38.4 Concluding Discussion: Doing Philosophy

I want to revisit some concepts/terms used during the course of this chapter. This will be done matter of factly, cryptically, to the point.

• Education is a moral undertaking, and therefore our practice within education must be open to reflective inquiry.
• To engage in philosophical inquiry is to theorize, to analyze, to critique, to raise questions about, and/or to pose as problematic.
• Theory can be derived from other systems of thought from social, political, and/or economic situations and can be constructed from practice.
• Philosophical inquiry is concerned with (i.e., "inquires into") the nature of reality, knowledge, and value.
• Philosophical inquiry is descriptive, normative, and analytic. It is interpretive and critical.
• Modes of philosophical inquiry have interests: inter . pretive inquiry has an interest in understanding; criti&cal inquiry has an interest in emancipation.
• Critical inquiry is a mode of philosophical inquiry that questions the nature of things, questions reality, looks for contradictions, and is change oriented.
• The major task of philosophy is the posing of questions. It is the basis for research; it is the foundation. Without good questions, there is no inquiry.
• Philosophical inquiry is doing philosophy.
• Philosophical inquiry is philosophical research.

...qualitative context out of which it grows and to which its conclusions must be put. The "statement of the problenf' in such a study, to be made clearly, calls on philosophy, and the chapter in which conclusions are suggested to be important (for further research or for practice) is philosophical in its axiol6gical import. And one may see a "review of the literature" in any study as an historical account of what has been tried in reference to the problem at hand (p. 33).

This position captures the sense in which I believe philosophy and its modes of inquiry are the foundation for educational research.

As I have stressed during this chapter, philosophical inquiry is doing philosophy. Maxine Greene (1974) hag captured, in a very insightful and existential way, what it means to do philosophy. I have used her work in the course of this chapter, and I would like to present a few more of her thoughts on what it means to do philosophy.

Greene (1974) regards philosophy as a way to approach (a way to look at, or to take a stance with respect to) knowledge gained through study of the sciences and the arts, as well as the personal understandings and insights that each of us acquires through daily life. Philosophy allows us a way to ask questions that have to do with:

...what is presupposed, perceived, intuited, believed, and known. It is a way of contemplating, examining, or thinking about what is taken to be significant, valuable, beautiful, worthy of commitment. It is a way of becoming self aware, of constituting meanings in one.'s life world.

Critical thinking is demanded, as are deliberate attempts to make things clear (p. 7).

There is the exploration of "background consciousness" and boundaries; there is the creation of "unifying perspectives"; there is normative thinking; there is the "probing of what might be, what should be," and the "forging of ideals." Doing philosophy is becoming conscious of the world as it presents itself to our consciousness. "Fo do philosophy, as Jean Paul Sartre says, is to develop a fundamental project, to go beyond the situations one confronts and refuse reality as given in the name of a reality to be produced" (p. 7).

To do educational philosophy, we must become critically aware of the complexities of the teaching and learning context. We must clarify the meanings of education and the language of schooling. We must become clear about preferences for the "good" and the "right" which motivate pressure groups as they place demands on schools (Greene, 1974, p. 7). This calls for critical, analytic, and normative philosophical inquiry.

We do philosophy (theorize) when, for whatever reason, we are:

...aroused to wonder about how events and experiences are interpreted and should be interpreted. We philosophize when we can no longer tolerate the splits and fragmentations in our pictures of the world, when we desire some kind of wholeness and integration, some coherence which is our own (Greene, 1974, pp. 10 - 11).

This requires that we be "wide awake" within our world, with others, within our communities. To be closed off because of

...snobbery, ignorance, or fear is to be deprived of the content that makes concepts meaningful. It is, as well, to be deprived of the very ground of questioning. For this reason, the teacher who dares to do philosophy must be open to such a multiplicity of realities. He cannot do so if he cannot perceive himself, in both his freedom and his limitations, as someone who must constitute his own meanings with the aid of what his culture provides. Nor can he do so if he is incapable of "bracketing," or setting aside, on occasion the presuppositions that fix his vision of the world (Greene, 1974, p. 11).

