Teaching Specific Philosophical Methods for Critical Thinking

This article gives examples of how material from the history of philosophy can provide conceptual resources for specific philosophical methods. The emphasis of the article is on methods of critical thinking. A didactic transformation with a problem-oriented focus and a two-stage process of elementarization is introduced to develop specific philosophical methods that are appropriate for teaching in schools. The aim is that students eventually will be able to use these methods themselves. This didactic transformation is demonstrated by looking at examples of two methods, namely genealogy and immanent critique, and it is finally summed up in a typology of methods and their corresponding problems and solutions.