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Children's Philosophical Abilities: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry Into Children's Ability To Practice Philosophy
Abou Khalil, Charbel ; Maesschalck, Marc (advisor) ; Umbelino, Luis (referee) ; Pourtois, Hervé (referee)
Title: Children's Philosophical Abilities: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry Into Children's Ability To Practice Philosophy. Author: Abou Khalil, Charbel Supervisor: Maesschalck, Marc Academic year: 2020-2021 Title of the study programme: Erasmus Mundus Master's Degree in French and German Philosophies: Contemporary Challenges. Abstract: Is the child capable of philosophising? The doxa answers in the negative. In fact, childhood has long been equated with intellectual immaturity. According to the work of Jean Piaget, which continues to guide many current pedagogical practices, philosophy, requiring inner dialogue, abstraction, and formal logic, is inaccessible to children whose thinking is egocentric, concrete and irrational. Yet, since the 1970s, we have witnessed the emergence of new pedagogical practices, designed for the philosophical education of children from the age of five: Philosophy for Children (P4C), advocated by Matthew Lipman, is based on the principle of educational interventionism, and seeks to challenge the child's reason in order to discover its dormant cognitive potential. With its theoretical foundations in John Dewey's pragmatism and Lev Vygotsky's social constructivism, it opposes the Piagetian conception of cognitive development and challenges the three characteristics of the child's...
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Adorno and biopolitics: Thoughts on our well-trained souls and bodies
Gyöngyösi, Megyer ; Maesschalck, Marc (advisor) ; Leclercq, Jean (referee) ; Pourtois, Hervé (referee) ; Gély, Raphaël (referee)
In this text, I propose a novel interpretation of Theodor W. Adorno's thoughts on politics and society from the vantage point of post-Foucauldian biopolitics. The aim of the text is both to find answers to some of the most problematic aspects of Adorno's philosophy (i.e. how to justify the normative claims he makes, what the possibilities of emancipatory politics are) and also to reveal some important insights that might have been underemphasized in current biopolitical discourses (such as the psychological aspects of biopolitical oppression). In the first half of the text, which deals with Adorno's paradigmatic shift in comprehending politics, I consider the question of why he dedicated his political analyses to the micropolitical construction of human life instead of focussing on the more conventional topics of political philosophy. The second half then treats of the resulting question of what kind of moral or political resistance is available. Keywords : Theodor W. Adorno; Biopolitics; Auschwitz; Gender and Sexuality; Emancipatory Politics.
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