what does the invitation to philosophize invite?

Abstract

In the call from papers from childhood & philosophy we hear an invitation to philosophize. But what does such an invitation mean? In what ways does an invitation or (re) invitation to philosophize encourage us to suspension our accepted meanings and empower us to sustain this challenge? These are the questions of two teachers who have, first, accepted the prior invitation to philosophize with children, and have now accepted the invitation to think and write together about that experience. This essay was prompted by two questions posed by the children with whom we philosophize: In writing it, we have experienced other ways  of thinking and living educational practice, and, through our encounters with our students, find ourselves challenged to live in more inventive and therefore more childlike ways within the framework of the public school, here understood in the sense of scholé (Masschelein; Simmons, 2013).  In order to reflect on the two questions, we set off from the concept of consummation (Heidegger, 1987), and we engage in dialogue with both a pedagogy of the question (Freire; Faundez, 1985), and the concept of equality of intelligence (Rancière, 2005), in order to open a pathway of thought that addresses them.