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103International Handbook of Philosophy of Education (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2018.This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a …Read more
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50Perfectionist Philosophy as a (an Untaken) Way of LifeJournal of Aesthetic Education 48 (3): 58-72. 2014.I am honored to respond to Paul Guyer’s elaboration on the role of examples of perfectionism in Cavell’s and Kant’s philosophies. Guyer’s appeal to Kant’s notion of freedom opens the way for suggestive readings of Cavell’s work on moral perfectionism but also, as I will show, for controversy.There are salient aspects of both Kant’s and Cavell’s philosophy that are crucial to understanding perfectionism and, let me call it, perfectionist education, that I wish to emphasize in response to Guyer. I…Read more
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74"I am scared too": Children's Literature for an Ethics beyond Moral ConceptsJournal of Aesthetic Education 47 (4): 80-109. 2013.This essay explores how moral discourse can have dogmatic tendencies. In exemplifying how it is possible to move beyond such tendencies, this essay turns to the Norwegian picture book Garmann's Summer. The essay not only suggests a vision of moral thinking, but also aims to demonstrate the role that literature, and particularly children's literature, can play in moral discourse, particularly in philosophy. The picture book's elaborations on the difficulties children can face when starting school…Read more
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30Introduction: Perfectionism and Education—Kant and Cavell on Ethics and Aesthetics in SocietyJournal of Aesthetic Education 48 (3): 1-4. 2014.Immanuel Kant’s conception of ethics and aesthetics, including his philosophy of judgment and practical knowledge, are widely discussed today among scholars in various fields: philosophy, political science, aesthetics, educational science, and others. His ideas continue to inspire and encourage an ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue, leading to an increasing awareness of the interdependence between societies and people and a clearer sense of the challenges we face in cultivating ourselves as mora…Read more
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Difficulties of the Will : Philosophy of Education Through Children's LiteratureIn Amanda Fulford & Naomi Hodgson (eds.), Philosophy and Theory in Educational Research: Writing in the Margin, Routledge. 2016.
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Literature and Philosophical Play in Early Childhood Education explores the role of philosophy and the humanities as pedagogy in early childhood educational research and practice, arguing that research should attend to questions about education and growth that concern social structures, individual development and existential aspects of learning. It demonstrates how we can think of pedagogy and educational practices in early childhood as artistic, poetic and philosophical, and exemplifies a human…Read more
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15Pedagogical Immediacy, Listening, and Silent Meaning: Essayistic Exercises in Philosophy and Literature for Early Childhood EducatorsChildhood and Philosophy 18 (n/a): 01-29. 2022.This essay concentrates on philosophizing that happens outside and in addition to planned philosophical discussions, philosophizing that comes alive in practice, that is intensified in children’s encounters with the world, with others, with language, in play. It contemplates how adults, educators and parents encounter children and are affected by children’s philosophical explorations. What is the role of the adult in children’s philosophical questioning? How can we respond to children’s philosop…Read more
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4Introduction Fiction and truth, learning and literature : Interdisciplinary perspectivesPolicy Futures in Education 20 (3): 257-266. 2022.Literature and fiction, in various forms, both textual and oral, have an undeniable place in human growth and education: they are a constitutive part of our reality. This raises the question: how and what do we learn from fiction? Even when fiction does not mirror reality directly, can it still, explore, express, and teach us about the world? If so, how? In this special issue education becomes something of a link between the fictional and the real. Approaching fiction to learn from it, or learn …Read more
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18Olmmái-Stállu: deflection, decolonization, and silence in Sámi early childhood scholarshipEthics and Education 16 (1): 51-73. 2021.This essay explores the existential difficulties involved in being a non-indigenous scholar of philosophy and early childhood education in an indigenous context. It begins by recalling an encounter with young Sámi children that happened while doing research at an early childhood centre in northern Scandinavia. This is read alongside the poetry of the Sámi writer Nils Aslak Valkeapää, a personal documentary text by Sámi author Elin Anna Labba, and Wittgensteinian philosophy. These texts are read …Read more
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18Infanticides: The unspoken side of infantologiesEducational Philosophy and Theory 1-15. forthcoming.
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17Infantasies: An EPAT collective projectEducational Philosophy and Theory 53 (14): 1442-1453. 2021.This is a collective writing project that is part of the larger design of Infantologies, Infanticides and Infantilizations; a quartet that explores the philosophy of infants from thematic perspectives, that puts infants at the centre of our reflections, and that encourages a different academic style of thinking.
