The practice of philosophy with children has been developing all over the world for more than 50 years. The stakes are multiple and go far beyond the need to democratize the teaching of philosophy upstream of the Terminale class. It is a question of developing critical thinking from an early age, of cultivating complex thinking and the […] … learn more→

Contrary to what the title of his book The Postmodern Explained to Children (1986) suggests , Jean ‑ François Lyotard’s thinking is not the most accessible, a fortiori for our dear blond heads. A philosopher commonly associated with the motley and questionable movement that is French theory , he seems to have been eclipsed within it by the thoughts of Foucault, Deleuze or Derrida, whose […] … learn more→

The life choices that had led me to be sitting in a booth underneath a banner that read “Ask a Philosopher” – at the entrance to the New York City subway at 57th and 8th – were perhaps random but inevitable. I’d been a “public philosopher” for 15 years, so I readily agreed to join my colleague Ian […] … learn more→

My title–at least the first part–comes from a Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical of the 1960s, now I suspect embarrassingly dated (although it’s been revived as recently as 2011), that I adored in high school.  But this post comes in response to an op-ed piece published two days ago in the Dallas Morning News by two University of Dallas philosophy professors.  Their essay […] … learn more→

During his unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Marco Rubio made the dubious (and grammatically unsound) assertion that “we need more welders and less philosophers.” Bill Miller clearly disagrees with the Florida senator. Miller, a prominent investor who spent three years studying philosophy at Johns Hopkins University as a graduate student, recently gave that school US$75 million to […] … learn more→

Philosophy has deep roots, with a clear historical evolution.  It is about knowledge, and the argument for why (and how) we exist in the first place. Western Philosophy is considered by many to be the foundation of philosophy in our modern times.  Early philosophers before Socrates focused hypotheses on metaphysics, or the Study of Existence […] … learn more→

Scientists now know that the universe contains at least two trillion galaxies. It’s a mind-scrunchingly big place, very different to the conception of the universe we had when the world’s major religions were founded. So do the astronomical discoveries of the last few centuries have implications for religion? Over the last few decades, a new way […] … learn more→

Young people today are constantly at risk of indoctrination – whether deliberate or inadvertent. This can be by advertisers, politicians, religious extremists or the media – and can make it hard for young people to get a handle on the world around them. But in this age of contradictory images and constant messages, I believe […] … learn more→

Philosophy has a reputation for its striking lack of diversity. The discipline is short on women and, more notably, short on black and minority ethnic representation. For the past few years, this topic has been a subject of great interest (and sometimes, great controversy), both on popular philosophy blogs, such asDaily Nous and Leiter Reports, […] … learn more→

Philosophy has been a favorite whipping boy in the culture wars since 399 B.C., when an Athenian jury sentenced Socrates to death. Nowadays, philosophers are no longer accused of “corrupting the youth.” Instead, a surprisingly wide range of pundits, from celebrity scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson to former GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio, assert that philosophy […] … learn more→