“I should have presented my topic using the p4c [philosophy for children] method,” said a philosopher about about his talk at a conference on Plato’s theory of forms, after taking part in a demonstration of it.
That remark is conveyed in the following guest post by Sophia Stone, associate professor of philosophy at Lynn University, and founder and president of Wisdom’s Edge Foundation, Inc., a not-for-profit organization that gives free or reduced cost philosophy classes to communities that do not have access to the university. Some of the communities she serves are women in transition from homelessness or incarceration, the elderly in assisted living, the general public, and of course, children.
By the way, today is Giving Tuesday. You can donate to Wisdom’s Edge here (or here).
What Can Professional Philosophers Learn from Philosophy for Children?
by Sophia Stone
On October 17, 2025, something remarkable happened in the world of Platonic scholarship. After giving my talk on Socratic conversations with children at the XVth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, seven serious Plato scholars joined me for a “philosophy for children, Hawai’ian style” discussion (aka p4cHI). The big “P” philosophers—serious scholars with impressive publication records—participated in what p4cHI calls “little p philosophy”.
We all know what big P philosophy is—that’s what we do, it is what we get paid to teach. It is how we earn our livelihood. It is what Daily Nous is all about—the profession of big P philosophy. Little p philosophy is what all children do—they ask questions for the sake of asking questions. They wonder, and they don’t have a destination for their wondering. In fact, it can be quite irritating or interesting, depending on your tastes for engaging in unstructured, on the spot, spontaneous questioning with children. Many professional scholars, including big P philosophers, think that serious philosophizing cannot be done with children, nor, for that matter, any methods that children might use to engage in wonder, many of which are a form of play.
But Plato in the Republic VII writes that nothing taught compulsory stays in the soul, and that is why learning must be a kind of play. so what about serious, big P philosophy? Is it possible for serious big P philosophers to gain philosophical insight from little p philosophy?
The topic of the conference was Plato’s theory of forms. We had heard seven presentations from international big P philosophers, which we used as the ‘stimulus’ for our inquiry. It was the second day, so we felt comfortable with each other. We followed the gently Socratic method, otherwise known as ‘plain vanilla’. After reviewing the the Good Thinker’s Toolkit, each participant was invited to write a question for discussion, a question that they still had after hearing the talks. Here are their questions:
Why does Plato always refer to just a few forms, but almost all of the speakers talk as if everything has a form?
Do we need a proof for the existence of forms?
Are there some new forms, that did not exist in antiquity but now they do?
Does Plato really derive the existence of forms from epistemological arguments only?
Are forms mental artifacts, or real objects outside the mind?
Do we believe in forms?
Where are the invisible forms?
Before you continue reading, which question would you have chosen for discussion? Can you guess which one the group voted for?
Everyone was given two game tokens to place their markers on which question they wanted. At first it was a three-way tie, and then after voting again with the three winning questions, the group settled on the question of whether there are some new forms that exist now that didn’t exist in antiquity. At first, the group was nearly split in half on the question. Yet by the end, some scholars had shifted their views as more arguments were made and more perspectives were shared. The conversation lasted only ten-minutes; the whole process from circling, question airing, voting, discussion and public evaluation took about twenty minutes. The feedback was amazing.
Research fellow Prof. RNDr. Ladislav Kvasz, DSc. from the Czech Academy of Sciences remarked that the group quickly made deep philosophical progress with no negative feelings. Gregory MacIsaac, currently a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge, and Associate Professor at Carleton University, wrote the following:
I thought the exercise was very valuable. It was a bit humbling to see one’s question ‘not’ picked as the thing to discuss. But that is good. If the question isn’t yours, it forces you to listen to others. Also, I thought that using the ‘ball’ to choose who can speak was really effective. It was a gentle way of preventing people from interrupting others or dominating the discussion. It also helped that we trusted each other by the second day of the conference, because the same people were attending every session. So we were more inclined to listen to each other and to say what we really thought.
Filip Karfik, Professor emeritus from University of Fribourg called the p4cHI presentation “the pinnacle of the entire event,” and said, “I should have presented my topic using the p4c method.”
While big P philosophers typically think of Socrates and the elenchus as emblematic of a good philosopher doing good philosophy by berating his interlocutors with questions upon questions, little attention is paid to the fact that he was a public philosopher—always engaging in wonder with others in public settings. Socrates was so committed to his search for finding wisdom, that, if we were to believe the ancient reports, he often stood adjacent to the market square at Simon’s cobbler shop so he could engage in conversations with the youth who were too young to venture out into the marketplace, which had a minimum age restriction of 18.
