401.
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358. (Also published in Hermeneutics—Ethics—Education, ed. Andrej Wiercinski, 463–472,
Zurich: Lit Verlag).
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and Them. New York: Penguin Books.
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Boston: Beacon Press.
Kennedy, David. 2004. The Role of a Facilitator in a Community of Philosophical Inquiry.
Metaphilosophy 35 (5): 744–765.
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University of New York Press.
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Lipman, Mathew. 1988. Philosophy Goes to School. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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(1): 1–13.
Lone, Mohr, and Jana. 2012. The Philosophical Child. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
Mead. George H. 1934. On Social Psychology. Ed. A. Strauss. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Neufeld, Gordon, and Gabor Mate. 2005. Hold On To Your Kids. Toronto: Vintage Canada.
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Buchler. New York: Dover.
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Who We Are, 2nd ed. New York: The Guilford Press.
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Harvard University Press.
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NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Turgeon, Wendy. 2015. The Art and Danger of the Question: Its Place Within Philosophy for
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https://www.philosophersmag.com/essays/50-how-to-philosophise-with-children. Accessed 15
July 2021.
Paradox, Friendship, and Philosophy
for Children 9
Anastasia Anderson
Introduction
A braid of related puzzles is woven through the history of philosophy of education.

It arises out of a perceived tension between the methods and the goals of moral
education, and it involves deep and enticing philosophical concepts such as
autonomy, self, moral responsibility, free will, as well as empirical theories of
psychology and child development. Peters (1981), coined the term ‘the paradox of
moral education’ to name the problem that the goal of moral education is for
children to be fully rational, autonomous, spontaneous, people who respond
intelligently to their circumstances and yet, during children’s early years, they are
incapable of this, and thus early moral education cannot appeal to their reason.
Moral education must begin by externally constraining and shaping children’s
behavior and attitudes. Peters famously claims, “young children […] can and must
enter the palace of Reason through the courtyard of Habit and Tradition […]”
(Peters 1981, p. 52). Kant frames the underlying concern more generally as “one of
the greatest problems of education” which is “how to unite submission to the
necessary restraint with the child’s capability of exercising his free will”
(cf. Kant 1900, p. 27). These puzzles raise educational questions about what form
of education is needed to foster authentic, rational moral agency, and prompt
metaphysical, moral, and empirical questions about how the leap to such agency
A. Anderson (&)
University of the Fraser Valley, King Road, Abbotsford, BC 33844, Canada
e-mail: Anastasia.Anderson@ufv.ca

128 A. Anderson
occurs.1 With due recognition of the breadth of the daunting philosophical issues at
play, I will begin by setting out an Aristotelian version of Peters’ paradox of moral
education, but I do so mainly to follow the thread provided by Aristotle’s response
to it. I will argue that moral education loosens the knot of the paradox if it facilitates
children’s participation in the creation of their moral characters. I will argue that
children’s communities of philosophical inquiry provide opportunities for children
to actively develop their own moral characters in a space which is best understood,
along Aristotelian lines, as a community of friends.
Aristotle’s Puzzle and the Challenge for Philosophy

for Children
Peters’ paradox of moral education has been described in a variety of ways (e.g.,
Cuypers 2009; Haydon 2010; Kristjánsson 2006). However, I will focus on a form
of the paradox of moral education that is found in Aristotle. It rests on the idea that
moral education begins in childhood with the shaping of character which can be
broadly understood as a “set of personal traits or dispositions that produce specific
moral emotions, inform motivation and guide conduct” (Jubilee Centre for Char-
acter Education 2017, p. 2). Our characters determine what we perceive as morally
relevant and good and how we react to the world. According to Aristotle, fully
virtuous people have both the virtues of character and the virtues of intellect, but the
different types of virtues result from distinct forms of education. Character is
educated through practice and habituation whereas education for the intellectual
virtues can take place through lectures and lessons (cf. Aristotle 1985, 1103a14-20).
Character education begins whether caregivers are consciously intending to educate
or not. It occurs as children absorb the social norms and expectations of those
around them. For example, imagine a two-year-old child is refusing to return a toy
that another child has shared with him during play. A parent might give simple
reasons to the child for why the toy must be given back (e.g., you must give it back
because it belongs to Johnny). If the child is too young to understand or refuses to
act in accordance with the reasons offered to him, his caregiver will still likely insist
that the toy be returned. The child will not be allowed to keep the toy that belongs
to another child because that type of behavior is not considered socially acceptable.
The child is being trained to share and to meet social expectations of behavior and
standards of moral action. As Curren puts it:
1
For example, Kristjánsson (2006) parses Peters’ paradox into a psychological question about the
possibility of the move from habit to reason and a moral/political one about whether it is consistent
and morally justifiable for the aims and methods of moral education to be at such odds.
Zimmerman (2003, p. 638) describes one problem as ‘the puzzle of naturalized self-creation in real
time’ which asks: “How do some children manage to develop the capacity to make up their own
minds about what values to embrace, by virtue of having gone through a process in which they
play an increasingly active role in making their own minds, a process that begins with their having
virtually no minds at all?”.
9 Paradox, Friendship, and Philosophy for Children 129
We are initiated into patterns of life, imitate what others do, and are trained from a very
young age in preferred patterns of conduct. Without such forms of learning, we would not
be able to acquire language, engage in reasoned exchanges, or regulate our own behavior in
light of relevant aspects of the world we inhabit. (Curren 2014, p. 485)
Aristotle suggests that the foundation of moral education is this shaping of dis-
positions and behavior. According to Aristotle, once one’s character is established,
it is very difficult to change (cf. Aristotle 1985, 1114a20-23, 1103b20-25). Having
noted the power and influence of habituation on our characters, Aristotle considers
an objection that I will reformulate and call ‘Aristotle’s puzzle’: How can one be
morally responsible for one’s actions if one’s choices are determined by one’s
character and one’s character is the result of habituation guided by external forces
such as family, teachers, and culture? (Cf. Aristotle 1985, 1114b1-5) All moral
educators and especially those who advocate for philosophy for children (P4C) as a
pedagogy that fosters children’s ability to think for themselves and that improves
their skills in moral reasoning (see, e.g., Lipman 2003), are faced with this puzzle.
P4C is an approach to education that uses adult facilitated children’s commu-
nities of philosophical inquiry (CPI). It is commonly used to teach critical, col-
laborative, creative, and caring thinking, or more generally, to teach reasoning skills
through philosophical inquiry dialogue. During a CPI, children are presented with
philosophically rich stimulus material and then are either given a philosophical
question or create their own for discussion. Throughout the inquiry dialogue,
children explore the question by presenting reasons for their responses, actively
listening to each other, critically evaluating each other’s arguments and being open
to changing their minds. The adult facilitator does not present definitive answers to
questions, rather he helps foster dialogue by encouraging the children to give their
reasons, ask further questions, listen, respond to each other, and reflect on their own
thinking. The educational goal of P4C, as put by its originators, is to help create
reasonable people (cf. Lipman 2003) or, as it is sometimes explained, wise people
(cf. Sharp 2018c; see also Gregory 2013).
The inquiry questions in CPIs frequently have ethical dimensions and P4C has
been promoted as a form of moral education because of the attention to moral
reasoning that occurs during CPIs. Moreover, as a non-directive form of teaching
that provides children with space to investigate and develop their own answers to
philosophical questions, advocates claim it promotes autonomy and education in
democratic citizenship (e.g., Lipman 2003; Burgh 2014; Sharp 2018d). While some
theorists have recently focused on the goal of helping children develop intellectual
virtues (e.g., Worely (no date)), it has also from the outset promoted the goal of
helping children to develop moral character through its focus on caring thinking and
community.2 Nevertheless, as Peterson and Bentley (2015) point out, there has not
2
See, e.g., Lipman (2003, pp. 114–15). Sharp (2018c, p. 117) writes: “The view of ethics implicit
in Philosophy for Children might well be called an ethics of care […]”. Elsewhere she writes: “it
encourages the formation of community feelings, which develop the pro-social virtuous
dispositions (such as sincerity, courage, care, honesty, considerateness, compassion, sensitivity,
integrity, etc.) and character structures of the children in the class” (ibid., p. 114).
130 A. Anderson
been much extended discussion of the role of P4C in character education (with
Sprod 2001 as a notable exception). In addition, the details of the relationship
between educating for moral character and educating for intellectual virtue have not
been widely explored in the P4C literature.3 Pritchard (1996) claims that while
habituation and character development is well underway by the time children enter
school, moral inquiry and the development of critical thinking skills help children
to refine that character and habit. Yet, the idea of ‘refinement’ suggests that chil-
dren’s moral thinking remains within the framework of their family, community,
and other teachers. Indeed, facilitators expect even very young children to have at
least some moral intuitions, some beliefs about what is morally right, and a general
grasp of moral concepts when they enter a CPI. For example, if we consider a story
in which the characters claim to be brave and then inquire into whether they truly
are brave, we are assuming the children already have attitudes towards bravery and
beliefs about what does and does not count as brave action. Aristotle’s puzzle raises
the question of whether these moral frameworks acquired through habituation are
insurmountable barriers to authentic moral agency. If P4C is to be an autonomy
promoting form of moral education that helps children become wise, authentic, and
morally responsible agents who can develop their own, perhaps entirely new, moral
outlooks that are not determined by how they have been habituated by others, it
must wrestle with Aristotle’s puzzle.
Unsatisfactory Responses to Aristotle’s Puzzle
Advocates of P4C might respond to the puzzle by claiming that if children become
capable of forming their own beliefs based on good reasoning and can critically
reflect on the family, social, and cultural beliefs that informed their early habitua-
tion then they can achieve autonomy and be held morally responsible for their
actions. One might argue that when it comes to questions of moral agency, the
focus of concern should be to avoid indoctrination which is relevant only to belief
acquisition. Copp (2016) suggests there is a distinction between moral socialization
and propositional moral education. He writes:
By moral socialization, I mean socialization that is aimed at building moral character – at
encouraging virtuous behavior and behavioral dispositions […] The goal of moral social-
ization is, for example, that pupils be honest, that they be tolerant of people who differ from
them […].” (Ibid., p. 155)
By contrast, propositional moral education aims to teach children which moral

beliefs to adopt. Copp suggests that moral education begins with moral socializa-
tion and then as children get older and become more sophisticated reasoners, the
emphasis shifts to propositional moral education. He maintains that moral
3
Discussions of education for intellectual virtues has borrowed from that of moral virtues, but the
two types of virtues and education for them are usually treated as distinct; cf. Kotzee et al. (2021).
socialization cannot be indoctrinal because it is an education in character rather than

