Students Of Philosophy Research Articles

The Female in Aristotle’s Biology: Reason or Rationalization

While Aristotle's writings on biology are considered to be among his best, the comments he makes about females in these works are widely regarded as the nadir of his philosophical oeuvre. In The Female in Aristotle's Biology, Robert Mayhew aims not to defend Aristotle's ideas about females but to defend Aristotle against the common charge that his writings on animals were motivated by ideological bias. Mayhew points out that the tools of modern science and scientific experimentation were not available to the Greeks during Aristotle's time and that, consequently, Aristotle relied not only on empirical observations when writing about living organisms but also on a fair amount of speculation. Further, he argues that Aristotle's remarks about females in his biological writings did not tend to promote the inferior status of ancient Greek women. Written with passion and precision, The Female in Aristotle's Biology will be of enormous value to students of philosophy, the history of science, and classical literature.

Историко-герменевтический очерк философии фальсафа на примере «княжьих зерцал» (наставления правителям) Абу-хамида Мухаммада Аль-газали Ал-туси: герменевтический код

Abstract: A hermeneutic analysis of the Oriental Philosophers’ writings is invariably a matter of great challenge and difficulty. It is always full of allegory and literary divagations which intersperse a smooth flow of argumentation. This paper is written by Marklen Konurbaev, Professor of Literature at Moscow State University and his son Salavat, a student of Arabic Philosophy. The paper consists of six parts and attempts to reveal the hidden message of a famous extract from the renowned book Ihya Ulum Al Din by a Persian philosopher Ghazālī, Abu Ḥamid Muḥammad Ibn Muḥammad Al-Tūsī, devoted to the analysis of the notion of “fairness” in the doings of a ruler. The hermeneutic analysis was performed based on the methodology propounded by Roland Gérard Barthes — a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist and critic. This is the first ever attempt to put together the methodological efforts of a Western scholar and profoundly oriental piece of philosophy. Results of the hermeneutic study are stunning and elucidating. The paper could be recommended to the students of literature and philosophy at the universities and colleges.

Leitura, interpretação e transcriação: concepções do ato tradutório entre estudiosos da filosofia alemã

O interesse na aprendizagem de alemão é frequentemente desencadeado pelo desejo e pela necessidade de leitura de textos alemães em sua língua de partida, fato comumente observável entre alunos oriundos do campo da filosofia. Este trabalho tem o intuito de apresentar um curso de alemão elaborado na modalidade a distância para estudiosos do campo da filosofia – que buscavam aprimoramento linguístico para melhor compreenderem textos em língua de partida da área – e de lançar luzes sobre diferentes concepções de tradução. Para tanto, descreveremos o curso realizado e analisaremos as discussões de quatro fóruns online, buscando identificar as noções de tradução imbuídas entre os participantes do curso. Os resultados apontam, de um lado, para a validade de cursos a distância para o trabalho com alunos de alemão com demandas específicas, por exemplo, que buscam a compreensão e tradução de textos filosóficos; por outro lado, foi possível reconhecer diferentes concepções de tradução. Buscamos com este trabalho contribuir para o campo dos estudos tradutórios, ao mesmo tempo em que evidenciamos um caminho interessante a ser percorrido no campo do ensino e aprendizagem de alemão como língua estrangeria.

God, Freud and religion: the origins of faith, fear and fundamentalism

Choice Essential Read Did God create man or did man create God? In this book, Dianna Kenny examines religious belief through a variety of perspectives – psychoanalytic, cognitive, neuropsychological, sociological, historical and psychiatric – to provide a coherent account of why people might believe in God. She argues that psychoanalytic theory provides a fertile and creative approach to the study of religion that attempts to integrate religious belief with our innate human nature and developmental histories that have unfolded in the context of our socialization and cultural experiences. Freud argued that religion is so compelling because it solves the problems of our existence. It explains the origin of the universe, offers solace and protection from evil, and provides a blueprint about how we should live our lives, with just rewards for the righteous and due punishments for sinners and transgressors. Science, on the other hand, offers no such explanations about the universe or the meaning of our lives and no comfort for the unanswered longings of the human race. Is religion a form of wish-fulfilment, a collective delusion to which we cling as we try to fathom our place and purpose in the drama of cosmology? Can there be morality without faith? Are science and religion radically incompatible? What are the roots of fundamentalism and terror theology? These are some of the questions addressed in God, Freud and Religion, a book that will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychologists and psychotherapists, students of psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy and theology and all those with an interest in religion and human behaviour. Dianna Kenny is Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is the author of over 200 publications, including six books.

