Philosophy for Community

Philosophy for Children has more than 40 years; during the last 20 years, though, in Italy there have been some experiments and variations in this philosophical practice, especially with adults. It has been called "Philosophy for Community". This research tries to answer questions like: is Philosophy for Community just and extension of Philosophy for Children? How can it work in different contexts? Can the Community of Researchers on Philosophy for Community agree on some guidelines? This work also tries to offer a model to explain the philosophical practice.

Draft programme of the congress to be held on 26 May 2016 @ the University of Milano Bicocca. My presentation will be on the following topic: "Valorizzazione delle diversità, empowerment interculturale e comunità di ricerca filosofica. Resoconto di un’esperienza scolastica / Appreciating diversities, intercultural empowerment, and communities of philosophical enquiry in the light of recent scholastic projects".

The first goal of this paper is to highlight the relevance of citizenship education. In the paper I underline the constitutive connection between democracy and educated citizens and its urgency for the present social-historical context. In the second part of the paper, I then introduce the concept of Philosophy for Communities, describe its main features and its structure. Moreover, looking at the Lipman-Sharp approach, I show that the Philosophy for Communities is derived from Philosophy for Children. My analysis in grounded in the so-called twentieth century practical turn of philosophy: starting from this theoretical framework, I describe philosophy as a social practice and show how Philosophy for Communities can contribute to the education of democratic citizenship in intercultural contexts. To better show the pragmatic virtues of this approach, I end the paper describing a community-based philosophical practice experience, realized by an association which pursues cultural and social integration. To conclude, I show how Philosophy for Communities can be conceived as an educational practice for community development and creation of social empowerment which can educate to a better democratic citizenship.

This book deals with the relevance of community-based philosophical practices to individual and social empowerment. The authors analyze if it is possible for the inclusive dialogue between people of diverse backgrounds in informal adult education to benefit from the community practice of philosophy. They discuss if the latter can offer a contribution to individual, community and social empowerment. They make use of the dialogical methodology linked to M. Lipman and A.M. Sharp’s «Philosophy for Children». The book aims at achieving a critical lens for the analysis and assessment of community practices and for envisioning further possibilities of philosophical inquiry

The article assumes that Lipman's paradigm of 'Philosophy for Children' (P4C) as a 'Community of Inquiry' (CI) is very useful in extending the range of philosophical practices and the benefits of philosophical community reflection to collective life as such. In particular, it examines the possible contribution of philosophy to the practical and ethical dynamics which, nowadays, seem to characterise many deliberative public contexts. Lipman's idea of CI is an interesting interpretative key for such contexts. As a result, the article highlights the possibility of understanding a CI essentially in terms of an ethics of responsibility.
http://www.appa.edu/journal.htm

Riflessioni semiserie su un quotidiano mal di pancia La politica, come tutti sanno, ha cessato da molto tempo di essere scienza del buon governo, ed è diventata invece arte della conquista e della conservazione del potere. Così la bontà di un uomo politico non si misura sul bene che egli riesce a fare agli altri, ma sulla rapidità con cui arriva al vertice e sul tempo che vi si mantiene. E la lotta politica, cioè la lotta per la conquista e la conservazione del potere, non è ormai più -apparenze a parte -fra stato e stato, tra fazione e fazione, ma interna allo stato, interna alla fazione.

Especially in the first platonic dialogues, Socrates does not only address the intellectual part of the soul of interlocutors, audience and public, but he also uses the emotional channel. This process takes place for various reasons: in the first place to orient the dialogue and to transmit a specific content to the public, but also to accompany the interlocutor through a real transformation of the self – a transformation with the power of engendering a new style of life.
In other words, Plato elicits the collaboration of the rational and emotional spheres in order to urge citizens to pursue a philosophical style of life, changing, in this way, their modes of life, values, and role models. Therefore, emotions allow the constitution of identity in the inter-subjective cognitive dimension alongside a transformation of the self. This is possible thanks to their mediating character : emotions are not irrational aspects but the mediating instances between the irrational and the rational. In other words, they are crucial4 for the harmonic well-being of the individual – and of the polis – which is in search of the right composition. When correctly oriented, emotions – thanks to the collaboration with the rational component – are the driving force that leads the soul to the discovery of the truth. If, however, emotions are corrupted and are not governed by the rational part of the soul, they lead the soul to commit the greatest misdeeds (in this perspective, the analysis of the soul of the tyrant carried out in the Republic is exemplar).
Contemporary Socratic dialogue should assume an integral vision of philosophical practice too, according to which emotions are not just con- sidered as the antithesis of rationality but as elements constitutive of the human being, working constantly with reason in the various processes of research. This approach does not intend to neglect theoretical or rational aspects, but to enlighten the joint action of rationality and emotions in a type of philosophical enquiry that involves the whole phenomenological experience.

In this paper I will outline the general lines of his philosophical thought: Royce's metaphysics of idealism, Royce's ethics of loyalty and Royce's pragmatist epistemology of interpretation, these are intimately connected and offer us a novel and very philosophically interesting view of self and community. I will consequently explore some of his core ideas on self and community focused in the process of integration that only family can mediate, i.e., a process of interpretation, and introduce these related to the understanding of how communities work. Finally my aim is to explain how these ideas can have a positive impact in the conception of family as the key integration of self and community in the spirit of the philosophy of Royce.

