Philosophical Roleplaying: Experiencing the History of Philosophy Through High School Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Despite a lack of standardized education in philosophy throughout American public high schools, each year thousands of students spend their evenings and weekends learning about ethical issues through so-called Lincoln-Douglas debate. This paper discusses Lincoln-Douglas as a vehicle for philosophical education and its relationship to the history of philosophy and academic canon. I argue that compared to academic philosophers, debaters interpret, appropriate, and experience the history of philosophy in a heterodox fashion. I defend this approach as pedagogically meaningful insofar as it puts students in a position to experience philosophy as vital within their lives. I advance this argument with Gilles Deleuze’s phenomenological concept of “ethology,” which describes individuals as subjectivities constituted by both affective relations and perceptual experiences that work together to compose an existential world that is the horizon of their lives. I conclude with the development of the concept of “philosophical roleplaying” in order to examine the way that experience with philosophical concepts in Lincoln-Douglas debate influences student’s worldviews. I maintain that while the history of philosophy must serve a grounding guide for education in philosophy, it ought not limit a student’s creative insights or hinder their own horizon of thought.