in beliefs and indoctrination should be understood strictly as teaching people to
accept beliefs uncritically. The distinction between moral socialization and propo-
sitional moral education highlights one way in which the P4C movement might
approach the paradox of moral education. Some might take the position that while
character is largely socialized, the concern of P4C is teaching children the thinking
skills necessary to form well-supported beliefs and to assiduously avoid indoctri-
nating children into beliefs. However, given the close relationship between char-
acter and motivation, focusing only on propositional moral education should not
satisfy proponents of P4C. P4C does not seek to cultivate excellent critical thinkers
who are not inclined to act on their well-reasoned beliefs.4 Reasonable people, and
certainly wise people, have characters that dispose them to feel, desire, and act in
accordance with their well-reasoned beliefs. Sowey and Lockrobin (2020) point
out, it is not entirely clear whether and how moral habits and character are affected
by moral reasoning. Some studies, for example, suggest that reasoning alone cannot
undo early moral socialization of motivation (cf. Kristjánsson 2014). If the edu-
cational goal of P4C is to foster ‘reasonable people’ or to foster ‘wise people’, then
it requires an approach that aids the integration of reasoning and character. Moral
education cannot ignore the motivational impact of character.
Another approach to the puzzle from the perspective of P4C might be to take
issue with the understanding of habituation that is relied upon to generate the
paradox. Sherman (1989, Chap. 5), for example, in her extrapolation of Aristotle’s
views on habituation, suggests that the habituation involved in proper moral edu-
cation engages children’s reasoning from the beginning and that the starting point
of character education is the perceptions, judgments, desires, and emotions of the
child. Sherman describes the process of habituation as the shaping the child’s
already present capacity to discriminate between different aspects of a situation and
drawing attention to important dimensions such as those that make one emotion
appropriate rather than another. Habituation is, in effect, a rational process that
builds on the child’s existing ability to make judgments and to perceive ethically
relevant details; it is not mindless conditioning. However, as Curren (2014) points
out, we are still left with the problem of the influence of that parental shaping of
moral perception. He writes:
One may still ask whether the coaching that shapes a learner’s perceptions, beliefs, desires,
and judgments toward the good or apparent good enables her to critically judge what she
has learned and to be moved by reasons that are fully her own. (Ibid., p. 488)
After all, this coaching is toward the formation of a moral character that is endorsed
by the coach and the patterns of perception and affect are difficult to change through
critical reasoning alone once they are habituated into one’s character.
4
See, e.g., Lipman et al. (1980, pp. 159–165).
132 A. Anderson
Annas (2011), like Sherman, portrays habituation for virtue as a process that
engages children’s understanding from the start. She, too, denies that moral edu-
cation requires a stage that inculcates mindless habit and describes the development
of moral virtue as analogous to skill development. An education in moral character
requires that the child understands why an act was done, what counts as a similarly
virtuous act in a different circumstance, and recognize where his own action might
have fallen short of virtue and why. The child needs a trusted teacher who will
provide reasons and not just models to follow. A key aspect of Annas’ skill model
of moral education is that to become virtuous one must have the drive to aspire.
This drive leads to the desire to improve and to understand which fuels the
acquisition of moral virtue and the critical reasoning that might lead one to question
one’s teachers. However, Annas recognizes that moral education occurs in an
embedded context of a particular family, culture, religion, and society. Thus, she
addresses one of our puzzles of moral education. How might someone be motivated
to reject the moral outlook of the people, family, or culture in which they were
raised? Moral learners begin by having trust in their teachers. Their drive to aspire
might lead them to critically assess, analyze, refine, and even reject the moral
concepts of their teachers, but if the learner has good and beloved teachers, she is
likely to stay attached to and motivated by the moral outlook of those teachers.
Annas describes breaking away from the moral perspective of one’s community as
a possibility because one can become a member of a new community. She uses the
example of developing a concept of honesty that leads one to believe that one’s
parents and fellow citizens are dishonest:
My understanding of honesty is now pulling me away not only from the context of my
family but also from the community I share with my fellow citizens. I am not on my own,
however, for I still share a community with the honest, with people who think and react as I
do about honesty. (Ibid., p. 56)
The new community might be people one knows, or it can be a community of those
from the past or other places or simply an idealized community. Being part of a
community of the honest will allow one to move away from one’s birth community
without a complete loss of belonging; it allows us to detach from our teachers.
However, Annas acknowledges that this sort of detachment is rare and that there is
a strong pull towards remaining with the community of one’s beloved teachers even
when one has come to disagree with their moral viewpoint. And while she states
that the move from one community to another is ‘unmysterious’, she does not
describe how critical reasoning and the drive to understand leads one to identify
oneself with a new community to the extent that allows one to detach from the
original community nor does the drive to aspire fully explain how an individual
might develop new moral outlooks that are not framed in terms of that first
community.
Resolving the Puzzle: Friendship and Moral Education
Even if we grant that parents and other teachers engage children’s reason when
habituating their character, and even if we agree that children generally have an
innate desire to understand, we are left with Aristotle’s puzzle: How can one be
morally responsible for actions stemming from a moral outlook and moral moti-
vations that have been habituated into one’s character under the direction of others?
Aristotle’s own response to the puzzle is to insist that while characters do even-
tually become set and difficult, if not impossible, to change, one is fully responsible
for how one’s character develops. He claims that people, at least by the time they
are young adults, take control of the formation of their own characters and shape
them while they are still malleable. (cf. Aristotle 1985, 1114a1-30). This creation of
one’s own character is not accomplished through critical reasoning alone, but
through repeated actions, activities, associations, and attachments. In essence, he
maintains that people eventually direct their own character habituation and so are
morally responsible for both the characters they develop and the acts that stem from
them. For example, young adults are aware that by spending considerable time with
criminal gang members they will likely develop character traits of a criminal gang
member. For Aristotle, friendship is central to the development and maintenance of
virtuous moral character (cf. Sherman 1989; Hoyos-Valdés 2017; Brewer 2005;
Kristjánsson 2020). Inspired by Aristotle’s solution to his puzzle and without
attempting to offer an interpretation of his work, I take from it the idea that self-
directed character education that is not determined by early moral socialization can
occur and that this is facilitated through friendship. Although there are many loose
threads left to be tied in the account that follows, my goal is to emphasize an aspect
of P4C that is not widely acknowledged5 which is that children’s communities of
philosophical inquiry have the potential to be communities of friends. When
understood in that light, the role of P4C in moral education is broadened consid-
erably and becomes not simply education in forming well-reasoned moral beliefs,
but also support for the self-creation of moral character through friendship.
Most recent philosophical treatments of friendship follow Aristotle in distin-
guishing between different types of friendship based on their function (see Helm
2017). One type of friendship is for utility. These friendships exist simply because
the friend is useful for reaching a particular goal. A second type of friendship is for
pleasure. Friendship of this type is simply for the sake of amusement. But the
primary form of friendship for Aristotle has come to be known as ‘character’
friendship. A character friend is loved for her character and for her own sake.
Relying on Aristotle’s general understanding of character friendship as the foun-
dation for my use of the word ‘friend’, I take four main features of friendship as
providing a list of jointly sufficient conditions. The first is that there is a
5
The exceptions I have found are Reed and Johnson (1999) who argue that character friendship
(which they call ‘perfect friendship’) can develop through P4C and might provide children with
their only experience of it. And Sharp (2018b, p. 236), claims that features of friendship “can be
extended by analogy to construct a regulative ideal for the classroom community of inquiry”.
134 A. Anderson
fundamental equality and similarity between friends. The second feature is that
friends engage in activities together. They ‘live together’ in the sense that they
spend time with each other and seek out each other’s company. The third is that
they have reciprocated good will and recognize that in each other. The good will is
not of an abstract, universal nature. They wish each other well for their own sakes
rather than for the sake of pleasure or utility or a universal moral requirement and
will act in ways intended to promote each other’s well-being. Their mutual good
will is grounded in the knowledge and care that friends have of and for each other.
Finally, friends share in each other’s joys and sadness. When someone suffers, her
friends suffer as well. When someone is triumphant, his friends share in his joy.
How does friendship support the self-creation of moral character? One important
aspect of friendship is its activity. Friends choose to engage in shared activities. As
Aristotle puts it, they ‘live together’. The primary activity of friendship is con-
versation and the sharing of thoughts and ideas (cf. Aristotle 1985, 1170b10-15).
Dialogue between friends plays a powerful role in helping one shape one’s moral
character. It is a practice that helps develop one’s understanding and intellectual
virtues such as open-mindedness, intellectual humility, and inquisitiveness, but it
also engages the friends in critical reflection on the moral perspective of their
family, teachers, and community. Because friendship is not simply a matter of
friends admiring each other uncritically, but truly caring about each other and each
other’s moral well-being, one is receptive to a friend’s constructive criticism.
Friendship helps one avoid moral error and encourages reflection upon one’s
actions and their effect on one’s character. Moreover, it provides practice, habitu-
ation, in being the type of person who cares about and engages in critical reflection
upon their own actions and understanding of morality (Hoyos-Valdés 2017). Fur-
thermore, friendship offers opportunities to practice acting in accordance with moral
virtues as one has come to understand them because of the friendship. These might
be virtues such as generosity, loyalty, and bravery or hitherto unnamed virtues that
have been uncovered in shared activity with friends.
Aristotle describes the friend as another self. Each friend acts as a mirror to the
other.6 If the friends have a shared moral outlook and are perfectly virtuous, they
can contemplate their own virtue by observing and appreciating it in their friend.
Friends who are not perfectly virtuous also act as mirrors for each other’s char-
acters, in an equally important way. Just as a mirror can be used to admire how one
has done one’s makeup or can be used to aid in the application of makeup, a friend
can reflect an accomplishment or be part of the process of its creation.7 Consider
how this might work. In one scenario, you and your friend both adopt a new
understanding of honesty and act accordingly. You might fully endorse your
friend’s action and admire your own new moral outlook by appreciating its man-
ifestation in your friend. However, an alternative scenario is that once you are aware
6
The claim that the friend is like a mirror is found in the Aristotelian Magna Moralia 1213a15-22
(Aristotle, 1984).
7
Cocking and Kennett (1998) object to the ‘mirror’ model and prefer to speak of ‘drawing’ the
friend. I think use of the word ‘mirror’ works well to capture the idea of the educational import of
the friend as another ‘self’ and is helpful if it is not taken too literally.
of your friend’s acts and experiences, you realize that your new understanding of
honesty is not viable. You have been able to get a more objective, more accurate
perspective on the new moral outlook by observing it in your friend and so reject it.
In another scenario, your friend embraces a moral outlook that is unfamiliar to you.
You witness your friend’s expression of it in her life, critically assess it together,
and either help her improve or support her, all the while considering whether her
moral outlook or some aspect of it is one that you yourself should adopt. 8The
friend helps you recognize your successes and failures by reflecting them back to
you and provides options for consideration and possible adoption. Kristjánsson
(2020), also taking inspiration from Aristotle, has suggested that the mechanisms of
moral education through friendship fall into three categories. The first is emotional.
Moral education through friendship involves an emotional connection of trust that
enables the self-disclosure and receptivity needed for moral education. The second
category is ‘linguistic and/or cognitive’ as friendship provides opportunities for
moral reasoning and critical assessment of one’s own and one’s friend’s reasoning.
The third is epistemological because friendship allows one to have deeper
knowledge of oneself through observation of a friend.
Self-Created Character: Children’s Friendships in the CPI
Aristotle’s paradigm case of character friendship exists between adults. Aristotle

considered children to be unfinished adults and incomplete biologically, ethically,
and politically. In some passages, he claims they are guided by their emotions,
seeking pleasure, animal-like in their inability to reason like adult humans (cf. Tress
1995). On the one hand, he appears to deny that they are capable of character
friendship because their characters are unstable, and they seek out friendship mostly
for pleasure. On the other hand, he states that friends keep young people from error
and that they are fonder of their friends than are older people (cf. Kristjánsson 2020,
p. 354). It might be argued that children are incapable of friendship as I have
described it because they are incapable of the central activity of sharing thoughts
and ideas or are not yet able to have genuine good will toward a friend for his own
sake. If this were the case, then friendship could not play the role in children’s
moral development that it might play in later life. Empirical studies, however,
indicate that children develop friendships much earlier than is generally thought (cf.
Dunn 2004; Healy 2011). Just as P4C has long argued that children are capable of
philosophical reasoning earlier than they are usually given credit for, I suggest that
even young children can form communities of philosophical inquiry that can
become communities of friends. My claim is not that they always become such
8
Sherman (1987) describes Aristotle’s conception of character friendship as allowing for different,
but complementary character traits to develop among friends with reference to Eudemian Ethics
(EE)1245a30-34 and quotes EE 1172a10-15: “The friendship of good persons is good, being
increased by their companionship and they are thought to become better too by their activities and
by improving each other; for from each other they take the mold of characteristic they approve.”
136 A. Anderson
communities, and when I refer to a CPI, I do not mean a single session, but the
community that can develop through P4C (cf. Sharp 2018a). However, given time
and appropriate facilitation, it is not rare for a CPI to become a community of
friends.9 When this does happen, these communities have a profound role to play in
children’s moral development.
It is common to think of friendship as it exists between two people. However,
friendship is possible between more than two. Aristotle, for example, limits how
many friends one can have only by how many it is possible to know well, spend
time with, be good towards, and have deep feelings for (cf. Aristotle 1985, 1158a
10–18). He allows for friendship among communities of people and the features of
friendship (i.e., equality/similarity, shared activity, mutual good will, and sharing of
joys and sorrows) can indeed be found in children’s CPIs. The similarity and
equality between the children in a CPI exist because of their closeness in age, their
common role as students, their shared status as children, and their philosophical
inquisitiveness.10 Similarity also exists because they all play an equal role within
the community of philosophical inquiry. They have an equal right to speak and an
equal right to be heard. They are equals in the sense that the facilitator does not
dictate answers to the inquiry questions, rather she facilitates the inquiry dialogue as
it is developed by the children who are equally treated with respect by the facilitator
and by each other once the community is fully established. This is neither to deny
that there can be vast differences between children nor to deny that social privileges
and burdens get brought into the community with them. However, it emphasizes
how important it is for the facilitator to focus attention on creating the conditions
necessary for equality in the CPI. Equality among community members is partic-
ularly important to moral self-development because it is part of what allows for the
trust, care, and mirroring needed for shaping character. As Hoyos-Valdés (2017)
notes, with reference to the empirical work of Dunn (2004), children as young as
two years old behave differently with friends than with parents or siblings. There is
more ‘other-oriented’ reasoning that occurs in the play of the friends, and this is due
to the equality of power in the relationship. “In the case of friendship, coordination
with the equal, not just conformation to the role model image is what drives friends’
moral and intellectual growth”(Hoyos-Valdés 2017, p. 77). The equality of the
members of the CPI means that each child’s burgeoning character presents a live
option for every other and the mistakes and corrections offered by the friend, both
verbally and by example, are grounded in that equality.
9
Reed and Johnson (1999) suggest P4C as something that is done in one or two hour sessions per
week will result in improvements in children’s reasoning and test scores, but are not likely to give
rise to friendship among the community. However, if the CPI model were to be embraced
throughout the curriculum, one would have the context in which character friendship could
flourish and the virtue of friendship could be nourished (ibid., pp. 191–193). I suggest that summer
camp is another way to nourish friendship in the CPI.
10
I take this inquisitiveness to be the desire to understand and an aspect of the drive to aspire that
is described in Annas (2011).
One mark of friendship is that it is chosen. We choose our friends voluntarily.

