This book is an interdisciplinary exploration of the notion of childhood and its place in philosophical education.

Childhood is not seen as a developmental state that needs to be overcome, but rather an existential state that

constitutes a significant part of being human as well as the (forgotten) dimension of the world itself.

Thinking, Childhood, and Time: Contemporary Perspectives on the Politics of Education is an interdisciplinary exploration of the notion of childhood and its place in a philosophical education. Contributors consider children’s experiences of time, space, embodiment, and thinking. By acknowledging Hannah Arendt’s notion that every child brings a new beginning into the world, they address the question of how educators can be more responsive to the Otherness that childhood offers, while assuming that most educational models follow either a chronological model of child development or view children as human beings that are lacking.

The contributors explore childhood as a philosophical concept in children, adults, and even beyond human beings—Childhood as a (forgotten) dimension of the world. Contributors also argue that a pedagogy that does not aim for an “exodus of childhood,” but rather responds to the arrival of a new human being responsibly (dialogically), fosters a deeper appreciation of the newness that children bring in order to sensitize us for our own Childhood as adults as well and allow us to welcome other forms of childhood in the world. As a whole, this book argues that the experience of natality, such as the beginning of life, is not chronologically determined, but rather can occur more than once in a human life and beyond. Scholars of philosophy, education, psychology, and childhood studies will find this book particularly useful.

Acknowledgments

Part One: Phenomenological Explorations of Time, Thinking and Embodiment

Chapter 1: Childhood and the Genesis of Time: A Phenomenological Approach

James Mensch

Chapter 2: Child and Time: A Phenomenological Journey into the Human Conditions of Education

Barbara Weber

Chapter 3: Think Like a Girl: Scout’s Time and Experience in To Kill a Mockingbird

Peter Costello

Chapter 4: Listening, Phronein and the First Principle of Happiness

Pablo Muruzábal Lamberti

Chapter 5: Thinking and the Play of Being

Michael A. Bonnett

Chapter 6: Philosophia Ludens for Children: A Proposal to Play and to Think

Annalisa Caputo

Part Two: Decolonial and Postructuralist Perspectives on the Politics of Education

Chapter 7: Becoming Child: Wild Being and the Post-Human

David Kennedy

Chapter 8: Paulo Freire and the Childhood of a Philosophical and Educational Life

Walter Omar Kohan

Chapter 9: Democratic Child’s Play: Natality, Responsible Education, and Decolonial Praxis

Toby Rollo

Chapter 10: Posthuman Child: De(con)structing Western Notions of Child Agency

Karin Murris

Chapter 11: Relational Openings for The Otherwise: Thinking Community as What is Not…

Cristina Delgado Vintimilla

Chapter 12: Life as a Pedagogical Concept

Iris Berger and Adrienne Argent

Chapter 13: Natures, Cultures and Education: Anarcheologies of the Present

Juliana Merçon

About the Contributors