I sense that this feeling of a fractured, fragmented world is part of the human condition, our sense of not "being at home" in the world. To remain open to multiple perspectives of the world, to create our own meanings and yet have to bracket them to understand another, etc., leaves one with a sense of unquietness (cf., Koetting, 1994). And yet not to be able to do this, leaves us (teachers), like our students, to live in a world that is primarily prefabricated by others for what they consider to be "the public." Thus:

On occasion, he must be critically attentive; he must consciously choose what to appropriate and what to discard. Reliance on the natural attitude a commonsense taking for granted of the everyday will not suffice. In some fashion,. the everyday must be rendered problematic so that questions may be posed (Greene, 1974, p. 11).

Greene is speaking of the difficult task of maintaining a philosophical attitude, a person/teacher who sees philosophically, and can communicate that attitude to students, that sense of empowerment to transform their situations. Thus students:

... need to be enabled through habituation and stimulation to initiate inquiries. To be equipped for inquiry is to be equipped to engage in a process through which objects and events can be seen in connection with other objects and events in the experienced world (Greene, 1974, p. 158).

This is working with students to do philosophy, to develop the philosophical attitudelorientation; this is seeing realities relationally and not in isolation. We need to show, as well as believe, that students are capable of doing philosophy.

Maxine Greene identifies what it means to do philosophy, to engage in philosophical inquiry. I have presented many of the theoretical positions that she demonstrates. I have referred to this as the philosophical attitude/orientation. There are many texts that will convey this attitude which would be helpful for initiating or continuing study in educational research.

There are texts on inquiry that are of a philosophical nature, that present in great depth the theoretical positions, the modes of inquiry, and examples of critical researrh (see endnote 9). There are texts within the field of educational technology that convey the theoretical positions for engaging in multiple forms of research (see endnote 10). And there are texts of critical essays that are examples of the forms of philosophical inquiry discussed in this chapter. They are examples of doing philosophy (see endnote 11).

In conclusion, I refer you to the following work: Schubert, William H. (1991). Philosophical inquiry: the speculative essay. In Edmund C. Short, ed. (1991). Forms of curriculum inquiry. Albany: SLTNY Press. Engage yourself in doing philosophy.

1. Recent educational critics suggest that we have lost this sense of education as a moral undertaking. Representative essays of a philosophical nature would be Beyer, 1988; Purpel, 1993; Giroux, 1988; Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985.

2. Examples of descriptive philosophical inquiry can be found in the following philosophy of education texts: Wingo, 1974; Gutek, 1988; Ozinon & Craver, 1995.

3. See Kaufmann, 1974, and Dewey, 1904 (1964), for examples of normative philosophical inquiry.

4. Examples of analytic inquiry would be Tom, 1984; Wilson, 1963.

5. The foundational (theoretical) text that influenced my study was Jurgen Habermas, 1971. Also, as secondary texts, Bernstein (1976) offers an historical perspective and overview of mainstream social science and moves through theoretical positions of language, analysis, phenomenology, and critical theory (also Schroyer, 1973).

6. Note the chapters in this volume on "Postmodem and Poststructuralist Theory" (Yeaman et al., Chapter 10) and on "Critical Theory and Educational Technology" (Nichols & Allen Brown, Chapter 9). 

7. This discussion of theorizing relates to my earlier discussion of research paradigms and interest.

8. Giarelli & Chambliss (1984) identify Dewey's Democracy and Education (1944) as a "classic example" of public philosophy of education. Also, cf. Aionowitz & Giroux, 1985.

9.   Bredo & Feinberg, 1982; Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Eisner, 1991, 1994; Kincheloe, 1991; Popkewitz, 1984; Cherryholmes, 1988.

10.  Hlynka & Belland, 1991; Muffoletto & Knupfer, 1993; Educational Technology, Vol. 34, No. 2, Yea man, guest ed., 1994; Robinson, 1990.

11. Short, 199 1; Beyer & Apple, 1988; Martusewicz & Reynolds, 1994; Greene, 1978; Pinar, 1988; McLaren & Leonard, 1993; Dobson, Dobson & Koetting, 1985.