ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3 the children’s play and entanglements in Chapter 2 are further explored as forms of philosophical exercise that demonstrate different versions of Plato’s cave metaphor. The chapter problematises Badiou’s (2012) hyper-translation of the cave metaphor by suggesting Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck (2006) as an alternative translation of the metaphor. This demonstrates that philosophical perplexities of childhood can serve as exercises in both searching for truth and establishing “life-lies,” in Ibsen’s terms. These readings of the cave illustrate that difficulties in children’s philosophising are dissolved in remarks from Wittgenstein in which the cave metaphor’s clear-cut truths and falsities merge into a form of messy “knowledge” of ordinary life. The chapter goes on to explore how children’s philosophising, approached through reading Alfie’s perplexities and the cave metaphors, leads to a philosophical pedagogy that messes with our understanding of ontology, epistemology, and ethics. In our engagement with these children, ontology, epistemology, and ethics become an intimate entanglement with the world, not as a doctrine or a theory, but as an exercise in being in the world by turning to the ordinary. In such an exercise, ontology, epistemology, and ethics merge into a form of being as acting entangled with the world and others, a lived philosophy, a philosophical pedagogy that becomes a practice of living entangled with children. The chapter ends by illustrating how this pedagogy is a way to reflect on encounters with young children.