We choose with whom we spend time. Children may not have voluntarily joined a
CPI if it occurs in school, but they engage in inquiry voluntarily insofar as they are
never required to speak, never required to participate. Thus, there is an element of
choice in activity within the CPI. By engaging in philosophical dialogue, children
choose to share what Aristotle describes as the central activity of friendship. They
share conversation and thoughts. The dialogues that are the focus of the activity in
the CPI allow children to investigate concepts, consider different ways of under-
standing moral landscapes, and imaginatively adopt each other’s perspectives and
experiences. The community, as one that values and promotes caring thinking,
respectful listening, and cooperative inquiry is one in which members can develop
good will for each other and practice it through their actions within the community.
The equality within the community and the practice of shared activities, plus the
genuine curiosity and eagerness to search for answers to the philosophical inquiry
questions lead children to trust each other enough to also share their experiences,
relate philosophical concepts back to their own contexts, and use their own actions
as examples for further inquiry. In this way, real intimacy and care can develop
within the community.
In communities where trust and care have been established, I have observed a
child ask the group whether he had bullied another child and if so then what he
should have done differently. I have witnessed a child relate a discussion of loss to
the death of her father, and another ask whether it is wrong for her to ask her mother
for new clothes rather than used clothes from a thrift store. Because of the trust and
openness that can develop in the community, children can indeed wish each other
well for their own sakes as they have gained insight into each other’s lives while
actively listening to each other’s reasons, ideas, and experiences. The emotional
component of friendship that can develop in the community meets the criterion of
friendship that friends share each other’s joys and distresses as their own. More-
over, because of the trust and sharing developed in the community, children can
have accurate mirrors and exercise their moral imagination in directions that are
suggested by their friends. Children can access the perspectives of their friends in a
more complete way because they have heard their stories, thoughts, and expressions
of their emotional experiences, and they bring that awareness and care to their
understanding of the situations that the friends find themselves in and the moral
perspectives they bring to it. Reed and Johnson write:
Not surprisingly my companions in the community of inquiry can serve, and will serve
when things are going well, as another self. Through occupying their positions and seeing
things from their perspective, I am able not only to extend my own intellectual vision but
also to correct the inherent limitations of that individual perspective. (Reed and Johnson
1999, p. 187)
Moral education through friendship in the community of philosophical inquiry

helps children to shape their own characters. This resolves Aristotle’s puzzle
because it shows that one’s character is not necessarily determined by external
forces nor limited by early moral habituation and therefore, one can be held morally
138 A. Anderson
responsible for actions stemming from character. How exactly does friendship in
the CPI help children to create their moral characters? Sherman and Annas may be
correct that when adults attempt to habituate children’s character, children’s reason
is involved early enough that it is a central part of that education. However, it is still
education that is undertaken within the moral framework of the guiding adults. The
child and adult are not epistemic equals in the process and while moral concepts
and virtues might be open for discussion between adult and child, they are still
being introduced from the mature world of the adult. Children, as they strive to
understand, absorb, refine, or even improve the moral outlook of their moral
teachers, are still largely understanding and evaluating their activities through the
perspectives of those teachers, and the attachment they have to them is strong
motivation to adopt those perspectives. However, through friendship with other
children and their sharing of dialogue and inquiry into philosophical and particu-
larly moral questions, children have mirrors to use as reference points for devel-
oping their own moral perspectives, feelings, and actions. Freedom to direct their
own habituation stems from the equality, similarity, trust, good will, and empathy
between the friends. In the CPI, children engage with others who are, like them-
selves, still children actively trying to understand what they should be and what
they should believe. They can recognize their own freedom because they observe
that same freedom in other children. As in adult friendships, the mirrors provided
by other children in the CPI allow them to evaluate their own behaviors and
feelings more objectively because other children will likely act and feel in similar
ways (and it is easier to critically assess one’s own outlook when one observes it in
someone else). Moreover, because of the similarities between the friends, any
contrast between the friends’ points of view and one’s own can bring one’s own
moral outlook into clearer view (Sherman 1987). The community of friends also
provides mirrors in the creative sense that they offer previously unknown options
for actions and attitudes that one can imaginatively try on as one’s own. The friends
present diverse understandings of moral concepts and offer constructively critical
comments on each other’s actions and emotions. The friendship helps children
embrace the freedom and accountability involved in becoming who they want to be.
Friendship in the CPI constitutes a form of moral education that helps children
create their characters by providing opportunities for clearer self-understanding,
assessment of different moral outlooks and emotions, enhanced awareness of the
freedom they have as children to shape themselves, and a team of friends who are
willing to share in the search for the best answers to moral questions while sup-
porting each other’s aspirations. It is important that the activity of friendship is not
simply an exercise in abstract reasoning. The moral reasoning occurs in the par-
ticular, embedded, emotional context of the friendship. The friendship helps chil-
dren become the kinds of people who seek reflectively and carefully for moral
understanding, but also gives them opportunities to put new moral understanding
into practice both within the CPI and in actions with their friends outside of the
inquiry dialogue. Just as parents and teachers tell stories and present role models of
virtue as part of habituating children’s characters, in the CPI, friends tell their own
stories and reason through their own options in ways that develop their moral
dispositions, emotions, and motivations. The emotional component of friendship is

of vital importance to its role in moral education. The friendship among the children
involves attachment to the members of the community so that as dialogue and other
philosophical activities unfold, they have emotional resonance. The children feel
together as well as think together so that when ideas and experiences are shared,
motivational elements that help prompt moral development such as the desire to
help another, and to improve oneself, shame, care, pride, joy, and sadness can be
present (Hoyos-Valdés 2017). The attachment that friends in the CPI have to each
other also offers a way to fill in the missing piece of Annas’ story of how it is
possible for people to reject the moral standpoint of their teachers despite the
motivational force of their attachment to them. The friends in the CPI form a
community of children who share the desire to inquire and understand. It is neither
a community that is directed by adults nor is it a community of those who have a
settled and agreed upon moral outlook. Rather, it is a friendship, a caring rela-
tionship between equals, which supports their independent moral habituation and
allows for a plurality of conceptions of virtuous moral character to develop. From
their attachment to this community of friends and the moral education that can result
from it, children may more easily come to identify with new moral communities
and detachment from their early moral teachers becomes a more realistic possibility.
The Limits of Character Creation Through Friendship
The activity of friendship in the CPI allows children to develop and implement new
understandings of what it means to have a good character, what should be valued,
and what is morally right. It is an activity that both embraces and benefits from
pluralism. The more diversity you have among the group of friends, the more
opportunity there is to understand other perspectives and develop new moral out-
looks. The friends can practice constructing their own habits that ‘tradition’ informs
but does not constrain. Thus, there can be genuine moral creativity and newness in
the community. This freedom, however, might give some critics pause. For
example, Hand (2020) has recently argued that communities of philosophical
inquiry should include directive teaching of justified moral standards and that if this
form of directive teaching is not included in CPIs then P4C is missing an essential
element of moral education. He maintains that the facilitator of the CPI should not
be thought of as an epistemic equal with the children and when moral standards are
not controversial and are backed by good reasons, they should be presented as such
rather than as being open to revision or rejection. The idea of the CPI as a com-
munity of friends stresses the equality of the members. It is this equality that is at
the heart of the friendship and the mirroring that is necessary for moral self-creation
and the development of new moral outlooks. The directive teaching of moral
standards by the facilitator would push the CPI away from conditions necessary for
friendship between the participants because it would privilege the moral outlook of
the adult. Some might worry, however, that without directive teaching,
140 A. Anderson
communities of friends could develop what most of us would consider to be ter-

