In this paper I offer a philosophical approach to the emotion ‘love’, as a response to more psychological approaches presupposed in ‘emotional intelligence’, ‘emotional literacy’ programmes, or how some Philosophy for Children practitioners interpret ‘caring thinking’. Martha Nussbaum’s philosophy of emotions expressed in her book Love’s Knowledge, and the complex arguments contained within it have been given a narrative context: the picturebook Frog in Love by Max Velthuijs. The narrative contextualisation shows how literature can be used to explore the meaning of love philosophically, but also (and this is the main thrust of my paper) it is an illustration of how some works of literature can do justice to the complexity involved in understanding emotions. The paper starts with an exposition of one of the sources of a currently popular view of emotion by psychologists and educators. Originally conceptualised by Plato, emotions are regarded as mental states in need of mastery and control. As a result, some parents and educators argue that their age and experience puts them in an advantageous position to tame youngsters’ wild ‘sides’ and to help them ‘mature’ into adults who understand and manage their emotions, and become so-called emotionally ‘literate’ or ‘emotionally intelligent’. For educators it is an appealing promise of empowerment and achievement for all (Miller, 2009, p 222). One particular approach to teaching and learning called Philosophy with Children (P4C) is also increasingly promoted and adopted in schools as a vehicle for emotional ‘intelligence’ or emotional ‘literacy’ (see e.g. Lewis, 2007). The caring thinking it encourages is interpreted psychologically often without acknowledging its moral and political dimensions. After a brief introduction of P4C, I problematise a psychological understanding of emotion by focusing on one book in particular, Martha Nussbaum’s Love’s Knowledge. With the help of the picturebook Frog in Love I entangle some of her complex arguments about ‘love’, what it means, and how literature can provide insight. I argue against a behaviourist approach to emotions, and through phronesis, that is, a detailed exploration of ‘love’ in the context of Frog in Love I intend to show an alternative, philosophical approach to emotions that regards emotions as neither fixed entities, nor feelings ‘inside’ our ‘selves’ that need to be managed or controlled, but as complex judgments, as linguistic concepts. Psychological approaches to emotions often misunderstand the ‘golden mean’ principle to mean self-discipline and willpower, but for Aristotle self-control is not a virtue. Instead, I argue how emotions need to be regarded as informative expressions of and responses to dynamic social relationships and return at the end of the paper to the relevance of this point of view for the theory and practice of P4C as phronesis.

In the current context of re-problematization of childhood as a concrete target of philosophical reflection in educational systems, above all, there is a unique disposition to put "childish" thinking into consideration as a target of educational organization and planning. While based on another perspective, the project Philosophy in School, developed by the University of Brasilia (PFE/UNB), is one of the many experiments in approximating childhood and philosophy. Addressing some of the questions implied in the alignment between philosophy, childhood and education, this essay analyzes the viewpoints of children on the experience of philosophical practice in the early grades of a public school in Brazil. In their comments, the children indicate that philosophy class is a moment in which people ‘learn’ or ‘think’ differently. What these students have learned by practicing philosophy can be spoken in the space that philosophy opens for the child’s own voice. When they talk about philosophical experience, these children testify to the mark in their learning process that the experience of a different way of thinking leaves. This new, more attentive and sensitive point of view invites us to an experience in which teaching, learning and philosophizing with childhood, become not only a possible exercise, but its principal reference.

