ABSTRACT
“Philosophy for Children,” firstly proposed by Matthew Lipman, aims to nourish both critical thinking and argumentative ability of participants. This model conceives of children as a crucial resource for social development: their thought is supposed to be free from undisputable dogmas and theories. Therefore, their questions about philosophical issues can shed new light on them, or even underline some contradictions of the adult-like society, that we unconsciously tend to disregard. This chapter argues that, although they are supposed to be cross sections of social environments, communities of inquiry as defined by Lipman are conventional (ceremonial) contexts: the sentences pronounced within the community are highly performative. Moreover, the quality of research crucially rests on the epistemic openness of a jointly chosen question that influences the following discussion. This paper proposes a methodological integration to the standard P4C model that could assure both participation and epistemic openness even in heterogeneous communities.