rifyingly immoral standards and vicious characters. The fear is that if we do not
directly teach moral standards and the excellent reasons for them, children will fail
to recognize the force of those reasons. They might think that unjustifiable moral
standards are in fact correct or that moral skepticism is the only justified position.
However, friendship within the community helps to mitigate these concerns.
When the CPI is a community of friends, children not only perceive the possi-
bilities of new moral outlooks, but, as we have seen, children can view their own
more objectively. They can assess their own choices and moral emotions more
accurately after considering them in their friend. Most importantly, a child is faced
with the question: can I consistently value this character in ‘another self’? This is
not an ‘anything goes’ process. If you cannot accept your moral character, stan-
dards, and values in your friend(s), then you cannot accept them in yourself. Brewer
(2005) argues that friendship will limit the range of acceptable moral outlooks
because some of them simply cannot meet the standard of shareability set by
friendship which he outlines in terms of self-affirmability. He maintains that
friendship will lead the friends to adopt moral outlooks that are universally
self-affirmable such that they are able to affirm without “what would count by its
own standards as error […] all possible embodiments of the same outlook, whether
in its possessor or in others” (ibid., p. 726). Without recourse to Brewer’s frame-
work of self-affirmability and remaining neutral on the extent to which friendship
results in an impersonal moral point of view, we can see how the equality, mir-
roring, and attachment of friendship eliminates the viability of some forms of
character and conceptions of the good. Egoism, to use one of Brewer’s examples,
would be rejected in the context of friendship. If the egoist looks to the ‘mirror’ of
her friend to examine and assess her egoism, she finds that if the values and desires
of her egoism were embodied in her friend, they would inevitably come into
conflict with her own. She could not consistently affirm both her friend’s fully
egoist moral outlook and her own. If she cannot value this moral outlook in her
friend, her mirror, she also cannot value it in herself.
Friendship limits what we can accept as moral and clarifies what we need to train
ourselves to avoid. As Brewer points out, friendship may not eliminate all forms of
vice, but it will eliminate some of the most common. Together, in dialogue, in
action, in sharing reasons and experiences, the community of friends will strive to
reach consistency and coherence in their views. The caring and good will shared by
the friends also contributes to limiting the kinds of characters that the friends can
endorse. One has good will for one’s friend for their own sake. Indeed, a moral
outlook that denies the friend’s intrinsic value cannot develop within the context of
the friendship. It would be tantamount to denying one’s own intrinsic value. There
will still be room for pluralism within a community of friends, and not all differ-
ences will be ruled out. There will be many live options for moral outlooks that are
consistent with each other. However, the moral outlooks developed through
friendship would lead to embracing the sorts of moral standards that Hand (2018)
claims should be taught directly: prohibitions on killing and causing harm, stealing,
lying, and cheating (cf. ibid, p. 68). One could scarcely consistently endorse one’s
friend embracing the moral character of a murderer, thief, liar, or cheat. And if I
cannot consistently embrace these character traits in my friend then I cannot con-
sistently work to shape my own character in those ways. The CPI as a community
of friends who are inquiring into what kind of person each member should strive to
be, will be offering their own perspectives, reasons, and emotional appeals to the
group to be critically scrutinized, but ultimately from the perspective of friendship
and the limits that it implies.
Conclusion
Aristotle’s puzzle of moral education is solved once the role of friendship in moral
development and education is recognized. Friendship provides the contexts that
allow us to assess and shape our moral outlooks without being wholly constrained
by early moral training. Even young children are likely to be capable of the type of
friendship that is educationally significant and, in fact, the self-creative, moral
education that friendship offers is likely to be most powerful when the friends are
young, and their characters not yet firmly set. However, friendship can be a hap-
hazard method of moral education. Friends with whom one can share philosophical
dialogue and the equality, trust, and caring necessary for moral growth are rare and
perhaps especially so for children given that they have more limits on the numbers
of people they can meet and interact with than adults. Relying on friendship as part
of moral education in schools may seem like a particularly unreliable approach.
However, educators do not simply have to cross their fingers and hope children find
the kinds of friends that help their moral development. P4C when implemented and
facilitated with an eye toward its potential to create communities of friends, offers
opportunities for morally significant forms of friendship to flourish. The friendship
that can arise in a CPI offers both the freedom and attachment needed for
self-directed habituation of moral character informed by deep and objective
self-awareness, good reasoning skills, a diversity of perspectives, care, and good
will. P4C can play a vital role in moral education without paradox by focusing on
its potential to create communities of friends.
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Sprod, T. 2001. Philosophical discussion in moral eduction: The community of ethical inquiry.
Tress, D.M. 1995. Aristotle’s child: Formation through Genes, Oikos, Polis. The Society for
Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter 385: 1–19.
The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. 2017. A framework for character education in
schools. https://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/527/character-education/framework. Accessed 23
July 2021.
Worley, P. (no date). Intellectual virtues. https://www.academia.edu/33533846/Intellectual_
virtues_of_doing_philosophy. Accesessed 23 July 2021.
Zimmerman, D. 2003. That was then, this is now: Personal history vs. psychological structure in
compatibilist theories of autonomous agency. Nous 37 (4): 638–671.
Conceptual Analysis as a Means
for Teaching Intellectual Virtues in P4C 10
Introduction
Over several decades, the founders of the ‘Philosophy for Children’ (P4C) pro-
gramme, Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp, have developed and presented a revo-
lutionary conception of classroom education with the ‘community of inquiry’
(CI) as the guiding model. One of the last papers that Lipman authored (cf. Lipman
2011) contains his account of the programme’s beginning, which I will briefly
summarise here. Lipman started teaching philosophy at Columbia University in
1954. During the 1960s he became more interested in the discipline of education
and, as he recalls, “fell in love with it” (ibid, p. 4). He recognised his personal
change and “wanted to bring the two disciplines together somehow” (ibid.). The
key events that took place when Lipman decided to transform this plan into action
were the university riots of 1968. He found that the Columbia University admin-
istration, the faculty, and the students “seemed bewildered and unreasonable”
(ibid.). In light of these events he thought that all the parties involved should have
been more reasonable and wondered whether their absence of reasonableness could
be explained by failures of the educational system. As a result, he began to
experiment with the idea that a Logic and Critical Thinking course could be revised
“so as to make children think more reasonably, more reflectively, more critically”
(ibid.). The idea for the P4C programme was born.
I present this brief anecdote of how the P4C programme started to give an idea of
the relationship between the two disciplines philosophy and education that Lipman
intended to bring together. To this end I am particularly interested in how philos-
ophy’s role is viewed in this relationship. Philosophy’s role in its relationship with
education can tell us more about the concept of philosophy that became part of the
programmes’ foundation. In this regard, it is particularly interesting that, according
F. Franken Figueiredo (&)

IFILNOVA, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
e-mail: florianfigueiredo@fcsh.unl.pt