This paper intends to show that, from today’s point of view, Nietzsche and Dewey are complementary in their pedagogical concepts and provide valuable theoretical and philosophical background for the path to self-determination in a social context. Although there is no direct reference to Nietzsche in Dewey’s work, this “making the connection” seems justifiable insofar as Dewey sees a close relationship between philosophy and culture or civilization. Also, one can assume it was through progressive reform pedagogy that Dewey became acquainted with Nietzsche’s pedagogical value scale of individuation. But in any case there are areas of overlap in the thought of Nietzsche and Dewey with regard to their central values, such as freedom, self-determination, or the individual. Both saw themselves as educators and understood their mission as offering support for self-enhancement and individuation and also encouraging the young to think for themselves. Central to both is the value of each person’s experience, which, within the conceptual framework of free play integrating the reason of the body, leads to individuation. In “experience” the tension between “what is creative” and “the rule” is balanced out. This relates to the fact that “experience” is characterized both by an active, creative perspective and a passive, receptive one, in which one’s own action is set in relation to the change resulting from it. This leads to recognition of the underlying rule. Thus experience, the reflection of what has been experienced, leads to an increase in freedom, as noted by Dewey, who asserts a close connection between freedom and learning. For Nietzsche and Dewey, as opposed their contemporaries, the body plays an important role in this as information carrier. Both of them believe that we only open up our intellect in a truly productive way when we find our way back to our physical being. Since the reflection of experience presupposes self-reflection, a high value is placed on the “retreat to the self” in self-cultivation and the development of inner freedom. But for Dewey this phase must correspond with intensive social phases. A free attitude can only develop when the individual is given appropriate latitude for investigation and experimentation. This free space is found in play. The playing child serves as metaphor for life in its highest fulfillment, which makes possible concern for the other. Nietzsche’s “enchantment of the Dionysian,” which reconciles humans among themselves, is compared here with the democratic “way of life” of Dewey’s citizens, the free and equal individuals. This path, according to Nietzsche, begins with the young. Dewey puts it into practice for the schools.

Any methodological application in the field of philosophy for children implies study of the progression of the thought processes and practical learning capacities. Firstly, from a point of view of the method, which in order to be a valid construction must be based on sound paradigmatic structures and thereby be applicable in practice. These requirements both theoretical and practical are integral and demand together a means of identification of the progression of thought processes, one which is imbued both with a dynamic conception of thought and with a practical conception of learning. The dialectic conflict enables this progression to be charted. It is an essential concept of both the Lipman theories of child philosophy and socio-constructivism, while at the same time remaining in-dissociable from pragmatic linguistics. This federating paradigmatic position is the essential element in constituting a tool which is capable of accounting for the progression of thought in the learning process in the research community. Thereby it becomes possible to conceive of a framework both methodological and conceptual which constructs the dialectic conflict along with the actual dialectic thought, revealing a basic contradiction. The learning process of thought itself therefore reverberates with the exercise of thinking, itself rendered by language as an interlocutory process. This analysis of the progression of conceptual thought in child philosophy can therefore enable the construction of a method only if it is in schematised form and is capable of taking on the cohesion essential to the dialectic conflict. The schematisation of a dialectic progression can therefore be recognised as a tool which enables the constituting process of conceptual thought to be identified. This schematisation is made up of a system of classification marks recording the common denominators making up the prerequisites of thought : differentiation of single and multiple, identical and different, relative and absolute and the part from the whole. This first instalment describes the schematic tool, firstly by presenting the constituting elements, then listing the operative procedures, to conclude with an example of its application. It prefigures a more generalised application which would focus on a methodology which would satisfy more fully the solidarity of its founding requirements.

The Western construction of subjectivity, as Michel Foucault indicated in his hermeneutics of the subject, has been marked since what he called the “Cartesian moment” by its relation to truth. It is important, therefore, to uncover possible relations between subjectivity and experience that express alternative constructions of the two terms. Walter Benjamin´s work offers two principal figures that encourage us to allow us to rethink the subject. One is the flâneur, or frequenter of the streets of 19th century Paris, and the other is the child. Both of them are counterpoints to the modern subject. This paper presents images of childhood that are found in some of Benjamin’s texts—in particular “Experience and narration,” “About language in general and human language in particular,” “The mimetic faculty,” “Childhood in Berlin around 1900,” “One way street,” “Writings,” “Childhood literature,” “Children and youth.” On the one hand, these images make it possible to think childhood as a human condition both philosophically and anthropologically. On the other hand, childhood as a concept allows us to outline a form of subjectivity that is constituted by experience, thus displacing it from the modern conceptualization that understands subjectivity only in its relations to truth. This paper takes a philosophical stroll among a framework of concepts like childhood, experience, language and play. It identifies experience as the given capacity to perceive or the capacity to produce similarities and to recognize difference. It takes as examples language as an “immaterial similarity” and children’s games, then moves to the experience of “playing at being one other” that the mimetic faculty makes possible, and which allows us both to find the border crossing with the other, and to experience transformation as subjects. Finally, we wonder if classroom pedagogy is capable of responding to a subjectivity that is constituted, not just from a relation with knowledge, but with experience as well.