Instrumental Values as Predictors of Religious Experience in the Lives of Students of Pedagogy and of Philosophy

This article seeks to demonstrate the existence of a relationship between instrumental values and religious experience—in this instance, the experiences of God’s presence and of God’s absence in the lives of Polish students of pedagogy and of philosophy. The methods applied involved making use of the Scale of Religious Experience (SRE) of Głaz and the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS). The study was conducted in Krakow. The subjects included male students of pedagogy and of philosophy. It emerges that, compared to philosophy students, pedagogy students seem to have a higher level of religious experience of God’s presence and also prefer different instrumental values. There is a significant relationship between instrumental values and religious experience of God’s presence and God’s absence in the lives of students of pedagogy and of philosophy.

Историко-герменевтический очерк философии Фальстафа на примере «княжьих зерцал» (наставления правителям) Абу-Хамида Мухаммеда Аль-Газали Ал-Туси: проайретический код

A hermeneutic analysis of the Oriental Philosophers´ writings is invariably a matter of great challenge and difficulty. It is always full of allegory and literary divagations which intersperse a smooth flow of argumentation. This paper is written by Marklen Konurbaev, Professor of Literature at Moscow State University and his son Salavat, a student of Arabic Philosophy. The paper consists of four parts and attempts to reveal the hidden message of a famous extract from the renowned book Ihya Ulum Al Din by a Persian philosopher Ghazall, Abu Hamid Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Al-TusI, devoted to the analysis of the notion of "fairness" in the doings of a ruler. The hermeneutic analysis was performed based on the methodology propounded by Roland Gerard Barthes — a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist and critic. This is the first ever attempt to put together the methodological efforts of a Western scholar and profoundly oriental piece of philosophy. Results of the hermeneutic study are stunning and elucidating. The paper could be recommended to the students of literature and philosophy at universities and colleges.

Expressions of judgment: an essay on Kant's aesthetics

The Critique of the third and final work in Kant s critical system laid the groundwork of modern aesthetics when it appeared in 1790. Eli Friedlander s reappraisal of this seminal accomplishment reformulates and elucidates Kant s thought in order to reveal the inner unity of the Third Critique.Expressions of Judgment emphasizes the internal connection of judgment and meaning in Kant s aesthetics, showing how the pleasure in judging is intimately related to our capacity to draw meaning from our encounter with beauty. Although the meaningfulness of aesthetic judgment is most evident in the response to art, the appreciation of nature s beauty has an equal share in the significant experience of our world. Friedlander s attention to fundamental dualities underlying the Third Critique such as that of art and nature underscores how its themes are subordinated systematically to the central task Kant sets himself: that of devising a philosophical blueprint for the mediation between the realms of nature and freedom.This understanding of the mediating function of judgment guides Friedlander in articulating the dimensions of the field of the aesthetic that opens between art and nature, the subject and the object, knowledge and the will, as well as between the individual and the communal. Expressions of illuminates the distinctness as well as the continuity of this important late phase in Kant s critical enterprise, providing insights for experienced scholars as well as new students of philosophy.

Anonymous Works and Their Ascription to Famous Authors: Are They Cases of Mistaken Identity of an Outright Forgery?

The false attribution of anonymous works to famous authors is not unique to Islamic tradition in general and to Ismāʿīlī tradition in particular. Rather it is a very old problem dating back to ancient Greeks. The students of philosophy are familiar with this question as a number of spurious books circulated in the Middle Ages known as “pseudo-Aristotelian” or “pseudo-Ammonius.” However, the scholars have succeeded to disentangle the genuine from the counterfeit by using various critical tools at their disposal. In what follows I have tried to demonstrate that both Minhāǧ al-farāʾiḍ and Kitāb al-Yanābīʿ are falsely ascribed to the famous Ismāʿīlī law giver al-Qāḍī l-Nuʿmān. Any scholar who is fully familiar with the whole corpus of al-Nuʿmān’s works, especially with his numerous works on jurisprudence, would reject Cilardo’s claim to the contrary.

