Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Journal / Book Title

The Journal of Philosophy in Schools

Abstract

Before he originated the field of philosophy for children, Matthew Lipman spent nearly twenty years teaching at Columbia University and its affiliated colleges under the tutelage of the American philosopher Justus Buchler. In those years Lipman’s scholarship focused on Buchler’s naturalist metaphysics, which was informed by Buchler’s scholarship on the philosophy of Charles Peirce. In this essay I relate Lipman’s relationship with Buchler, summarise Buchler’s theory of human judgement, and indicate key parts of that theory that influenced Lipman’s own theory of judgement and multidimensional thinking. I then discuss the pedagogical turn Buchler made with his theory, including his conception of classroom discussion as a mode of ‘community of query,’ which became the prototype for Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp’s theory of ‘community of inquiry’ as a protocol of classroom dialogue and a paradigm of philosophical practice and democratic decision-making.

Journal ISSN / Book ISBN

2204-2482

Published Citation

Gregory, Maughn Rollins (2024) Justus Buchler and the Community of Query. Journal of Philosophy in Schools 11(1): 7-39. DOI: 10.46707/jps.v11i1.215.

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