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4Introduction: Section 3 – Revisiting Enduring Educational DebatesIn Ann Chinnery, Nuraan Davids, Naomi Hodgson, Kai Horsthemke, Viktor Johansson, Dirk Willem Postma, Claudia W. Ruitenberg, Paul Smeyers, Christiane Thompson, Joris Vlieghe, Hanan Alexander, Joop Berding, Charles Bingham, Michael Bonnett, David Bridges, Malte Brinkmann, Brian A. Brown, Carsten Bünger, Nicholas C. Burbules, Rita Casale, M. Victoria Costa, Brian Coyne, Renato Huarte Cuéllar, Stefaan E. Cuypers, Johan Dahlbeck, Suzanne de Castell, Doret de Ruyter, Samantha Deane, Sarah J. DesRoches, Eduardo Duarte, Denise Egéa, Penny Enslin, Oren Ergas, Lynn Fendler, Sheron Fraser-Burgess, Norm Friesen, Amanda Fulford, Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer, Stefan Herbrechter, Chris Higgins, Pádraig Hogan, Katariina Holma, Liz Jackson, Ronald B. Jacobson, Jennifer Jenson, Kerstin Jergus, Clarence W. Joldersma, Mark E. Jonas, Zdenko Kodelja, Wendy Kohli, Anna Kouppanou, Heikki A. Kovalainen, Lesley Le Grange, David Lewin, Tyson E. Lewis, Gerard Lum, Niclas Månsson, Christopher Martin & Jan Masschelein (eds.), International Handbook of Philosophy of Education, Springer Verlag. pp. 749-754. 2018.Debate is arguably a central aspect of philosophy. There are a number of topics, however, on which the weighing of argument and counter-argument does not reach a final conclusion, but only a temporary settlement before the issue raises itself again. Understanding the historical development of such debates in philosophy of education is crucial to an appreciation of contemporary discussions in the field of education more broadly. They are debates that seem to have been always there and that contin…Read more
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6Philosophy for Children and Children for Philosophy: Possibilities and ProblemsIn Ann Chinnery, Nuraan Davids, Naomi Hodgson, Kai Horsthemke, Viktor Johansson, Dirk Willem Postma, Claudia W. Ruitenberg, Paul Smeyers, Christiane Thompson, Joris Vlieghe, Hanan Alexander, Joop Berding, Charles Bingham, Michael Bonnett, David Bridges, Malte Brinkmann, Brian A. Brown, Carsten Bünger, Nicholas C. Burbules, Rita Casale, M. Victoria Costa, Brian Coyne, Renato Huarte Cuéllar, Stefaan E. Cuypers, Johan Dahlbeck, Suzanne de Castell, Doret de Ruyter, Samantha Deane, Sarah J. DesRoches, Eduardo Duarte, Denise Egéa, Penny Enslin, Oren Ergas, Lynn Fendler, Sheron Fraser-Burgess, Norm Friesen, Amanda Fulford, Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer, Stefan Herbrechter, Chris Higgins, Pádraig Hogan, Katariina Holma, Liz Jackson, Ronald B. Jacobson, Jennifer Jenson, Kerstin Jergus, Clarence W. Joldersma, Mark E. Jonas, Zdenko Kodelja, Wendy Kohli, Anna Kouppanou, Heikki A. Kovalainen, Lesley Le Grange, David Lewin, Tyson E. Lewis, Gerard Lum, Niclas Månsson, Christopher Martin & Jan Masschelein (eds.), International Handbook of Philosophy of Education, Springer Verlag. pp. 1149-1161. 2018.This chapter begins by illustrating the role of children in philosophy, and how childhood may impact philosophy, by turning to the work of Stanley Cavell. In particular this chapter focuses on his idea of philosophy as a confrontation with our culture’s criteria, but read in the light of Pierre Hadot’s understanding of philosophy as a way of life. It goes on to consider how the philosophy for children movement has developed through three generations of thought and practice. To illustrate how the…Read more
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13Pedagogy and Polyphonic Narrativity in Søren KierkegaardJournal of Aesthetic Education 53 (4): 111-122. 2019.The relation between philosophy and pedagogy is complex and hard to grasp.1 Nonetheless, the tendency within much educational research influenced by the Anglo-American traditions of studying education is for philosophy to become a source from which educational researchers retrieve concepts, ideas, and critical methods for the analysis of empirical material, for formulating criticism of policy, or for developing curriculum theory. Philosophy is simply applied to educational research problems and …Read more
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17Dissonant Voices has a twofold aspiration. First, it is a philosophical treatment of everyday pedagogical interactions between children and their elders, between teachers and pupils. More specifically it is an exploration of the possibilities to go on with dissonant voices that interrupt established practices – our attunement – in behaviour, practice and thinking. Voices that are incomprehensible or expressions that are unacceptable, morally or otherwise. The text works on a tension between two …Read more
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17Wildly wise in the terrible moment: Kant, Emerson, and improvisatory Bildung in early childhood educationEducational Philosophy and Theory 51 (5): 519-530. 2019.This paper aims to show how Emerson provides a reworking of Kantian understandings of moral education in young children’s Bildung. The article begins and ends by thinking of Emersonian self-cultivation as a form of improvisatory or wild Bildung. It explores the role of Bildung and self-cultivation in preschools through a philosophy that accounts for children’s ‘Wild wisdom’ by letting Emerson speak to Kant. The paper argues that Kant’s vision of Bildung essentially involves reason’s turn upon it…Read more
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17Bildung, self-cultivation, and the challenge of democracy: Ralph Waldo Emerson as a philosopher of educationEducational Philosophy and Theory 51 (5): 474-477. 2019.
