‘In Charge of the Truffula Seeds’: On Children's Literature, Rationality and Children's Voices in Philosophy

Journal of Philosophy of Education 45 (2):359-377 (2011)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In this paper I investigate how philosophy can speak for children and how children can have a voice in philosophy and speak for philosophy. I argue that we should understand children as responsible rational individuals who are involved in their own philosophical inquiries and who can be involved in our own philosophical investigations—not because of their rational abilities, but because we acknowledge them as conversational partners, acknowledge their reasons as reasons, and speak for them as well as let them speak for us and our rational community. In order to argue this I turn, first, to Gareth Matthews' philosophy of childhood and suggest a reconstruction of some of his concepts in line with the philosophy of Stanley Cavell. Second, in order to examine more closely our conceptions of rationality and our pictures of children, I consider the children's books, The Lorax and Where is My Sister? and Henrik Ibsen's play, The Wild Duck

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

What is Happening with P4C?Matthew Lipman - 1999 - The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 3:21-26.
The Ring of Gyges.Gareth B. Matthews - 2000 - International Journal of Applied Philosophy 14 (1):3-11.
Teaching Philosophy as a Tool for Helping Children Understand Problems Properly.Young-Sam Chun - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 27:23-28.
And the Children Shall Lead Them.Ann Margaret Sharp - 2004 - International Journal of Applied Philosophy 18 (2):177-187.
Circumscribed autonomy: Children, care, and custody.Hugh LaFollette - 1998 - In Uma Narayan & Julia Bartkowiak (eds.), Having and Raising Children. Pennsylvania State University Press.
Teaching your children responsibility.Linda Eyre - 1982 - New York: Simon & Schuster. Edited by Richard M. Eyre.
Philosophy with Children: Learning to live well.Claire Cassidy - 2012 - Childhood and Philosophy 8 (16):243-264.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-05-26

Downloads
31 (#442,895)

6 months
2 (#658,848)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Viktor Johansson
Stockholm University

References found in this work

Science, Perception and Reality.Wilfrid Sellars (ed.) - 1963 - New York,: Humanities Press.
Philosophical investigations.Ludwig Wittgenstein & G. E. M. Anscombe - 1953 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 161:124-124.

View all 21 references / Add more references