Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
1995
Journal / Book Title
Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children
Abstract
In this book, Matthews works the vast, vaguely contiguous fields of academic philosophy, developmental psychology, cognitive science, child study, and education in his own unique and asymmetrical way. His project has a Wittgensteinian flavor; he is an expert at cleaning up muddles, or carefully tugging apart things that, after he's done them, we see didn't belong together anyway. The chapter themes are wide ranging-from children doing philosophy to the theories of reigning child epistemologists, to children's art, to children's rights, to children's understanding of death, to the philosophy in some children's literature, to whether children think morally, to the continuity of selfhood between childhood and adulthood and each one involves one of the traditional domains of philosophy. To the extent that Matthews does evoke a larger philosophical argument about childhood, it is one that I acquiesce to, but that I am not completely comfortable with; nor do I think that it defines the field of "philosophy of childhood" in a manner that fully acknowledges the rich, complex thematization of childhood in Western thought.
Book Publisher
Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children
Journal ISSN / Book ISBN
0190-3330
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Kennedy, David K., "(1995) Review of The Philosophy of Childhood by Gareth B. Matthews" (1995). Collected Papers of David Kennedy. 11.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/dkennedy/11
Published Citation
Kennedy, David (1995) Review of The Philosophy of Childhood by Gareth B. Matthews. Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children 12(2): 41-44.