The Physics of Augustine: The Matter of Time, Change and an Unchanging God

Scientific questions posed by St. Augustine, early father of the Christian church, are presented as a part of a proposed undergraduate course for religion and philosophy students. Augustine regularly seasons his religious, philosophical and moral investigations with analysis focused on the physical nature of the universe and how it can be quantified: “And yet, O Lord, we do perceive intervals of time, and we compare them with each other, and we say that some are longer and others are shorter” (Confessions, Book 11). The physical analysis is sometimes extended, pressing the attention and grasp of the unsuspecting student of religion or philosophy. Though Augustine emphasizes that true knowledge comes from faith and revelation, his physical inquiries imply that he values such analysis as a way toward truth. In contrast, Master of Divinity programs, which train the majority of Western Christian ministers, require little science experience and usually no physics. Serious investigation of Augustine’s physical explorations reveal an alternative way of understanding scripture, especially Jesus’ sayings: could the master engineer who created the universe sometimes be speaking in straightforward scientific terms?

Ibn Sīnā’sRemarks and Admonitions: Physics and Metaphysics.An Analysis and Annotated TranslationBy Shams C. Inati

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) is without doubt among the most important and influential Muslim philosophers of all time. He presented his unique intellectual system with its mix of Greek science and Islamic theology in no less than three encyclopedias: al-Shifāʾ (The Healing), al-Najāt (The Salvations) and al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt (Remarks and Admonitions). Of these the Ishārāt is the shortest and most enigmatic of Ibn Sīnā’s summae. Indeed Ibn Sīnā wrote the Ishārāt as a loosely linked set of hints indicating the important elements for reconstructing his philosophical system as well as various warnings about where one might fall into error. Because of its brevity and almost cryptic nature, the Ishārāt was the subject of literally scores of commentaries (and super-commentaries) in the post-classical Muslim world making it arguably the most important vehicle for Avicennan thought in the East. Professor Inati’s Ibn Sīnā’s Remarks and Admonitions: Physics and Metaphysics is not merely the first English translation of the ḥikma section of the Ishārāt, that is, Ibn Sīnā’s discussion of physics and metaphysics, but also, along with her translations of the remaining parts of the Ishārāt—Ibn Sina and Mysticism: Remarks and Admonitions: Part Four (Kegan Paul International, 1996) and Remarks and Admonitions. Part One: Logic (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984)—she completes the first English translation of any of Ibn Sīnā’s philosophical encyclopedias in its entirety. While the present translation is not without its fault, Professor Inati has made an important contribution to Avicennan scholarship, which should be valued by students of philosophy, theology, religion and intellectual history alike.

Brief aus Äthiopien

Abstract The letter deals with the establishing and development of philosophical education in the Department of Philosophy of Addis Ababa University. It explores the focus of philosophical education since its inception, unravelling a trajectory that began with a few courses and has now reached a level where a PhD in teaching is offered and important research undertaken. It explains how certain philosophical issues have influenced the evolution of philosophical education in Ethiopia. The dynamics of philosophical education in Ethiopia is constituted by the debate on the nature and task of philosophy. This highlights a healthy and fruitful debate by students of philosophy pointing out that philosophy can be contextualised to enlighten us on social and moral questions without, of course, forgetting the traditional and main branches of philosophy.

