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childhood
& philosophy a journal of the international council of
philosophical inquiry with children |
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editors’ welcome childhood and philosophy is a journal which has been waiting
to be born at least since socrates sat down in the unique (at least for us)
shelter of the 5th century bc polis and founded a discipline. the journal’s conception lies much, much later, in
the fateful historical meeting between childhood education and philosophy.
this meeting, in turn, had to wait for rousseau’s mantic pronouncements
of the emile, sent like a letter in
a bottle to the approaching revolution, and for the slow development, over
the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, of a kind of
adult actually capable of listening to children, much less of hearing them. this, in turn, required the romantic deconstruction of
that very enlightened (male) adult whom, we must admit, made revolution
possible. we can avoid the politically dangerous
speculation as to which of this pair—philosophy or childhood education—was
the father and which the mother by invoking anti-oedipus and the ontology of
difference, in which the possibilities for paternal and maternal work
multiply. certainly education conceived as a vehicle
of dissemination of the modern devices for the constitution of subjectivity
excavated for us by foucault cannot claim paternity rights. the form of education spawned by disciplinary power has
long been an enemy of childhood and
philosophy. on the other hand, “professional” or
“real” philosophers typically scoff at the suggestion that
children are capable of philosophizing, much less doing anything else
remotely “serious.” we believe that a concern with children doing
philosophy is inseparable from a preoccupation with childhood itself. this gets its basis from the observation
that many adults—and especially both adults who teach children in
schools and professional philosophers—seem in most cases either to
overlook or to flatly deny children’s capacity to think
philosophically. this is profoundly complicated by
the fact that to think children doing philosophy is to redefine philosophy
itself. therefore
it is not enough to say the obvious—that children cannot do philosophy
as we do. to think children doing philosophy asks
for a redefinition of childhood itself. it is both of these redefinitions,
caught in chiasmic relation, which this journal seeks to explore. and this exploration is at least one fundamental dimension
of the group of philosophers and educators who make up the international
council for philosophical inquiry with children. icpic already has
a long history, which is a click away, at http://www.simnet.is/heimspekiskolinn/icpic.html.
childhood and philosophy is designed to be one
of its many voices, and to act in concert with the news and information you
will find on its website. in keeping with the lively
polyvocal character of the organization, we have decided to post/publish
papers in at least six languages. we recognize that this is not a
particularly efficient way to deliver the journal—translating
everything into english would probably, on the average, gather more readers
per article—but this practice signifies our commitment, not only to the
integrity of each piece of work in its mother tongue, but to our hopes for an
increasing multilingualism in general, which is a metaphor (or in fact an
index) of an increase in that polyperspectivalism which we consider to be the
hope of rethinking childhood and philosophy.
we hope that you will feel encouraged to
submit articles, whether in english or your mother tongue. as you will see
within, childhood and philosophy
welcomes not just scholarly and research articles, but compilations from
philosophers and/or educators, transcripts, curriculum samples, book reviews,
reports on current projects, poetry and art. welcome
to childhood and philosophy! david kennedy –
walter o. kohan
upper
montclair – rio de janeiro
january
2005
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