146 F. Franken Figueiredo
to Lipman, philosophy as it is practised at universities had to be redesigned for

children’s use in order to fit into the idea of the P4C programme. The programme’s
aim is to “reorient students away from their strictly knowledge-seeking motivation
and towards an inquiry-based orientation in its place” (ibid., p. 5). In its new design,
what the founders conceived of as philosophy was subordinated to educational
goals. This means that according to their view two things are negated: First, as the
model of philosophy is subordinated to the programme’s educational goals, the
founders did not consider it as part of P4C that the programme and/or its compo-
nents become the focus of philosophical reflection. Being primarily an educational
programme, P4C does not imply the ‘Philosophy of P4C’. Second, and more
generally, the P4C programme is not conceived of as committed to philosophy in
the way that philosophy is practised at universities. It thus is a misunderstanding of
the word ‘Philosophy’ in Philosophy for/with Children if one expects that propo-
nents of the programme are committed either to philosophical reflection on the
programme or to academic philosophy in any way.1
If this is correct, then from the beginning of the programme onward the founders
had no obligation to reflect philosophically on its theoretical framework. Lipman’s
idea of the programme was not intended to provide answers to philosophical
problems or questions. Thus, when the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy
for Children (IAPC) was established in 1972 on the campus of Montclair State
University, the philosophical investigation of the P4C programme was not among
its goals. The chief task of the institute, as Lipman recalls it, was to provide the
resources for disseminating and carrying out the programme, e.g., “the writing and
publishing of curriculum materials, the organization of experimental research, and
the preparation of teachers” (ibid., p. 4) In the aftermath of the institute’s estab-
lishment, Lipman’s initial idea developed into a worldwide programme that is still
experiencing great success: Thousands of teachers have been prepared as P4C
facilitators, P4C has been implemented in 50 countries and its material has been
translated into 20 languages, the merits of the programme have been repeatedly
stated and empirical studies speak for the programme’s positive impacts (cf.
Trickey and Topping 2004; Trickey 2007).
However, as with every educational programme, the P4C programme is exposed
to an increasing demand to justify its theoretical foundations. The demand for
scrutiny is amplified due to the fact that the curriculum devotes itself to ethics. As
Lipman points out:
there is hardly a page in the […] sub-programs in which some moral issue is not likely to
come up, hardly a page in which some conflict of values is unlikely to rear its head.
1
Therefore the question whether or not P4C is philosophy (cf. Daniel and Auriac 2011) does not
need to concern us here.
10 Conceptual Analysis as a Means for Teaching ... 147
The ethical inquiry approach aims at more than the development of virtuous individuals, for
it also seeks to contribute positively to the making of a truly democratic society. (Lipman
2011, p. 9)2
The fact that the curriculum devotes itself to ethics affects our evaluation of the two
points that were initially negated. As P4C is conceived of as a programme that
fosters moral education, it cannot be plausibly argued that it is not committed to
philosophy in the way it is practised at universities. Ethics and the nature of moral
action are among the main issues that are explored in academic philosophy. Moral
education, as it is understood in P4C, is thus committed to philosophical scrutiny of
the relation of education and morality. Moreover, although the founders and pro-
ponents of P4C have no obligation to relate the programme to the philosophical
tradition as it is practised at universities, they have repeatedly done so.3 The fact
that (a) moral education in P4C is committed to the philosophical scrutiny of
morality and (b) the founders have repeatedly established connections between the
P4C programme and the philosophical tradition raises the question of how moral
education can be properly conceptualised within the P4C framework. My aim in
this paper is to investigate how this question can be addressed.
In the first section, I will explore Lipman and Sharp’s suggestions for how to
understand moral education. I argue that both follow the idea that participants will
adopt specific values by means of the P4C programme. Their hope is that in
adopting and practising these values the participants will, for example, become
reasonable citizens in a democratic society. Both founders relate P4C to Aristotelian
philosophy, but it is Sharp who argues that the P4C programme is the proper means
for teaching intellectual virtues. However, I argue that the founders’ account of
moral education does not explain what entitles one to the claim that the participants
have adopted the virtues and values in question. Their account leaves a gap between
the claim that intellectual virtues can be taught and the argument that entitles one to
the claim that the participants have adopted them.
In the second section, I argue that the attempt to close the gap between teaching
and adopting the virtues implies a commitment to one of the following views:
conformism, realism or relativism. I argue that these views are either rejected by the
founders or they are not adequate for defending the founders’ account of moral
education. This argument suggests that we need to understand the procedural
processes differently if we are to relate P4C to moral education.
2
See also Lipman (1991, pp. 64, 244) and (2003, p. 47); Sharp 2018. See also Burgh (2014, 2018)
who follows this tradition and argues extensively for a model of democratic education based on the
idea that there is a relationship between education and democracy that goes back to Dewey 1916.
For critical assessment of Lipman’s view see Wurtz (Chap. 4) in this volume.
3
For example, Lipman was initially looking for a way to use logic to improve children’s cognition.
He suggested “that the logic [is] somehow concealed in a children’s story […] about a
middle-school child who discovers the logical principle of conversion, which [Lipman] had long
suspected to be the main building block of Aristotelian logic” (ibid., p. 4).
In the third section, I argue that the gap can be closed if the inquiry is conceived
of as conceptual analysis. Moral education in P4C is best understood this way as it
enables us to understand intellectual virtues as responsibilist virtues. The gap
between teaching and adopting virtues and values can be closed by the assumption
that participants aim for understanding as an end-in-itself. Finally, I show that the
conceptual analysis that is carried out to this end explains how participants apply
intellectual virtues.
The P4C Founders on Moral Education
One of the main goals of the P4C programme is to teach specific positive values.
Lipman argues in his book Thinking in Education that the specific values are
adopted in exercising good judgement and reasonableness, which are both
improved by means of critical thinking.4 Paradigmatic for his critical thinking
approach is the situated dialogue between participants that, among other things,
includes “challenge[ing] one another to supply reasons for otherwise unsupported
opinions, assist[ing] each other in drawing inferences from what has been said, and
seek[ing] to identify one another’s assumptions” (Lipman 2003, p. 20 (my
emphasis); see also Lipman et al. 1980, p. 45). The approach relies heavily on
patterns of argumentative practice that contains “procedural rules, which are largely
logical in nature” (Lipman 2003, p. 84). Lipman emphasises in his book that in
finding its direction, the dialogue is “disciplined by logic” and he points out that
“the moves that are made to follow the argument where it leads are logical moves”
(ibid., p. 92). As Lipman argues elsewhere (see Lipman et al. 1980, p. 133), this
does not mean that the dialogue can be reduced to the application of procedural
rules or that the education of moral values can be reduced to the education of formal
or informal logic.5 Beyond being guided by logical rules, Lipman mentions that
argumentative practice also contains creative aspects in the participants’ interac-
tions (e.g., building on each other’s ideas) and caring aspects (e.g., listening to one
4
Cf. Lipman (2003); see also Lipman (2011). Lipman is not alone in this assumption. See, e.g.,
Sprod (2001, p. 13) who points out that “to say that one is teaching ‘critical thinking’ is usually
taken to mean that one is teaching good thinking.” Elsewhere, Lipman argues that moral education
must not “be construed as a way of getting children to conform to the values and practices of the
society in which they find themselves” but rather “to encourage children to judge for themselves”;
cf. Lipman et al. (1980, p. 157).
5
See also Figueiredo (forthcoming). Thus, when Kotzee et al. (2019, p. 22) argue that “the study
of logic […] provides the clearest, most precise and most comprehensive account of good thinking
that we have by far”, their use of the word ‘good’ is certainly not intended to have a moral or
ethical connotation but rather an instrumental one.
It seems fair to say, however, that Lipman thinks of logical rules as in some way constitutive for
moral education: “We do not encourage the teaching of reasoning to children because we believe
that moral problems are simply disguised logical problems […]. But we do think it important for
adults to encourage children to develop a consistent texture to the fabric of their lives, and they
cannot tell what we mean by this until they can appreciate what it is for ideas to be inconsistent
with one another, or incompatible, or contradictory” (Lipman et al. 1980, pp. 180–81).
another with respect and being open-minded with regard to beliefs; cf. Lipman
2003, pp. 47, 166). He does not present an explicit account, however, that would
explain what the generic relation between those virtue-like aspects and logic is and
how they both result in the adoption of specific positive values that the programme
aims to achieve.
Sharp states in an interview with Maughn Gregory that although Lipman “had a
reputation of being very fascinated with the logical component of the [P4C] pro-
gramme […] all you had to do was to open the curriculum and you would see it
there-the search for wisdom” (Gregory 2011, p. 201).6 Sharp agrees with Lipman
that “[b]ecoming more reasonable is much broader than deductive logic which in
the end […] is mechanical” (Sharp 1987, p. 43). Although she interprets the call to
foster reasonableness as “the call to teach children to be logical” (Splitter and Sharp
1995, p. 28n2), Sharp seems to be in line with the view that formal logic is not
equivalent to the procedural conception of what it is to reason well. In terms of
conceptualising moral education, she goes even further than Lipman’s demand for
respect and open-mindedness. Sharp explicitly relates the procedural conception of
the P4C programme to the participants’ “ethical development” (cf. Splitter and
Sharp 1995, Chap. 6), which she describes as “the development of traits which
make it possible to form good judgements about how to act and how to live” (ibid.,
p. 165). According to Sharp, it is the goal of moral education in P4C to establish
what she calls (with reference to Aristotle) ‘intellectual’ or ‘cognitive virtues’, or
‘traits of character’ (cf. Sharp 1987; Splitter and Sharp 1995, pp. 19, 165, 178).
Lipman mentions the role of intellectual virtues in the second edition of Thinking in
Education almost exclusively in the context of his approach to violence reduction.
This approach is presented in the fifth chapter of the book and is not part of the first
edition.7 It seems likely that it was mainly Sharp’s initiative to address the issue of
ethical development and its relation to the P4C programme with reference to
intellectual virtues in the Aristotelian tradition. Lipman seems to have picked up on
this initiative only after the first edition of his book had appeared.8
Let us turn to Sharp’s suggestion for how the P4C programme can be conceived
of as the adequate means to teach intellectual virtues. First, it is worth noticing that,
similarly to Lipman, Sharp maintains that it is not the goal of moral education in
P4C to conform children to the values and practices of the society in which they
find themselves. She emphasises that “habits and ideals which are constitutive of
good character cannot be enforced through the unreflective transmission of rules
6
To say that one “would see it” is, of course, ambiguous. As Sharp wrote in a story from 1980: “I
think I know what a community of inquiry is now-when I see it. But I would be hard pressed to
spell out all of its characteristics” (Sharp 1987, p. 38).
7
His work on education for violence reduction and peace development is, to my knowledge, first
recorded in a paper published in the Proceedings of the 2nd World Congress on Violence held at
the University of Montreal, 13–17 July, 1992.
8
However, intellectual virtues are not explicitly mentioned in Lipman et al. 1980. The word
‘virtue’ is only mentioned a handful times and there, as mentioned above, in its relation to logic:
“[L]ogic helps one appreciate the difference between that which integrates one’s life and that
which disintegrates it” and “[c]hildren whose habits and beliefs have been coherently integrated
are the best guardians of their own virtue”; ibid., p. 181.
from one generation to the next” (Splitter and Sharp 1995, p. 179). The goal is
rather to provide children “with the opportunity to reflect on the ideals and virtues
which are the components of good character” (cf. ibid; my emphasis).9 Her account,
however, implies a circularity between the means and ends of the P4C programme.
On the one hand, values are not taken as fixed beforehand but are rather the subject
matter of the procedural processes. On the other hand, Sharp’s account presupposes
a kind of familiarity with these values that fosters the procedural processes, as it
seems possible to recognise the specific positive values as ‘the components of good
character’.
The circularity in Sharp’s account raises issues regarding (a) the children’s
familiarity with the components of good character and (b) the criteria for under-
standing them correctly. First, it is assumed that children are already familiar with
the components. Why then is it necessary to enter into the procedural processes in
the first place? Why should participants put their understanding of the components
into doubt by making them the subject matter of inquiry? Second, the participants
enter into an inquiry. What is the criterion for the inquiry to be successful? When
and how do participants know that they have achieved the correct understanding of
the components of a good character? Sharp does not provide us with a straight-
forward answer to these questions. She thinks that the answers will be given in
practice by carrying out and going through the procedural processes:
[P]hilosophy—when embedded in the context of the community of inquiry—cultivates
habits based on reflection and self-correction, rather than inculcation and rote learning. […]
It is true that habits allow us to form judgements and make decisions without having to
subject each and every one to scrutiny—a task that would make practical living impossible.
But habits do not have to be ‘blind’ indeed, as the building-blocks of character, they ought
to be the results of reflection and inquiry into experience and, moreover, be subject to
revision in accordance with these same elements. (Ibid.)
However, a tension remains in her account between the cultivation of habits on the
one hand and reflection and inquiry on those habits on the other hand:
Once a few elementary concepts, rules and procedures are in place, what remains is ‘doing
it’ over and over again in a reflective and self-correcting manner, and with a lot of help from
one’s friends. […V]alues and virtues must be both ‘taught’ and ‘caught’: they can be
discussed, analysed and explored, but ultimately they must be practised, embodied, and
lived. Here we see the appropriateness of the community of philosophical inquiry: phi-
losophy being the appropriate discipline for ‘teaching’ values, with the community [of
inquiry] as the appropriate environment for ‘catching’ them. (Ibid., pp. 179-80)
The idea is that P4C helps to internalise certain habits that are related to specific
positive values, which means that these habits “dispose individuals to behave well
in their relations with others” (ibid., p. 178). This alone is not sufficient for moral
education to be successful, however. As Sharp puts it, the values that are related to
9
According to her, the ideals and virtues are “not […] fixed and immutable […] but, like all
concepts and ideas, as problematic contestable and open to further scrutiny and review”; Splitter
and Sharp 1995, p. 179.
internalised habits must also be ‘caught’ by the participants, but she gives no
criteria for the occurrence of the latter. Her account leaves us with an unexplained
gap between the teaching and the adopting of intellectual virtues. As Curren (2014)
puts it:
One may still ask whether the coaching that shapes a learner’s perceptions, beliefs, desires,
and judgments toward the good or apparent good enables her to critically judge what she
has learned and to be moved by reasons that are fully her own. (Ibid., p. 488)10
Furthermore, it should be noted that moral education on Sharp’s account does not
rest on the teaching and catching of values and virtues alone, but seems to pre-
suppose that certain “elementary concepts, rules and procedures” are already
established. Laurence Splitter repeats this presupposition in a recent paper. He
argues that inquiry in P4C (including moral inquiry) is driven by a combination of
questions and certain associated dispositions and attitudes that “are known as
‘character traits’ or ‘intellectual virtues’” (Splitter 2016, p. 25). Splitter’s account
raises additional doubts concerning the claim that P4C can provide the necessary
means for participants to adopt specific virtues and values. As he argues, these
virtues and values are manifested in psychological dispositions and attitudes that
are conceived of as laying the ground for genuine inquiry. Good inquiry involves,
for example, the participants’ ability to self-correct and to identify the power of a
counterargument or objection. Splitter argues that this already presupposes attitudes
or dispositions such as intellectual humility, persistence, self-effacement, and a
sense of fallibility. However, if the procedural processes in P4C require that par-
ticipants already possess the virtues and values in question then the programme’s
goal can, at best, only be to confirm that the dispositional virtues and values are
practicable within the framework of the procedural processes.
Let us summarise the results of our inquiry into the founders’ accounts of moral
education. Their accounts rely on the following basic assumptions. First, it is
assumed that the participants’ moral behaviour is based on character traits or
intellectual virtues. Second, participants who enter the P4C programme are already
equipped with intellectual virtues in the form of psychological dispositions and
attitudes. These dispositions are conceived of as laying the ground for genuine
inquiry. Third, although it is presupposed that there is some understanding of what
the components of a good character are, the goal of P4C is not to enforce them to
conform children to certain virtues and values. According to the fourth assumption,
the idea is rather that, based on the dispositions which the participants already have,
they enter into an inquiry’s procedural processes and reflect on the ideals and
virtues in question. The inquiry is in principle open-ended but on a large scale it
ultimately leads to the formation of a good character.
10
One of the puzzles raised by the gap is the ‘paradox of moral education’; see Anderson (Chap. 9).
Here I will not go into the puzzle’s history.
An Upcoming Trilemma
In the previous section I argued that the founders of P4C present accounts of moral
education that leave central questions unanswered. Although they assume that the
P4C programme is a proper means to teach intellectual virtues they do not explain
how one is entitled to the claim that the participants have adopted the specific
virtues and values in question. Their accounts imply a gap between the teaching and
the adopting of virtues and leave unexplained how this gap can be closed. The
deeper problem, however, is that to close the gap one is committed to one of three
views that I present below. In arguing for this claim I am not maintaining that the
founders subscribe to any of these views, but rather that the attempt to close the
unexplained gap implies their commitment to one of them. This makes it difficult to
see how their accounts of moral education can be defended.
The first view to which one might be committed is a conformism of the sort that
the founders have rejected. According to conformism, children adopt intellectual
virtues and character traits through unreflective transmission. I merely want to
mention the possible commitment to this view. As it is incompatible with the
critical thinking approach that is at the centre of the P4C programme, conformism is
not a serious option for the programme’s proponents to defend their account of
moral education. I will thus leave further discussion of it aside.11 The second view
to which one might be committed in order to close the gap is a sort of realism
concerning normative questions. In using the term ‘realism’, I am following Gre-
gory (1995). Gregory characterises the realist as someone who believes “that ‘the
good’ is unitary (not relative) and that it too is readily knowable by humans” (ibid.,
p. 31). According to him, the realist is committed to the assumption of an objective
‘truth’ or ‘good’ and, moreover, to the attitude that it is possible to achieve
knowledge concerning the truth or good.
In terms of intellectual virtues, there are two different perspectives from which
they can be of value for the realist (cf. Baehr 2006; Battaly 2015). From the first
perspective, the value of intellectual virtues is produced by the virtues’ good
intellectual effects: e.g., true beliefs, knowledge, and understanding. According to
this view intellectual virtues are ‘reliabilist virtues’: they are conceived of as any
reliable or truth-conducive quality of a person. From the second perspective,
however, it is argued that, it is insufficient to refer only to the virtues’ effects in
order to describe their value. A participant in the CI, for example, might only want
the effect; she might only want to get to the truth without actually being virtuous. It
is therefore argued by proponents of this perspective that producing the effect of
truth-conducive qualities is not enough to count as a virtuous person; one must also
care about truth for its own sake, and in that sense take responsibility for one’s
intention to get to the truth. ‘Responsibilist virtues’ get their value from the par-
ticipants’ good motivation for their aims of truth, knowledge and understanding.
11
For a detailed argument regarding the distinction between moral socialization and moral
education see Copp (2016). Anderson (Chap. 9) argues that P4C cannot ignore the motivational
aspect of moral socialisation in moral education.
Is it possible that the founders of P4C are defending their accounts of moral
education with reference to either reliabilist or responsibilist virtues? As we have
seen above, there is good reason to assume that neither Lipman nor Sharp defend
the view that intellectual virtues are reliabilist virtues. Although Lipman holds the
importance of logical thinking skills in P4C, he also emphasises that he does not
believe that “moral problems are simply disguised logical problems” (Lipman et al.
1980; see larger quotation above). Furthermore, it is noteworthy that in Thinking in
Education Lipman develops a multi-dimension model of thinking (cf. Lipman
2003, p. 65), introducing the idea that inquiry in P4C involves critical thinking and
creative and caring thinking. I am not arguing here that his focus on caring thinking
might explain the nature of intellectual values or moral education.12 However, it
does show that Lipman does not think that moral education merely relies on a
person’s truth-conducive qualities. As we have seen above, Sharp follows him in
this regard.
The question remains whether the founders might be committed to a realist
position such that they conceive of intellectual virtues as responsibilist virtues.13
The answer to this question is more complicated. On the one hand, much of how
they understand intellectual virtues speaks in favour of interpreting them as focused
on the motivation of the participants. The aim of moral inquiry in P4C is for the
participants to achieve good moral judgement; the intellectual virtues are conceived
of as the dispositions and attitudes that drive the inquiry. On the other hand, there is
reason to doubt whether it follows straightforwardly from the founders’ point of
view that the participants’ motivations aim at truth, knowledge or understanding in
the strong sense that is implied by the realist position. The realist thinks that the CI
should offer the best means by which their participants may come to be in pos-
session of the truth and/or the good and is extremely confident that participants in
P4C may be able to achieve this goal. Arguably, this position intersects with the
founders’ position; Lipman and Sharp reject the view that moral values “are merely
subjective, or merely relative in the sense that any response is as right as any other
for a given situation” (Lipman et al. 1980, p. 163). However, their conception of
understanding moral subject matters “more objectively” (ibid., p. 164) does not
necessarily rely on a realist assumption of truth; it rather relates to the procedural
processes of the inquiry that “can help young persons move towards objectivity”
(Sharp 1987, p. 39). Sharp emphasises in this regard that:
12
In fact, I think it does not. I have argued in more detail elsewhere (see Figueiredo forthcoming),
that even if Lipman’s idea of a multi-dimensional model of thinking is not conceived of as a model
in which the three dimensions form a hierarchy due to reflexivity (or ‘metacognition’), but rather
assumes, as Lipman (1995) seems to suggest, that critical thinking is related to caring thinking
because of a partial overlap of values to which both are committed, then the model is still
problematic. It begs the question of how the values that are provided by critical and creative
thinking are justified, if the justification of those values is not simply presupposed.
13
Note that I am raising this question here only with regard to the founders. Of course, there are
other proponents of P4C who undoubtedly have been committed to realist positions, e.g., Gardner
(1995), Fisher (1996).
When I use the term ‘objectivity’, I mean an inter-subjective truth arrived at by human
beings through inquiry, experimentation, consideration of the evidence and dialogue. This
inter-subjective truth is always subject to self-correction. (Ibid., p. 40)
Lipman presents a similar view. He points out that the inquiry “aims at producing a
product-at some kind of settlement or judgment, however partial and tentative this
may be” (Lipman 2003, p. 84). Following John Dewey, he characterises these
settlements as “perches or resting places, without finality” (ibid., p. 93).14 Lipman
and Sharp’s statements raise doubts regarding whether the founders can be viewed
as proponents of a realist position. Arguably, the fully committed realist is willing
to accept neither a notion of truth conceived of as inter-subjective and based on
procedural processes, nor a notion of truth conceived of as a merely regulative idea
in a Kantian sense, without finality.15
This brings us to the third view to which one is committed if one rejects either
conformism or realism. The remaining option is to rely on some sort of relativism.
The answer to the question whether the founders subscribe to this option is also
complicated. On a first reading, passages can be found in which they strictly reject
crude forms of relativism. For example, in their first major work the founders
declare that “in no way do we assert that moral values are merely subjective, or
merely relative in the sense that any response is as right as any other for a given
situation” (Lipman et al. 1980, p. 163). Despite rejecting such a crude type of
relativism, however, they seem in principle to be open to other forms. This open-
ness is suggested, for example, in Sharp’s work. She attempts to differentiate
between different kinds of relativism and highlights possible intersections between
one sort of relativism and the P4C programme:
If relativism is the view that everyone’s opinions are equally valid and so can never be
challenged, examined or corrected, then we reject it utterly. But if relativism is the view that
there are no final answers to many of life’s questions, and that absolute certainty and a
failure to be self-critical are dubious virtues, then it is surely worth considering.” (Splitter
and Sharp 1995, p. 25)16
14
According to Lipman, they “provide us with grounds for assuming, warrants for asserting. They
represent provisional judgments rather than firm bases for absolute convictions”; Lipman 2003,
p. 93. However, as he points out in a footnote on the same page, the Kantian term ‘provisional
judgement’ that Lipman uses here also relies on some notion of truth, as Kant defines a provisional
judgement as “one by which I suppose that there are more grounds for the truth of something than
against it” (ibid.).
15
According to the division based on Gregory’s description of realist and non-realist positions (cf.
Gregory 1995) there are therefore good reasons to think that the founders’ positions belong to the
latter category.
16
Some passages suggest that Sharp is not at all worried about relativism regarding values, for
example when she accepts that “ethical inquiry will reveal how questions of value are sensitive to
context, circumstance and differences of perspective”; Splitter and Sharp (1995, p. 186). One may
argue that the disposition to be self-critical, even as a basic principle, is certainly not desirable at
every stage of the inquiry. Its application is context-sensitive such that it is beneficial at some
stages but not at others.
Sharp’s negative description seems rather vague if we want to reach an under-