T. S. Eliot and the Criterion

T. S. Eliot and the Criterion A. Banerjee (bio) After T. S. Eliot’s death in 1965 Valerie Eliot prevented the publication of her husband’s letters and kept his prospective biographers at bay for a long time. It was only in 1988 that she herself published the first volume of The Letters of T. S. Eliot, 1898–1922, and then there was a lapse of twenty-one years before the second volume appeared in 2009. The third and fourth volumes soon followed in 2012 and 2013. These letters reveal authentic details of Eliot’s early life that had never been known. We now have, for the first time, fuller details about the illnesses, both physical and mental, from which his first wife suffered throughout her unhappy life. We know too that Eliot was profoundly affected by what he called “the catastrophic state” of her health, so much so that at one time he told Middleton Murray that he had contemplated suicide—or murder. More important, these letters illuminate a combination of circumstances that resulted in his fortunate entry into literary journalism—a change of career that shaped his whole life. Eliot’s literary career started in London, where he arrived in 1914 on a Harvard scholarship to attend Merton College, Oxford. It was wartime and most British students had enlisted in the army. The university was sparsely [End Page 231] populated, mostly by American and foreign students, and Eliot found the atmosphere congenial. His tutor was Harold Joachim, who was a disciple of the philosopher F. H. Bradley, on whom Eliot had started work at Harvard as a graduate student of philosophy. He had published poems in the Harvard Advocate and had given some of his unpublished poems to his Harvard friend Conrad Aiken. Aiken had arrived in London a year earlier than Eliot and had shown Eliot’s poems to English poets and editors for their opinion. Harold Monro dismissed “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” as “absolutely insane.” But Ezra Pound, who had been living in London for five years and was promoting his unconventional poems about contemporary life, was greatly impressed by it. He sent it to Harriet Monroe, the editor of Poetry magazine, telling her that he was sending her “the best poem I have had or seen from an American. He has actually trained himself and modernized himself on his own.” Though Eliot was thus generally pleased with his new situation, he began to feel sexually frustrated. He complained to Aiken that “one walks about the street with one’s desires, and one’s refinement rises up like a wall whenever opportunity approaches. I should be better off, I sometimes think, if I had disposed of my virginity and shyness several years ago: and indeed I still think sometimes that it would be well to do so before marriage.” He was soon to remedy the situation. He met several English girls, and was drawn to them for their different looks, manners, and accents. One such girl was Vivienne (later called Vivien) Haigh-Wood, with whom he seems to have started a relationship. No details are known about this period of their lives, but they suddenly got married on 26 June 1915, without informing their respective parents. This event had a major influence on Eliot’s life without his being fully conscious of all its implications. He decided to stay on in England, and soon thereafter gave up his philosophy studies and his hopes of a teaching career in America. He told his professor at Harvard that he would like to “remain in London and engage in literary work.” But he soon realized that writing could not provide him a reliable source of income. His marriage certificate says, next to Eliot’s name, “of no fixed occupation.” To earn a living he started to teach at schools in London and to give extension lectures to mature students in different parts of the country. And, to supplement this inadequate income, he began to review books for journals to which he was initially introduced by Bertrand Russell and Sidney Waterlow. His first professional review of A. J. Balfour’s “Theism and Humanism” appeared in the International...

Attitudes of Belgian Students of Medicine, Philosophy, and Law Toward Euthanasia and the Conditions for Its Acceptance

Euthanasia is legal in Belgium if due care criteria are met, which is judged by committees including physicians, ethicists, and jurists. We examined whether students in these disciplines differ in how they judge euthanasia as an acceptable act. A cross-sectional, anonymous e-mail survey revealed that they have similar attitudes and accept its legalization. Therefore, joint decision-making of physicians, ethicists, and lawyers regarding euthanasia seems to have a common attitudinal base in Belgium. However, they differ to some extent regarding the conditions they put forward for euthanasia being acceptable. Philosophy of life (religion) was an independent predictor of these attitudes.

“A written monologue by that most interesting being, myself”: Sickness, Suicide, and Self-Reflection in the Diary of Alice James