If we are to believe Socrates in Plato’s Apology, the moral compass Socrates used, his ‘daimonia’ or inner voice, developed when he was quite young. This is why p4c—philosophy for children—is an international movement, because communities world-wide see the value in conducting philosophical conversations with children. Communities and caregivers realize that children start developing their moral compass at an early age and from the moment they can speak, children start to wonder why. We do a disservice to our youth by thinking that children cannot engage in philosophical questioning. We do a disservice to ourselves by doing only big P philosophy in the stiff, isolated walls of the confined private classroom or the well-scheduled conference hall. When big P philosophers are open to new ways of doing philosophy, even if those new ways are designed for children, it can have a remarkable effect on how one approaches and thinks about philosophical problems.
Special thanks to Ondřej Krása, Veronika Konrádová and Filip Karfik, the organizers of the Plato conference, and to Amber Makaiau, Thomas Yos, Ben Lukey, Chad Miller and Thomas Jackson (Dr. J)— the research team at the University of Hawai’i Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education who created the wonderful world of p4cHI.
I think the works of D.W. Winnicott, a pediatrician and psychoanalyst, provide bountiful and provocative evidence of the capacity or potential for children to engage in philosophical or philosophical-like (even ‘existential’) questions and conversations more generally. And Adam Phillips’s psychoanalytic essays which often discuss Winnocott’s ideas and therapeutic praxis are further ample and eloquent testimony to that fact. Be it Freud, Melanie Klein, or Anna Freud (among others in their field), it is in this tradition of childhood psychoanalysis that we first see an intellectual, emotional, and psychological respect for such conversations and witness the seeds of philosophical exploration in individual “units” (Winnicott’s sense of this term) or persons.
I should have noted that the recognition of and respect for the life of the minds (and hearts) of children, as well as fundamental care for the their welfare and well-being goes back to the first generation of psychoanalysis and the social democratic state of Austria and “Red Vienna” in particular. Dr. Julius Tandler, as far back as 1919, fought for the new republic’s “pathbreaking welfare system” as undersecretary of state for public health:
“Over the next ten years Tandler fought for a vast extension of public health and welfare services and implemented a comprehensive political solution to the city’s high rates of infant mortality, childhood illness, and, ultimately, family poverty. “The Social Democrats ‘hoped to take away the shame of being born an illegitimate child,’ remembered Else Pappeheim. ‘Any baby born out of wedlock,’ she said, “was adopted by the city. It stayed with the mother who, if she was poor, was sent for six weeks to a home with the baby–but it was officially adopted.” Even a group of American physicians visiting Vienna were impressed. ‘Nowhere else have the theory and practice of legal guardianhship for illegitimate and dependent children been pushed so far,’ they observed. Actually pediatric medical care originated in Austria and the principle of guardianship, the state in essence substituting for paternal support of illegitimate children, had long been in effect. [….] For Julius Tandler healthy children were simply the necessary foundation of a healthy state.”
Thus it is no coincidence that at the university, Tandler’s “medical students included future prominent psychoanalysts like Erik Erikcson, Wilhelm Reich, Otto Fenichel, and Grete and Eduard Bibring.”
Should anyone be interested in learning more about our topic, see the index entries under “Child Guidance Guidance Clinics (Adlerian),” “Children, welfare of,” and “Children’s Seminars (Berlin), in Elizabeth Ann Danto’s (the daughter of the late philosopher Arthur C. Danto). Freud’s Free Clincs: Psychoanalysis & Social Justice, 1918-1938 (Columbia University Press, 2005).
I started teaching philosophy to children as my full-time gig right out of grad school. I find engagement is way higher than in undergrad classes, which is great. And while the quality of contributions from young students can be uneven, they’ll often take me by surprise by bringing up and drilling down on interesting (and often novel) ideas, arguments, and objections. The best is when someone makes an argument similar to some famous philosopher’s argument, and I get to tell them that! Another benefit: no grading! It’s all discussion-based.
If you don’t mind me asking, are you primarily a philosophy teacher at a school or would something like this be what one does in a private institution? It sounds great.
If you are interested in teaching philosophy, please check out the P.L.A.T.O. organization; they offer numerous resources and can connect you to opportunities. https://www.plato-philosophy.org/