standing of what kind of relativism she is willing to accept. Nevertheless, it is
noteworthy that she relates her acceptable version of relativism to some of the
procedural principles of inquiry in P4C: the inquiry (i) does not lead to final
answers, (ii) does not produce absolute certainty, and (iii) requires from the par-
ticipants the disposition to be self-critical. Sharp holds that if relativism means a
commitment to these principles, then it can be accepted and should not be
worrisome.
However, the kind of relativism that Sharp is willing to accept for the P4C
programme is arguably more problematic than she seems to realise. Take, for
example, the founders’ assumption that the question of what the components of a
good character are cannot be answered ‘outside’ a certain CI. Both Lipman and
Sharp hold that the question must be answered within a certain community because
the components are both part and result of the procedural processes that underlie the
inquiry. However, this means that different CIs can in principle end up stating
different components. Moreover, the participants are entitled to take these com-
ponents as the ones that truly belong to a good character; their judgement is based
on inter-subjective truth as the result of going through the procedural processes of
the inquiry. What the community takes to be the true virtues and values is thus
relative to the inquiry and its procedural processes. As soon as more than one CI is
considered, this becomes problematic because different communities might come to
different results regarding the true components of a good character.17
A second problem with Sharp’s accepted version of relativism is that it can be
used to defend epistemic injustice when achieving judgements or can render those
epistemic injustices invisible. Let us assume, for example, that the dispositions and
attitudes of the participants of a certain CI are such that they are particularly
insensitive to the lives and natures of women. Consequently, their processes of
inquiry foster values that overlook or even disregard women’s voices. As Sharp and
others have argued (see Sharp 1992; Field 1995, 1997) the P4C programme must
aim at preventing barriers to women’s participation within the community. How-
ever, if the justification of procedural processes is relative to each CI the question
remains how epistemic injustice within the community can be prevented. The
theoretical framework of P4C allows that only dispositions and attitudes that belong
to ‘the loud majority’ of a CI can influence, and be justified within, the procedural
processes. Due to this fact, it is possible for the community to pervert their vices
17
Compare this to Daniel and Auriac’s (2011) claim that “[t]he CI is a micro-society in which
pupils are initiated into the ethics of social life and in which, by differentiating viewpoints and
explicitly producing alternative solutions” (ibid., p. 422; my emphasis). This view neglects the
macro-level, as Kennedy (cf. Chap. 3) suggests: “What if I deal sincerely with the fellow humans
in my sphere of activity with all the traditional character virtues, deeply felt, but the larger system
in the context of which I am virtuous is not virtuous?” In speaking of the CI as a ‘micro-society’,
one might think that smaller communities of inquiry amalgamate to form bigger communities until
there is only one big united CI left. However, this solution neglects not only diversity of beliefs but
also the fact that this diversity is rooted in the many different ways and many different
circumstances in which belief-holders live. This limits the possibility for the amalgamation of
different communities of inquiry and turns the idea of one united community into a utopia.
into what they will take to be the components of good character. In this regard,
Darren Chetty has recently argued convincingly with reference to Jody Armour’s
work (Armour 1997) that being a racist can be justified as reasonable in a ‘gated’
community if being a ‘reasonable racist’ means that one’s “racist beliefs […] can be
shown to be typical, majority views” (Chetty 2018, p. 7).
As the version of relativism that Sharp is willing to accept is linked to these severe
problems one should not be inclined to commit to it to defend the founders’ accounts
of moral education. This presents us with the challenge that moral education in P4C,
as it is proposed by the founders, leaves us with a trilemma: the positions to which
one might be committed in defending their account of moral education are either
rejected by the founders or they are not possible to recommend. As a conclusion, the
P4C programme does not provide us with an adequate conception of moral educa-
tion. In the final section I will suggest a solution to this problem.
Intellectual Virtues and Conceptual Analysis
One of the reasons why the founders’ account of moral education fails is their
attempt to derive the nature of intellectual virtues from the procedural processes of
inquiry. In order to defend their attempt they must be committed to a sort of
conformism, realism, or relativism—positions that they either reject or which lead
to severe problems. I therefore suggest uncoupling intellectual virtues from the
procedural processes of the inquiry that the founders suggest and understanding the
latter in a different way. This is a legitimate move which is covered by the prin-
ciples of P4C as the principles allow that the procedures of inquiry are not excluded
from, and can be made subject matter of, a critical inquiry.18 The idea is that a
different understanding of the procedural processes might be more adequate if we
are to relate P4C to moral education.
We have seen above that the founders have conceptualised the processes of
inquiry such that their goal is to achieve inter-subjective truth and that pursuing this
goal is, in principle, an open-ended endeavour. In taking this position, the founders
reject the possibility that intellectual virtues are conceived of as responsibilist
virtues, as such an understanding would require their commitment to a sort of
realism. I have argued that both Lipman and Sharp reject this position. I suggest
now that the assumption of responsibilist virtues, in fact, only requires their com-
mitment to realism (which they reject) because of how the founders conceptualise
the processes of inquiry. If the inquiry is conceived of as a conceptual analysis, I
argue, it is possible to understand intellectual virtues as responsibilist virtues.
As I mentioned above, responsibilist virtues require, and get some of their value
from, the participants’ good motivations for truth, knowledge, and understanding
such that these things are not only conceived of as valuable means to other ends but
18
P4C implies, as Lipman argues, “having an opportunity to inquire for ourselves”; cf. Lipman
(2003, p. 47).
as valuable for their own sake. This is particularly plausible in the case of under-
standing.19 One may argue that a certain understanding of things is valuable as a
means in practical contexts. For example, if one understands the construction of a
washing machine then this might be valuable in order to repair it; if one understands
how to read a public transportation map then this might be valuable in order to get
from one place to another. Despite understanding having a certain practical value in
particular situations, however, we can grasp the intrinsic value of understanding in
general if we imagine a situation in which we have lost any understanding. In such
a situation we can imagine that we would find ourselves in a state of mind in which
we were completely helpless. Sometimes understanding is conceived of as a desire,
e.g. in the sense of “inquisitiveness”.20 However, the sense of understanding to
which I refer here is more than a desire; it is an essential need for us as human
beings. The fact that we cannot think of ourselves as autonomous in a situation in
which we have lost understanding entirely makes it clear why we must value
understanding not only as a practical means but, more importantly, for its own sake.
Given that understanding in general is so essential for human life, I suggest that
understanding as an end-in-itself is the main goal of the P4C programme. Usually,
we think of understanding as produced by means of verbalised or non-verbalised
concepts. Thus, if understanding is the goal in P4C, then the programme’s proce-
dural processes should be subordinated under this goal, their focus being on the
understanding of verbalised concepts.21 I suggest that the procedural processes in
P4C should be understood as processes of what Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig Wittgenstein,
and others have called ‘conceptual analysis’.22
The basic idea of conceptual analysis is that verbalised concepts (i.e., words and
sentences) are used in very different ways and with different purposes, and that the
understanding of words and sentences, i.e., how they are used, is often unclear.
Wittgenstein writes in the Philosophical Investigations:
19
I will leave the question aside what it means to value truth and knowledge for its own sake. As
will become clear in what follows, I do not think that one needs to be committed to the version of
realism that the founders reject to accept the idea of responsibilist virtues.
20
Cf., e.g., Annas (2011). Lipman (2003, p. 12) sees it as a fact “with regard to very young
children […] that they are lively, curious, imaginative, and inquisitive.”.
21
Notice that for my purposes I will leave aside the understanding of non-verbalised concepts
aside as in P4C the relationship between the participants is conceptualised as having a dialogic
character (cf. Lipman et al. 1980, p. 7; Sharp 1987). I am interested in the participants’
understanding of the verbal concepts that are used in their dialogues.
22
In a recent interview, Peter Hacker (2021) reminds us in this regard that “[P]hilosophical
investigation must engage with a significant part of our forms of thought and reasoning, with a
large fragment of our conceptual scheme. Otherwise it is of little value […].” Although Lipman
does not consider conceptual analysis to be the main goal in P4C, he agrees that it is one of the
goals in P4C; cf. Lipman 2011, p. 3. On this point see also Daniel and Auriac (2011, pp. 425–26) ,
Murris (2000). For Kennedy (Chap. 3) “the ethical is the realm of philosophical discourse […]
where the clarification and reconstruction of concepts meets the imperative of action and emerges
as praxis.” (My emphasis.).
A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of the use of
our words. — Our grammar is deficient in surveyability [Übersichtlichkeit]. (Wittgenstein
2009, §122)
Here are a couple of examples to illustrate what Wittgenstein has in mind when he
claims that our grammar is deficient. The word ‘have’ that is used in the expression ‘to
have a house’ looks as if its function is the same as the function of the word ‘have’ that is
used in the expression ‘to have a mind’. However, the function of the former word
pertains to the purpose of signifying a form of ownership that relates the owner to a
physical object, whereas the function of the latter word is not related to this purpose.
Here is a second example: in the sentences ‘Jack is taller than Jill’ and ‘3 is greater than
2’ the functions of the expressions ‘is taller’ and ‘is greater’ seem to have a similar
purpose, i.e., to express relations. However, the purpose of the former expression is to
describe the relation between two physical objects, whereas the purpose of the latter is
to describe the relation between numbers in the form of a (mathematical) rule.
I have argued that the main goal in P4C is to obtain understanding. According to
Wittgenstein this means that we need to achieve surveyability regarding the use of
words and sentences. He suggests that this can be achieved by what he calls a
“surveyable representation” (übersichtliche Darstellung), which “produces pre-
cisely that kind of understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’” (ibid.).
The idea is that various uses of a word or sentence are gathered so that one is able to
compare them and see the similarities and differences between them. In this way
one becomes able to recognise the difference between ‘having a house’ and ‘having
a mind’ or between the various uses of ‘tall’ and ‘great’.
To illustrate how this method differs from the processes that have been suggested
by the founders of P4C, let us consider Lipman’s inquiry into the expression ‘to
love’. Lipman gives an example in which two men are asked two questions and
both use the expression ‘to love’ in their answer: One man answers the question,
“Why do you abuse your children” by saying “Because I love to”; another man
answers the question, “Why did you marry your wife” by saying “Because I loved
her” (cf. Lipman 1995, p. 3).
The first answer is certainly irritating and the question is how a CI should
approach this irritation. Lipman argues that there are, in general, no acceptable
reasons for child abuse. From his point of view, the answer is irritating because it is
inappropriate and unreasonable.23 Although Lipman’s explanation (that our irri-
tation is based on the lack of reasons) is intuitively plausible, his answer is not
completely satisfying. First, his explanation refers only to justifying reasons but not
to other kinds of reasons. Under the described circumstances motivating reasons
(i.e., reasons that refer to the man’s psychological condition) could explain the first
answer. Second, even if it is claimed that the process of giving and taking reasons is
essential to the CI then this does not explain the deeper point that we must be, and
23
“[I]t is likely that the first man will not be able to cite cognitive reasons for his “love” and that
the second man will be able to do so. Loving the person one wants to marry is under most
circumstances, appropriate and reasonable; loving to engage in child abuse is, under most
circumstances, inappropriate and unreasonable” (Lipman 1995, p. 3).
often are, able to understand these reasons. On Lipman’s approach, understanding