In May 1895, William James delivered a talk to the Young Men's Christian Association of Harvard University entitled Is Life Worth Living? The lecture was subsequently published, first in the International Journal of Ethics in October of the same year and again as a stand-alone essay in 1896. The essay addresses the dangerous doubt that necessarily accompanies an career: My task, let me say now, is practically narrow, and my words are to deal only with that metaphysical tedium vitae which is peculiar to reflecting men. Most of are devoted for good or ill to the reflective life. Many of are students of philosophy, and have already felt in your own persons the scepticism and unreality that too much grubbing in the abstract roots of things will breed. This is, indeed, one of the regular fruits of the over-studious career. Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead, almost as often as too much sensualism does, to the edge of the slope, at the bottom of which lie pessimism and the nightmare or suicidal view of life. (16) William is describing the predicament of Hamlet, the archetypal reflective man, but he is possibly drawing upon sources much closer to home. (1) As George Cotkin notes, fin de siecle suicides and potential suicides suffered from a doubting mania akin to the type that had cast a shadow over [William]'s own (89). Elsewhere William describes himself as a victim of neurasthenia and of the sense of hollowness and unreality that goes with (qtd. in Cotkin 77). William may also have in mind his sister's enquiry to her father about the ethics of committing suicide. In September 1878, the year of Alice's hideous summer during which she suffered her second serious breakdown, Henry James senior wrote to the youngest of the James siblings, Robertson, recounting the discussion: One day a long time ago [she] asked me whether I thought that suicide, to which at times she felt very strongly tempted, was a sin. I told her that I thought it was not a sin except when it was wanton, as when a person from a mere love of pleasurable excitement indulged in drink or opium to the utter degradation of his faculties and to the ruin of the human form in him; but that it was absurd to think it sinful when one was driven to it in order to escape bitter suffering, from spiritual flux, as in her case, or from some loathsome form of disease, as in others. I told her that so far as I was concerned she had my full permission to end her life whenever she pleased.... She then remarked that she was very thankful to me, but she felt that now she could perceive it to be her right to dispose of her own body when it became intolerable ... she was more than content to stay by my side, and battle in concert against the evil that is in the world. I don't fear suicide much since this conversation, though she often tells me that she is strongly tempted still, (qtd. in James, Death 15-16) William may have seen the letter, been aware of the situation at the time, been told about it later, or even received the same advice, as there is an echo of the discussion in Is Life Worth Living?: To come immediately to the heart of my theme, then, what I propose is to imagine ourselves reasoning with a fellow-mortal who is on such terms with life that the only comfort left him is to brood on the assurance you may end it when will. What reasons can we plead that may render such a brother (or sister) willing to take up the burden again? Ordinary Christians, reasoning with would-be suicides, have little to offer them beyond the usual negative thou shalt not. God alone is master of life and death, they say, and it is a blasphemous act to anticipate his absolving hand. But can we find nothing richer or more positive than this, no reflections to urge whereby the suicide may actually see, and in all sad seriousness feel, that in spite of adverse appearances even for him life is worth living still? …

“This is our Alabama”: Racial Segregation, Discrimination, and Violence in Tamio Wakayama's <em>Signs of Life</em>

This essay examines the civil rights photography of Tamio Wakayama. In 1963, Wakayama, a twenty-year-old Japanese Canadian philosophy student, left the University of Western Ontario and joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). A self-taught photographer, he shot pictures of SNCC’s grassroots organizing activities in Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. Upon returning to Canada, Wakayama became the photographer for the Student Union for Peace Action (SUPA). In 1965 and 1966, he toured Canada taking pictures of SUPA’s community empowerment projects in urban slums and on reservations. The majority of photographs collected in Wakayama’s first photography book, Signs of Life (1969), come from his time as a field photographer for SNCC and SUPA. In this essay, I argue that Wakayama’s representations of race in Signs of Life encourage his audience to see civil rights activists’ demands for meaningful racial reform and redress as both legitimate and urgently necessary. Wakayama’s photographs of African American and Native struggles against racial segregation’s material and psychological effects reveal the US South and Canada’s shared histories of racialized dispossession, dehumanization, and discrimination.

A personal memoir by Þóra Arnórsdóttir

My long-standing relationship with Italy started on a cold, stormy night in Reykjavik. I was a second-year philosophy student and had decided I needed to broaden my horizon as I’m born and bred on this beautiful but harsh island in the North Atlantic.

Confronting the brain in the classroom

During the influx of neurological research into France from across Europe that took place rapidly in the late 19th century, the philosophy course in lycées (the French equivalent of high schools) was mobilized by education reformers as a means of promulgating the emergent brain sciences and simultaneously steering their cultural resonance. I contend that these linked prongs of philosophy’s public mission under the Third Republic reconciled contradictory pressures to advance the nation’s scientific prowess following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 without dropping France’s distinct tradition of 19th-century spiritualism, which extended from Maine de Biran’s philosophical psychology to Victor Cousin’s official eclectic spiritualism. Between 1874 and 1902, the French Ministry of Public Instruction transformed philosophy into a national project designed to guide the reception of experimental psychology generally and neurology in particular. This article features original archival research on philosophy textbooks and students’ course notes that illuminate the cultural and intellectual impact of these sciences in the fin de siècle from inside the classroom. I argue that the scientific turn in the psychology section of the lycée philosophy course reflected and brought about a distinct philosophical movement that I call ‘scientific spiritualism’. While historians have analysed philosophy instruction as a mechanism used by the Third Republic to secularize students, this article sheds new light on lycée philosophy professors’ campaign to promote scientific spiritualism as a means to advance incipient brain research and pare its reductionist implications.

