Recovering Wildness: “Earthy” Education and Field Philosophy
Varner T.
2021
Eidos: A Journal for Philosophy of Culture
0
10.14394/eidos.jpc.2021.0015
This essay invites a recovery of “wildness” as a way for philosophers to respond to the present moment which includes: an ongoing global pandemic, economic uncertainty, increasing cultural division, and a crisis in higher education broadly that persistently threatens the status of philosophy programs. Drawing on the American thinkers John William Miller and John Dewey and elaborating on their own philosophical defenses of liberal education, I propose a turn to wildness and freedom in our pedagogies through active and embodied philosophical pedagogy, including field philosophy. I offer two examples of courses that begin to invite wildness into the process of philosophical inquiry. The aim of this essay is to consider how wildness in teaching and learning and in doing philosophy might make philosophy stay alive. © 2021, University of Warsaw. All rights reserved.
Field philosophy; John Dewey; John William Miller; Pedagog; Wildness
Anderson Douglas R., In the Face of Technology: Toward a Recovery of the Human, Technology and Society, 20, pp. 297-306, (1998); Dennis Lawrence J., John Dewey as Environmental Educator, Journal of Environmental Education, 28, 2, pp. 5-9, (1997); Dewey John, Art as Experience, (2005); Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, (2012); The School and Society, (2007); Frank Jeffrey, Being a Presence for Students: Teaching as Lived Defense of Liberal Education, (2019); Liberal Education and Pedagogy’s Value in Challenging Times, Lever Press, (2020); Knoll Michael, Laboratory School, University of Chicago, Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy, 2, pp. 455-458, (2014); McGandy Michael J., The Active Life: Miller’s Metaphysics of Democracy, (2005); Miller John William, The Owl, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 24, 3, pp. 399-407, (1988); The Task of Criticism, (2005); Postman Neil, Weingartner Charles, Teaching as Subversive Activity, (1969); Thoreau Henry David, Walking, The Portable Thoreau, (1981)
University of Warsaw
Article
All Open Access; Gold Open Access
Scopus