A philosophy of childhood

Abstract

The expression, “philosophy of childhood,” is hardly a household word. Understood in the way, a “philosophy of childhood” would be an application of philosophy to childhood analogous to the application of philosophy to science in the philosophy of science, to art in the philosophy of art, to language in the philosophy of language, and so on. Central to Aristotle’s philosophy is his doctrine of the “Four Causes”—material cause, efficient cause, formal cause, and final cause. A satisfactory philosophy of childhood should, among other things, make it clear how it is possible to have a philosophically rich discussion with children and why it is so valuable, both for the teacher or parent and for the kids, to have had the experience of thinking together about the nature of perfect happiness. Since childhood is an essentially prospective state, what is a good for a child can only be something that will contribute to its good in adulthood.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 148 citations exist upstream.