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11Fiction and learning realities after postmodernismEducational Philosophy and Theory 50 (14): 1504-1505. 2018.
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23Unserious but Serious Pilgrimages: What Educational Philosophy Can Learn about Fiction and Reality from Children's Artful PlayEducational Theory 67 (3): 309-326. 2017.What happens if we think of children's play as a form of great art that we turn to and return to for inspiration, for education? If we can see play as art, then what and how can we learn from children's play or from playing with them? What can philosophy, or philosophers, learn from children's play? In this essay Viktor Johansson gives examples of what and when children can teach philosophers through play or, more specifically, how children's play can teach philosophers about the relation betwee…Read more
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19Bildung, self-cultivation, and the challenge of democracy: Ralph Waldo Emerson as a philosopher of educationEducational Philosophy and Theory 1-4. 2017.
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18Wildly wise in the terrible moment: Kant, Emerson, and improvisatory Bildung in early childhood educationEducational Philosophy and Theory 1-12. 2017.This paper aims to show how Emerson provides a reworking of Kantian understandings of moral education in young children’s Bildung. The article begins and ends by thinking of Emersonian self-cultivation as a form of improvisatory or wild Bildung. It explores the role of Bildung and self-cultivation in preschools through a philosophy that accounts for children’s ‘Wild wisdom’ by letting Emerson speak to Kant. The paper argues that Kant’s vision of Bildung essentially involves reason’s turn upon it…Read more
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28Killing the Buddha: Towards a heretical philosophy of learningEducational Philosophy and Theory 50 (1): 61-71. 2018.This article explores how different philosophical models and pictures of learning can become dogmatic and disguise other conceptions of learning. With reference to a passage from St. Paul, I give a sense of the dogmatic teleology that underpins philosophical assumptions about learning. The Pauline assumption is exemplified through a variety of models of learning as conceptualised by Israel Scheffler. In order to show how the Paulinian dogmatism can give rise to radically different pictures of le…Read more
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3‘In Charge of the Truffula Seeds’: On Children's Literature, Rationality and Children's Voices in PhilosophyJournal of Philosophy of Education 45 (2): 359-377. 2011.In this paper I investigate how philosophy can speak for children and how children can have a voice in philosophy and speak for philosophy. I argue that we should understand children as responsible rational individuals who are involved in their own philosophical inquiries and who can be involved in our own philosophical investigations—not because of their rational abilities, but because we acknowledge them as conversational partners, acknowledge their reasons as reasons, and speak for them as we…Read more
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53Questions from the Rough Ground: Teaching, Autobiography and the Cosmopolitan “I”Studies in Philosophy and Education 34 (5): 441-458. 2014.In this article I explore how cosmopolitanism can be a challenge for ordinary language philosophy. I also explore cosmopolitan aspects of Stanley Cavell’s ordinary language philosophy. Beginning by considering the moral aspects of cosmopolitanism and some examples of discussions of cosmopolitanism in philosophy of education, I turn to the scene of instruction in Wittgenstein and to Stanley Cavell’s emphasis on the role of autobiography in philosophy. The turn to the autobiographical dimension of…Read more
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35‘In Charge of the Truffula Seeds’: On Children's Literature, Rationality and Children's Voices in PhilosophyJournal of Philosophy of Education 45 (2): 359-377. 2011.In this paper I investigate how philosophy can speak for children and how children can have a voice in philosophy and speak for philosophy. I argue that we should understand children as responsible rational individuals who are involved in their own philosophical inquiries and who can be involved in our own philosophical investigations—not because of their rational abilities, but because we acknowledge them as conversational partners, acknowledge their reasons as reasons, and speak for them as we…Read more
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Stockholm UniversityGraduate student