always seems to be a presupposition for accomplishing good judgment.24 However,
it is not considered to be the proper aim of inquiry.
According to the view I am suggesting, the answer given in the example is
irritating because the expression ‘to love’ is used in a way that we do not seem to
understand in the given circumstances, at least without the possibility of further
explanation. Most people would agree first that child abuse is a highly unpleasant
situation, and second that we usually use the expression ‘to love’ to refer to pleasant
things. It is therefore unclear what the man is saying when he says that he ‘loves’ to
engage in child abuse. This lack of clarity becomes obvious when the use of the
expression in the first answer is compared with the use of the expression in the
second answer. Participants who make these comparisons in an inquiry create a
surveyable representation of different cases in which the expression in question is
used in certain circumstances. The comparison of different circumstances in which
an expression is used enables them to clarify the similarities and differences
between distinct uses and to improve their understanding.
I suggest that what I have briefly described here as conceptual analysis is an
adequate means for teaching intellectual virtues in P4C if they are conceived of as
responsibilist virtues. Human beings are naturally motivated to obtain under-
standing. Understanding is, in general, necessary for the lives of human beings and
therefore has intrinsic value. Inquiry in the P4C programme, conceived of as
conceptual analysis, can build on this presupposition. Arguably, participants are
motivated to understand the meaning of words and sentences because of their
general interest in understanding the world that they are experiencing.
Although it is often argued for an ontological difference between child and adult,
there is, in fact no difference between them regarding their interest in understanding
themselves, others, and the world. It is true that, to this end, adults have usually
more elaborate instruments at hand since they have a longer experience in using
language. However, the fact that adults’ language is, in general, more elaborate
does not imply that adults have also a better understanding. It is one thing to use
words, but it is quite another thing to have an adequate understanding of them (e.g.,
one can train parrots to emit certain words and they will emit those words but
without understanding). Thus, in the business of understanding both children and
adults often find themselves in an equal position.25 This, as Claire Cassidy (cf.
Chap. 2) puts it nicely in this volume, allows for a relationship in which:
24
It also is a presupposition for reflecting on one’s own live and for “engaging positively with the
world and others in it”, which Cassidy (2012; see also Chap. 2 in this volume) assumes to be in the
centre of moral education.
25
Some authors even claim that in doing philosophy one has to become “childish” or “childlike”
(cf. Matthews 1999; Kohan 2015; Kohan and Costa Carvalho (see Chap. 5) in this volume). As I
see it, the need of conceptual analysis for the sake of understanding is able to reject the criticism
addressed to this view that “[what it means to be] child-philosopher-like is firmly embedded in
adult assumptions and desires about how [childhood] should be” (cf. Murris 2016, p. 76; see also
Wurtz’s concern (Chap. 4) in this volume regarding what he calls the problem of ‘normative
overloading’.
our own humanity as adults and as children is recognised and where children’s humanity is
similarly acknowledged. It allows that adults, and children, share their humanity, and
within that humanity resides both vulnerability and scope for compassionate action that
takes account for that shared humanity. (Ibid.)
In considering the procedures of the inquiry in P4C as means to mutual

acknowledgement, I suggest that the inquiry is focused on the investigation of the
meaning of words and sentences that the participants want to understand better.
Moreover, it should be emphasised that the participants in P4C work together in a
community to the benefit of an adequate understanding. This is a plausible
requirement for the inquiry, especially when we consider that the use of the
expressions in question is socially shared—an important point to which Cassidy’s
concept of humanity is alluding.26 The CI is not completely blind regarding the
understanding of the expressions in question; their investigation is based on a
familiarity with certain ways in which expressions are used.
To illustrate this point, let me return to the example of the expression ‘to love’.
The first step in a conceptual analysis carried out by the CI is to follow the
participants’ motivations for a better understanding of how the expression is used.
The second step is for the participants to remind each other of examples in which
the expression is used. For example, they remind each other of utterances such as ‘I
love x’ or ‘I love to do x’ that are used under certain circumstances (e.g., as answers
to the question ‘Why do you abuse your children?’ or ‘Why did you marry your
wife?’). This means that the community can refer in their inquiry to knowledge of
how the expression is used. It also means that certain intellectual virtues are
involved in carrying out this step. For example, participants have to be curious and
open-minded regarding the ways in which the expression is used. They also need to
be creative in imagining situations in which, according to their knowledge, the
expression is used. As the main goal of the inquiry is to obtain a better under-
standing of the expression in question, nobody in the CI benefits from shortening
the list of examples or considering only certain examples but not others. We have
seen, for example, that imagining someone saying that he loves to abuse his chil-
dren is helpful in this regard as it makes the community see certain things when this
example is compared with others. Everybody in the community benefits from
showing intellectual courage and being fair-minded in terms of the examples that
26
Language in this regard is conceived of as shared interaction(s) among agents. I will not argue
for the view extensively here. For a description see, e.g., Wittgenstein (2009). On this basis the
child, in contrast to being marginalised, is an “interlocutor” in a hermeneutical relation in which
“working with children is every bit as much self-work as it is work with another”; see Kennedy
(Chap. 3) in this volume.
the community is gathering.27 The final steps in the inquiry are to compare the
examples and to draw conclusions from these comparisons. In carrying out these
steps, the CI has to apply virtues such as intellectual carefulness, attentiveness,
intellectual tenacity, and intellectual diligence.
I have argued in this chapter that its founders thought of the P4C programme as a
proper means for moral education that would teach intellectual virtues to the par-
ticipants. However, the founders do not provide a sufficient explanation for how this
can be achieved by the P4C programme in the form in which they present it.
Although they maintain that the adoption of intellectual virtues is the result of
undergoing the procedural processes of inquiry, they do not explain what ensures
that the CI will ultimately adopt these virtues and commit to the specific positive
values that are related to them. I have presented a solution to the problem, arguing
that if the inquiry is conceived of as a conceptual analysis it becomes possible to
understand intellectual virtues as responsibilist virtues. The gap between teaching
and adopting virtues and values can be closed by the assumptions that participants
aim for understanding as an end-in-itself and that they carry out the conceptual
analysis to this end. Moreover, I have explained that the participants benefit from
carrying out the conceptual analysis when they apply intellectual virtues. This does
not guarantee that the participants will always apply intellectual virtues properly.
However, they are motivated to apply intellectual virtues because when they do it
properly there is a greater benefit of understanding.
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Index
A Connection, 2, 5, 6, 9, 15, 16, 19, 107, 115,

