Education for Thinking in the Anthropocene: A Call to Ecosophize P4C Thinking Systems

Abstract Matthew Lipman's Philosophy for Children (P4C) has been hailed as a valuable pedagogical program for addressing the nuanced questions raised by the Anthropocene. As many have proposed, its emphasis on reason‐based thinking, community philosophical reflection, and inclusivity of diverse perspectives offers youth a chance to develop the thinking and dialogical skills necessary to address the environmental crisis we are facing. Despite the clear value of programs like P4C (or Philosophy with Children [PwC]), I argue that the current landscape of inquiry (i.e., the text and the community of philosophical inquiry) lacks an ecological dimension. That is, it is too abstract and detached from the non‐ideal, immanent conditions of inquiry to purposefully cultivate thinkers who can make ecosocial decisions under the material conditions of the Anthropocene. Considering this narrowness, I resituate P4C within the broader program I call “Ecosophy with Children”: a purposeful reterritorialization of P4C's thinking systems as a transversal community of philosophical inquiry that conceptualizes participants' subjectivities in relation to their mental, social, and environmental ecological contexts.