Il volume Philosophy for Children in gioco, a cura di Silvia Bevilacqua e
Pierpaolo Casarin, raccoglie una piccola serie di saggi a firma, oltre che dei
curatori, di Walter Kohan, Maximiliano Durán, Roberto Peverelli, Roberto
Franzini Tibaldeo, Cristina Bonelli, Paolo Limonta, Giuseppe Ferraro, Franco
Manti e una postfazione di Rosella Prezzo. Il volume nasce dalla curiosa idea di proporre ad alcuni studiosi ed esperti di pratiche filosofiche e di filosofia con i bambini di produrre una riflessione a partire da un video, intitolato I bambini ci pensano, realizzato nel contesto del progetto del CIAI “A scuola di cittadinanza. Dall’integrazione all’interazione culturale”, presso le scuole di via Palmieri e via San Giacomo dell’Istituto Comprensivo Cesare Battisti di Milano. Il video diventa così stimolo per una “messa in gioco” della philosophy for children (P4C) e dell’idea di una pratica filosofica con i bambini.

“Philosophy and Community Practices” is a project of the University of Turin (Italy)
developed in collaboration with the MondoQui association. Its aim was to test the validity of Philosophy for Communities – inspired by M. Lipman and A.M. Sharp – in terms of community empowerment. In this chapter, we will analyse the design phase, describe the p4c sessions and present the results achieved.

Filosofia e Pratiche di Comunità è un progetto del Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze dell’Educazione dell’Università di Torino, realizzato grazie al contributo della Fondazione CRT e in collaborazione con l’associazione MondoQui di Mondovì (CN) e il CeSPeC (Centro Studi sul Pensiero Contemporaneo) di Cuneo. Il suo scopo è stato testare la validità della Philosophy for Communities – pratica filosofica che si ispira e prende a modello la Philosophy for Children di M. Lipman e A.M. Sharp – per l’empowerment di comunità. Questo contributo si concentra sulla realizzazione del progetto: in primo luogo analizza la fase progettuale e le ipotesi iniziali di ricerca, descrivendo anche il contesto sociale di intervento. In secondo luogo, espone le sessioni di Philosophy for Communities svolte a MondoQui. Infine, compie alcune riflessioni valutative conclusive sui principali risultati raggiunti, mettendo in evidenza un legame tra due questioni teoriche interne alla Philosophy for Communities: il suo specifico filosofico inteso come formulazione di argomentazioni e buoni giudizi in presenza di altri e la creazione di legami sociali entro una comunità di ricerca.

This paper aims to connect a recent debate on the concepts of “common” and “modes of life” (modes de vie) with the theoretical reflection about philosophical community practices such as Philosophy for Community or Philosophy for Children, developed by scholars like Matthew Lipman and Ann M. Sharp. The paper shows how and why philosophical community practices in education can be a strong tool able to lay the foundations for deep political change.

The first goal of this paper is to highlight the relevance of citizenship education. In the paper I underline the constitutive connection between democracy and educated citizens and its urgency for the present social-historical context.
In the second part of the paper, I then introduce the concept of Philosophy for Communities, describe its main features and its structure. Moreover, looking at the Lipman-Sharp approach, I show that the Philosophy for Communities is derived from Philosophy for Children. My analysis in grounded in the so-called twentieth century practical turn of philosophy: starting from this theoretical framework, I describe philosophy as a social practice and show how Philosophy for Communities can contribute to the education of democratic citizenship in intercultural contexts.
To better show the pragmatic virtues of this approach, I end the paper describing a community-based philosophical practice experience, realized by an association which pursues cultural and social integration. To conclude, I show how Philosophy for Communities can be conceived as an educational practice for community development and creation of social empowerment which can educate to a better democratic citizenship.

The article assumes that Lipman’s paradigm of ‘Philosophy for Children’ (P4C) as a ‘Community of Inquiry’ (CI) is very useful in extending the range of philosophical practices and the benefits of philosophical community reflection to collective life as such. In particular, it examines the possible contribution of philosophy to the practical and ethical dynamics which, nowadays, seem to characterise many deliberative public contexts. Lipman’s idea of CI is an interesting interpretative key for such contexts. As a result, the article highlights the possibility of understanding a CI essentially in terms of an ethics of responsibility.

Nel contesto attuale, segnato dalla pluralità di prospettive e dalla diversità di culture, valori, generi, generazioni è di fondamentale importanza – in ambito scolastico-educativo, ma non solo – lavorare al consolidamento e all’ampliamento delle competenze atte a gestire tale pluralità e diversità, e ciò al fine di conseguire l’inclusione sociale.
Un aiuto in tal senso può provenire dalla filosofia, in quanto pratica riflessiva in grado di suscitare pensiero critico, creativo e “caring”. Tra le pratiche filosofiche disponibili (filosofia per e con i bambini, la “philosophy for community”, il dialogo socratico, il counseling filosofico, il caffè filosofico, ecc.) quella che mi sembra rispondere adeguatamente alla sfida interculturale è la “Philosophy for Children/Community” (P4C) elaborata decenni or sono da Matthew Lipman e Ann M. Sharp.
La P4C offre a persone di ogni età la possibilità di fare esperienza di una ricerca comunitaria che mira a condividere, confrontare e analizzare punti di vista diversi e a co-costruire senso e significato; in breve: che mira a realizzare inclusione mediante la valorizzazione delle diversità.
La prima parte dell’incontro si svolgerà secondo la modalità della P4C e consentirà ai partecipanti di sperimentare le potenzialità interculturali di tale pratica filosofica. Nella seconda parte si avrà la possibilità di scambiarsi con libertà alcune impressioni suscitate da tale esperienza.