Philosophy is no child's play! Says who?
To drive home the argument of Soren Kierkegaard who speaks of the inadequacy of Hegel's ethical framework to explain religion, particularly faith, I used a kindergarten tool-kit. Basing on the Biblical event of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22: 1-19), Kierkegaard claims that the notion of ethics and the universal (as postulated by Kant or Hegel) is insufficient to grasp the faith of Abraham, the protagonist of the Biblical episode.
To show that an ethical framework, even though complete in itself and useful to understand human life and interactions, could still be inadequate in making sense of some other aspect of the varied human living, I brought a set of alphabet blocks to the seminar. I asked two of students to verify that the set is complete, another two to spell out the word 'Thursday', another couple to verify the spelling, the next pair to spell out 'February' using the same alphabet set. While the first group had no difficulty completing the task of spelling 'Thursday', the latter were left a bit perplexed for they didn't have a second 'r' to complete 'February'. All of this took no more than 4 - 5 minutes. Not only was the point clear, the exercise facilitated our discussion on how religion can or cannot be discussed from within an established philosophical outlook.
Not sure if philosophy can be taught to tiny-tots in the kindergarten, but that the latter's learning aids are still useful to a graduate class studying philosophy is certain! (Posted on inSTIL TandLspace)
To drive home the argument of Soren Kierkegaard who speaks of the inadequacy of Hegel's ethical framework to explain religion, particularly faith, I used a kindergarten tool-kit. Basing on the Biblical event of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22: 1-19), Kierkegaard claims that the notion of ethics and the universal (as postulated by Kant or Hegel) is insufficient to grasp the faith of Abraham, the protagonist of the Biblical episode.
To show that an ethical framework, even though complete in itself and useful to understand human life and interactions, could still be inadequate in making sense of some other aspect of the varied human living, I brought a set of alphabet blocks to the seminar. I asked two of students to verify that the set is complete, another two to spell out the word 'Thursday', another couple to verify the spelling, the next pair to spell out 'February' using the same alphabet set. While the first group had no difficulty completing the task of spelling 'Thursday', the latter were left a bit perplexed for they didn't have a second 'r' to complete 'February'. All of this took no more than 4 - 5 minutes. Not only was the point clear, the exercise facilitated our discussion on how religion can or cannot be discussed from within an established philosophical outlook.
Not sure if philosophy can be taught to tiny-tots in the kindergarten, but that the latter's learning aids are still useful to a graduate class studying philosophy is certain! (Posted on inSTIL TandLspace)
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