Thinking Otherwise: Speculative Imagining in PfC

In the face of looming ecological catastrophe, ever-expanding neoliberalism and the ongoing integration of our lives into virtual spaces, there is an urgent need to expand people’s political imagination and responsiveness to these challenges. Engaging with philosophy outside the academic sphere – for example, in school and community contexts – can contribute to addressing this political need. Using the example of Philosophy for Children (PfC), an international educational movement, this thesis explores the potential for cross-paradigmatic approaches to philosophical inquiry. It observes that adherence to particular philosophical paradigms, as has largely been the case in PfC, binds the imagination to particular epistemic and political parameters and precludes ideas that contradict paradigmatic assumptions. Invoking the sensibility of Gillian Rose, I argue that we need a philosophy that permits people to imagine radically different political worlds in a manner that actively resists political ‘bubble-think’. This thesis illustrates how Rose’s cross-paradigmatic approach, speculative negotiation, can help to address some of the limits of paradigm thinking by inspiring a more transformative philosophy in contexts such as PfC. In doing so, this thesis contributes both to an expansion of the PfC programme and to questions surrounding the concrete practise of Rose’s rich theoretical oeuvre.