What is philosophy

Writing with a good dose of humor about his own two sons, University of Michigan professor Scott Hershowitz explains why we should always take kids' ...

Many of the problems that we face are hard, and I think it is worth encouraging kids who are already inclined to want to think deeply to hold onto that as an activity that they engage in and show them that it is valued. I suspect that kids everywhere are trying to make sense of gender — of why people dress differently and have different roles in the world. They are not as confused about the world as little kids are, and I think a lot of the philosophical questions come from this confusion. A lot of philosophers and lawyers are Jews, at least in the US. Rex got me to see that though I think that for real God is pretend, there is some value in pretending that God is real in that it enriches my life in a variety of ways. You’d rather not have them draw their conclusions from what they hear in the playground or pick up on their own, so that’s a place where I have raised conversations rather than wait for them to raise questions. Every kid who says, “You’re not the boss of me,” or wonders why their parents get to make decisions and they don’t, is a kid with a philosophical question. The first is I think we need more people in the world who think deeply and carefully about the problems that we face, especially as we live in a world dominated by soundbites and social media. I also want to help adults recapture the sense of wonder they had as kids, and that willingness to ask hard questions and think deeply about them,” he said. “I wanted to convey that philosophy is not this thing that is over with, that was in the past and done by famous people who were mainly old white guys. I wanted to convey that philosophy is this living activity and that there are maybe more philosophers in the world now than there ever were. For example, an account about the unintended results of giving toddler-age Rex a time-out as punishment for screaming in his high chair has segued into a serious conversation with students about what society is trying to accomplish by punishing adults.