Aion, 70, 71, 77 120–125, 135
Animism, 66 Courage, 8, 63, 98, 129, 160
Argumentation, ix, 106 Creative thinking, 3, 109, 153
Aristotle, 9, 14, 36, 45, 46, 98, 107, 128–131, Critical thinking, 3, 67, 109, 130, 148, 153
133–137, 141, 149 Culture, 8, 17, 23, 29–34, 67, 83, 89, 90, 93,
Authenticity, 115 129, 132
Autonomy, 9, 29–32, 38, 103, 107, 125, 127, Curriculum, 2, 7, 34–37, 44, 102, 104, 105,
129, 130 114, 136, 146, 147, 149
B D
Bergson, 61, 64, 68, 69 Democracy, 2, 34, 38, 42–45, 47, 50, 51, 99,
Buber, 123 103–105
Derrida, 66, 69, 72, 73, 75, 76
C Dewey, 2, 33–35, 43, 50, 100, 101, 105, 114,
Capability Approach, 108 119, 124, 154
Care, 4, 15, 21, 23, 48, 54, 61, 62, 102–105, Dialogical self, 31, 32
115, 116, 119, 120, 125, 129, 134, 136, Dialogue, xi, 1–3, 9, 20–23, 25, 39, 43, 44, 60,
137, 139, 141, 152 101–103, 113, 115, 118, 122, 124, 125,
Caring thinking, 3, 21, 109, 119, 153 129, 136–138, 140, 141, 148, 154
Cavell, 8, 80, 81, 84–89, 92, 93 Dichotomy, 102
Character, 6, 8, 9, 36, 38, 39, 45, 60, 97, 99, Dilemmas, 4, 99, 105, 118
100, 102–108, 128–137, 139–141, Dispositions, 1, 7, 20, 30, 74, 97, 107,
149–152, 155–157 128–130, 139, 151, 153, 155
Childism, 18, 19 Dissonance, 73, 74
Chronos, 68, 71
Citizens, 43, 44, 50, 54, 56, 67, 99, 101, 132, E
147 Emotional Intelligence, 105
Citizenship, v, 17, 51, 104, 108, 115, 129 Empathy, 21, 23, 99, 138
Citizenship education, 17 Epistemology, 2, 31, 35, 45
Civic education, 2 Equality, 19, 20, 23, 25, 34, 72, 134, 136–141
Classroom, 5, 33, 34, 37, 66, 67, 102, 133, 145 Ethics, 5, 8, 19, 24, 32, 35, 37, 38, 45, 52, 54,
Community, x, 34, 35, 115 55, 59, 72, 79, 90, 104, 105, 107, 109,
Community of inquiry, 2, 4, 6, 35, 36, 44, 50, 129, 146, 147, 155
52, 71, 133, 137, 145, 149, 150 Ethos, 72
Community of philosophical inquiry, 9, 34, 50,
74, 102, 118, 136, 137, 150 F
Compassion, 6, 15–17, 19–21, 23–25, 129 Facilitator, 1, 115, 117, 118, 120–123, 125,
Conceptual analysis, 145, 148 129, 136, 139
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to 165
Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2021
Philosophische Perspektiven, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-64180-4
166 Index
Fecundity, 55, 56 Lipman, 1–3, 7–9, 20, 21, 24, 42–45, 47, 50,
Freedom, 6, 55, 74, 100, 105, 107, 138, 139, 51, 60, 65, 67, 71, 101–103, 107, 116,
141 119, 129, 131, 145–149, 153–158
Friendship, 3, 9, 118, 127, 133–141
M
G Matthews, 1, 3, 5, 7, 14, 17, 22, 42, 46–48, 50,
Good, 3, 15–17, 20–23, 30, 33, 34, 37, 38, 47, 51, 159
48, 66, 68, 71, 98–100, 102–104, 106, Mead, 115
108, 116, 121, 128, 130–132, 134–141, Moral education, 2–9, 13, 16, 17, 20, 23–25,
148–156, 159 38, 62, 69, 71, 72, 76, 97, 101–105,
Good life, 22, 23 108, 127–133, 135, 138, 139, 141,
Goodness, 8, 17, 38, 97, 98, 105, 106, 109 147–153, 156, 159, 161
Growth, 2, 3, 8, 31, 65, 66, 97, 100–103, 105, Morality, 5, 8, 9, 17, 21, 38, 69, 71, 72, 75,
107, 109, 125, 136, 141 101, 107, 134, 147
H N
Habit, 8, 33, 34, 39, 121, 128, 130, 132 Neoteny, 29–33, 38
Habituation, 9, 99, 128–134, 137, 139, 141 Nietzsche, 69–71, 73
Hadot, 8, 67, 81–88, 91 Normative, 7, 29–32, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47–51, 54,
Hegel, 49 56, 152, 159
Heraclitus, 70, 71, 77 Nussbaum, 2, 16, 21, 22, 24, 25, 99, 108
Heteronomous, 29, 104
Humility, 90, 93, 134, 151 O
Husserl, 82 Objectivity, 55, 153, 154
Ontology, 7, 41, 42, 48–53, 55
I Orthesis, 71
Ideals, 7, 30, 41, 149–151
Imagination, 1, 25, 99, 107, 118, 137 P
Immersion, 92, 93 Pandemic, 109
Indigeneity, 79 Paradox, 9, 127, 128, 131, 141, 151
Individualism, 30, 31, 38 Parent-child, 7, 54, 55, 123
Infancy, 74–76 Pedagogy of compassion, 20, 21, 24, 25
Injustice, 7, 20, 23, 24, 49, 54, 71, 155 Peirce, 2, 119
Intersubjective, 31, 32, 55 Personality, 8, 30, 38, 97, 99, 105, 106, 109
Intrasubjective, 31 Philosophers, 2, 5, 8, 10, 41, 45–48, 50–52, 54,
Irrationality, 82, 83 72, 82, 84
Philosophical issues, ix, 1, 128
J Philosophical thinking, 45
Journey, 15, 119 Phronesis, 8
Justice, 8, 19, 20, 34, 98, 103, 104 Prosthesis, 71
Piaget, 31, 45
K Pity, 6, 15, 16
Kant, 31, 46, 104, 127, 154 Playground, 65
Knowledge, 3, 7, 8, 10, 18, 31, 34–36, 46, 47, Privileged stranger, 34
51, 52, 54–56, 76, 88, 98–100, 105,
107, 134, 135, 146, 149, 152, 153, 156, Q
157, 160 Question, 9, 17, 21, 34, 37, 41, 46, 47, 51, 62,
Kohlberg, 104, 107 72, 76, 83, 84, 86, 102, 113, 115–121,
124, 125, 128–130, 132, 140, 146, 147,
L 151–155, 157–160
Learning, 1, 35, 74, 82, 86, 97, 99, 104, 123,
129, 150 R
Levinas, 7, 31, 35, 42, 48–50, 52–56 Reasonableness, 2, 67, 71, 72, 74, 145, 148,
Linguistic tensions, 86 149
Index 167
Reasons, 9, 20, 44, 60, 62, 102, 115, 124, 128, Teachers, 9, 10, 13–15, 20, 23, 24, 32, 36, 84,
129, 131, 132, 137, 139, 140, 148, 151, 86, 91, 92, 98, 102, 109, 124, 129, 130,
154, 156, 158 132–134, 138, 146
Relationship, 5, 7, 19, 22, 23, 25, 33, 42, 43, Techne, 105
45, 46, 48–56, 67, 75, 103, 105, 106, The other, 6, 7, 9, 14, 17–19, 29–33, 35,
109, 123, 124, 130, 131, 136, 139, 145, 48–50, 53, 55, 63, 67, 68, 79, 84, 92,
157, 159 98, 101–106, 115, 116, 118–120,
Relativism, 10, 147, 154–156 122–124, 134, 135, 150, 153
Responsibility, 16, 18, 25, 32, 34, 42, 44, 48, Thinking, v, xi, 1, 3–5, 8, 18–22, 24, 30, 36,
49, 53, 55, 99, 100, 102, 103, 122, 125, 42–46, 48, 50, 61, 65–69, 71, 72,
127, 152 81–83, 87–91, 93, 107–109, 118–120,
Robot problem, 114 123, 129, 131, 137, 148, 152, 153
Rorty, 2–4 Thinking skills, 1, 130
Rousseau, 15, 16 Thoreau, 8, 80, 81, 84–86, 88, 89, 92
Rule of law, 30 Thunberg, 14
Ryle, 157 Time, ix, 3, 14, 31, 34, 37, 42, 44, 46, 49, 51,
53–56, 60–64, 70, 71, 74–77, 80, 85,
S 102, 107, 108, 117, 118, 125, 128, 130,
Sámi, x, 8, 79, 81, 84, 86–93 133, 134, 136, 137
School, xi, 7, 10, 14, 17, 20, 23, 30–39, 42–45, Training, ix, 25, 62, 65, 101, 108, 124, 141
66, 67, 73, 74, 86, 87, 101, 104, 109, Transformation, 19, 31, 80, 82, 85, 86, 93, 102,
130, 137, 147 114, 122
Schooling, ix, xi, 17, 32, 114 Transformative, 22, 81, 99
Self, 7, 9, 19, 20, 29, 31, 33, 34, 38, 44, 48–50, Translation, 8, 41, 45, 77, 79, 81–93
52, 53, 55, 64, 98, 99, 105, 109, Trolley problem, 105
113–125, 127, 128, 133, 134, 136–141,
150, 151, 154, 155, 160 V
Sharp, 1, 2, 8, 9, 21–23, 60, 65, 71, 72, 101, Values, 3, 4, 9, 20, 23, 44, 46, 50, 72, 83,
102, 129, 133, 136, 145, 147, 149–151, 99–104, 109, 117, 119, 128, 137, 140,
153–157 146–155, 161
Society, 14, 16, 17, 19, 22–25, 34, 39, 42–45, Virtue, 8, 48, 51, 98, 99, 104, 105, 107, 128,
48, 51, 83, 98, 101, 102, 108, 132, 130, 132, 134, 136, 138, 149
147–149, 155
Spiritual exercise, 8, 82, 83 W
Storytelling, 87–89 Well-being, 15, 20, 48, 134
Stranger, 29, 34, 54, 55 Wittgenstein, 81, 83, 85, 86, 124, 157, 158,
Students, xi, 8, 10, 20, 23, 37, 42–44, 102–104, 160
117, 125, 136, 145, 146 World, 1–4, 6, 13–21, 23–25, 32, 35, 36, 38,
Subject, 16, 17, 31, 35, 37, 49, 56, 61, 67, 101, 39, 45, 46, 48–50, 52, 59, 60, 63, 64,
102, 107, 119, 150, 153, 154, 156 66, 68, 70, 72, 73, 75–77, 81, 83, 87,
Subjectivity, 29–34, 39 89, 92, 93, 99, 102, 103, 114, 128, 129,
138, 159
T Writing, 8, 18, 60–62, 64–69, 71–77, 85, 86,
Taylor, 18, 114, 124 88, 89, 92, 121, 146

Conceptions of Childhood and Moral Education in Philosophy For Children

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KINDHEIT – BILDUNG – ERZIEHUNG

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/16428

ISSN 2662-5040 ISSN 2662-5059 (electronic)

Editorial: Franziska Remeika

About the Editors

Anastasia Anderson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University

Magda Costa Carvalho holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy (Ph.D., University of the

Claire Cassidy is a Reader in the School of Education at the University of

Florian Franken Figueiredo is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy

Susan T. Gardner is a Philosopher (Ph.D., Concordia University, 1981) and a

Viktor Johansson is an Associate Professor in Pedagogy at Södertörn University

David Kennedy is a Professor of Educational Foundations at Montclair State

Walter Omar Kohan is a Full professor at the Childhood Studies Department

Dina Mendonça (Ph.D. University of South Carolina, USA, 2003) researches on

stages. She is the author of a manual of Philosophy for Children (“Brincar a

Félix García-Moriyón (Ph.D. in Philosophy) is an Honorary Professor at the

Jonathan Wurtz is currently an independent researcher who recently graduated

Dina Mendonça IFILNOVA, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

Moral Education and Philosophy for/with Children

Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) is a pedagogical methodology that aims to

D. Mendonça (&) F. Franken Figueiredo

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, 1

a worldwide scientiﬁc community of inquiry, the term is adopted within P4wC to

In addition to the interconnection between philosophy, thinking well and moral

Overview of the Book

Drawing on work by Dacia Narvaez and contributions in the ﬁeld of personality

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, 13

Philosophy with Children

Broadly speaking, Philosophy with Children (PwC) is a generic term used to

valued as worthwhile. It presents the adult-child relationship as a positive one

Two Contrastive Pairs

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, 29

Schooling, Neoteny, and Modal Subjectivity

The Adult–Child Relation and the Dialogical Self

Community of Philosophical Inquiry and Ethical

that she speaks differently—it suggests what in psychoanalytic parlance is referred

assumptions to be “settled.” As a result, the philosophical inquiry that should be a

The School as a Realm of Ethical Reflection and Action

In a school modeled on the ur-discourse of community of inquiry, each discipline

This essay is an attempt to consider the possibility of an ethical encounter between

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, 41

P4C and the Democratic Overloading of Childhood

In April 1968, students from Columbia University gathered on campus to protest

P4C and The Philosophical Overloading of Childhood

Alongside this democratic overloading of childhood, there is another kind which I

Childhood is philosophical, not because it raises its own philosophical questions or

Finally, we should ask what normative agenda is childhood being overloaded

In other words, childhood bears responsibility for philosophy’s continued relevance

The Relative Ontology of Childhood and Normative

Ontology is therefore marked by an antagonistic relationship of violence and

relative ontology of childhood. To be more speciﬁc, a relative ontology deﬁnes

conversation in the community of inquiry or as a topic for philosophical investi-

Radical Alterity and the Ethics of the Adult–Child

Philosophy and Childhood: P4C and the Possibility Beyond

I conclude here by arguing that the parent–child relationship in P4C, expressed as

Walter Omar Kohan and Magda Costa Carvalho

“To start” is a childlike verb. There seems to be an indomitable boldness, char-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, 59

We can wonder if the childish boldness of beginnings is lost because the

to a routine or to repeat a movement. There must be anomalies, abnormalities, the

Children for Philosophy

Listening to this childlike philosophy requires us to believe that children have

Moral End (End-ucation; End-ing)