Gareth B. Matthews

Gareth B. Matthews acknowledges that the first time he heard the expression “philosophy of childhood” from Matthew Lipman, he was quite doubtful about it. Matthews’ scholarship in the philosophy of childhood was groundbreaking and for that reason it can be problematized in light of scholarship by philosophers working in traditions different from his and since his passing. By 2006, Matthews was able to refer to his own philosophy of childhood, confident that the field had established itself in the intervening years in the Anglo-Saxon academic world, where philosophers were publishing on the ethics and politics of childhood and on the figure of the child in the history of philosophy. For Matthews, philosophy of childhood and philosophical practice with children so inform one another that it is difficult to separate them without diminishing the potential of both. Matthews’ fourth desideratum is that a philosophy of childhood “should help us understand how children can be genuine moral agents”.