Shadow philosophy: Plato's cave and cinema

Shadow Philosophy: Plato’s Cave and Cinema is an accessible and exciting new contribution to film-philosophy, which shows that to take film seriously is also to engage with the fundamental questions of philosophy. Nathan Andersen brings Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange into philosophical conversation with Plato’s Republic, comparing their contributions to themes such as the nature of experience and meaning, the character of justice, the contrast between appearance and reality, the importance of art, and the impact of images. At the heart of the book is a novel account of the analogy between Plato’s allegory of the cave and cinema, developed in conjunction with a provocative interpretation of the most powerful image from A Clockwork Orange, in which the lead character is strapped to a chair and forced to watch violent films. Key features of the book include: a comprehensive bibliography of suggested readings on Plato, on film, on philosophy, and on the philosophy of film a list of suggested films that can be explored following the approach in this book, including brief descriptions of each film, and suggestions regarding its philosophical implications a summary of Plato’s Republic, book by book, highlighting both dramatic context and subject matter. Offering a close reading of the controversial classic film A Clockwork Orange, and an introductory account of the central themes of the philosophical classic The Republic, this book will be of interest to both scholars and students of philosophy and film, as well as to readers of Plato and fans of Stanley Kubrick.

The Oxford encyclopedia of philosophy, science, and technology in Islam

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam provides both an overview and a comprehensive and detailed survey of the main features of philosophy, science, medicine and technology in the Muslim world. The level of entries are scholarly, based on primary and secondary sources, and aimed at advanced students of Islamic philosophy and science. The selection of entries as well as their content reflect the highest academic standards and most recent research in the field, providing scholars and advanced students with in-depth surveys on the most important issues in the study of these topics, serving as the authoritative reference work on this important area of research.

Philosophy in Schools: Then and Now

It is twelve years since the article you are about to read was published. During that time, the philosophy in schools movement has expanded and diversified in response to curriculum developments (see Cam 1993, 1997, 1998; Kennedy 2013; Sprod 2001; Wartenberg 2009, 2013; Worley 2011), teaching guides (see Cam 1994, 2006; Freakley, Burgh & MacSporran 2008; Goering, Shudak & Wartenberg 2013; McCall 2009; Wilks 1996), web-based resources, dissertations, empirical research (Daniel & Michel 2000; Leckey 2001; Garcia-Moryon, Rebollo & Colom 2005; Reznitskaya 2005; Russell 2002) and theoretical scholarship (Davey Chesters 2012; Hand & Winstanley 2008; Haynes & Murris 2012; Kennedy 2006; Kohan 2014a, 2014b; Lone 2012; Lone & Israeloff 2012; Shapiro 2012; Sprod 2001). Philosophy and philosophy of education journals regularly publish articles and special issues on pre-college philosophy. There are more opportunities for undergraduate and graduate philosophy students to practice and research philosophy for/with children in schools. The Ontario Philosophy Teachers Association (OPTA) (founded in 1999) reports that in English-speaking Canada there are over 28,000 senior high school students studying philosophy in over 440 schools, and philosophy is now a Teachable Qualification (for an overview see Pinto, McDonough & Boyd 2006). In the USA, the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO) was founded in 2009 to create a network of pre-college philosophy teachers. With the loss of its founders—Matthew Lipman (1922-2010), Ann Margaret Sharp (1942-2010) and Gareth Matthews (1929-2011)—the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) is developing a digital archive in P4C. My original article was inspired by the design (1999) and pilot (2000) of a new philosophy elective for the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE). This initiative garnered considerable interest from the P4C community because many believed that (a) the decision to offer a VCE philosophy elective reflected the effectiveness and popularity of P4C in elementary schools, and (b) the new philosophy elective would establish P4C as an essential prerequisite for the study of philosophy in senior secondary school and at university. In my view, enthusiasts overlooked an important difference in the conception of philosophy informing the new philosophy elective: it introduced students to the theoretical or academic discipline of philosophy, whereas P4C conceived of philosophy as a wisdom tradition—otherwise known as the art of living.