no visitors allowed
facilitating philosophical dialogue in the presence of guarded faith
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12957/childphilo.2025.90478Keywords:
critical thinking, caring thinking, interpersonal communication, faith and philosophy, community of philosophical inquiryAbstract
This paper considers the case of participants of faith who refuse to subject their beliefs to discussion in general, let alone philosophical inquiry. I call this modality of faith “guarded faith.” I do not simply consider guarded faith as a challenge stemming from practicing P4C in a global context, but also as an opportunity to reflect on and refine facilitators’ conceptions of the overarching aims and values of the community of philosophical inquiry (CPI). After outlining the salient features of guarded faith, I show why it calls for a practice of caring-critical thinking. I argue for a robust conception of caring-critical thinking as a skill that cannot be straightforwardly reduced to either critical or caring thinking pure and simple. Through the lens of caring-critical thinking, I examine the universality of Ann Sharp’s notion of “visiting” as a model for the relationship between participants in CPI. The leading question here is the following: Should guarded faith disqualify individuals from participating in CPI? By the lights of Sharp’s “visiting” model, guarded faith presents intractable challenges to the facilitator, possibly threatening to undermine the aims of inquiry. However, I argue that Sharp’s model should be supplemented by a broader approach, one that seriously takes into account the epistemic, affective, and meta-ethical determinations of guarded faith. Instead of “visiting,” the community of inquiry should rather adopt an ethics of “making room” when presented with the challenges of guarded faith, to avoid excluding the guarded believer who might otherwise be interested in philosophical inquiry, while maintaining the delicate balance between the ends of inquiry and the ends of community, which is arguably a universal value of P4C/CPI practice. As a result, to Sharp’s “Visitor,” “Assimilator,” and “Traveler” typology, I add and recommend the following type: the Neighbor. In closing, I draw out the implications of this alternative model for facilitator and participant alike, suggesting some caring-critical thinking questions to guide P4C/CPI sessions, if and when needed.
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