For the past month I've been working on the chapter of my book that examines what I'm calling the "philosophical self." This part of us, that is naturally inclined to ponder the deeper questions raised by the strangeness of finding ourselves alive in the world, fails to develop for many (most?) young people because cultivating the philosophical self is not something that is nurtured and supported by most (or any) of the adults in their lives.

I've been thinking this week about the central role of questions, and in particular the acquisition of confidence and skill in asking questions, in the development of the philosophical self. We are not a society that is particularly comfortable with questions. Many adults have grown up absorbing the idea that asking questions serves to broadcast to the world what they don't know, and this has the potential to be somewhat shameful, or at least embarrassing. But philosophy is all about questions. Questions are the key to recognizing the philosophically puzzling aspects of our lives, and to making it possible to examine these puzzles with others.

Mat Lipman, in his book Thinking in Education, emphasized the importance, when having philosophical discussions with children, of ensuring that the questions being discussed emerge from the children. I've realized over years of working with young people how profound an idea this was.

Ultimately, whether we are parents or teachers or other adults talking with children, this enterprise is not about teaching children philosophy, but about doing philosophy with them by engaging them in questions they are already exploring. We initiate philosophical conversations with children not to bestow our philosophical insights on children, but to facilitate the ability of children to inquire themselves about the peculiarity of human existence and the most ordinary experiences of our lives. It is crucial, then, that the conversations begin by eliciting from young people the questions they are interested in discussing.

When I lead a philosophy session in a classroom, often a good part of the session will be spent listing the children's questions and helping them to decide which question to discuss. It can be easy, sometimes, in the goal-driven society in which we live, to see this part of the session as a precursor to the real work, the philosophy discussion itself. But I've come to understand that the time spent helping students to formulate their own questions and ensuring that the discussion starts with those questions is in the end as valuable as the time spent actually talking about philosophical questions.

Mat Lipman died in December 2010 at the age of 87. He was an inspiration to me when I first began thinking about the possibilities of introducing philosophy to children, and as I've thought about him over the past month I've realized how much his work, and especially his commitment to the authenticity of philosophical discussions with children, has guided and helped me over the years.

As part of the book I'm working on, I've been thinking a lot about the development of our philosophical selves. In my experience, most children begin to exhibit a "philosophical self" around age 5, when all of the questions that demonstrate "wonder at the world" often start to emerge. This curiosity about and exploration of some of the basic facets of human life -- why we're alive, what it means to be good, what obligations we have to others and why, identity, the nature of reality -- seem to me fundamental aspects of what it means to be human. Yet, for many (most?) people, this development gets cut off at some point between age 5 and graduation from high school.

Recognized as important are the development of children's physical selves, intellectual selves, moral selves, and social and emotional selves, but there is little attention paid to the development of our philosophical selves: the part of us that recognizes and ponders the intense strangeness of the human experience, that thinks deeply about the concepts that underlie our collective understanding of the world. For me what has always been most important about engaging in philosophical discussions with children -- my own, and students in pre-college classrooms -- has been helping children to think more clearly about questions they are already thinking about. I remember my first class in philosophy, which I was lucky enough to have in a public high school, and how thrilling it was to be able to talk about these questions I'd thought about since I was little and that I imagined no one else ever considered very much.

I think that the development of children's philosophical selves is of crucial importance to learning how to evaluate the difficult questions of life thoughtfully and imaginatively. Encouraging children to cultivate their natural inclinations to wonder about life's perennially unsettled questions and to think about these questions carefully and coherently helps them become effective independent thinkers. Our philosophical selves are central, I think, to the uniqueness of human consciousness, to our awareness that we are experiencing whatever we are experiencing. Development of this part of us can profoundly enrich and deepen our lives.