(Un/named) Philosophy as a Method

• In Event: Working Through Methodologies Without a Proper Name

Abstract

Objective and significance: Philosophy as a method is an ontological, epistemological, and ethical relationship with thought (Koro-Ljungberg et al., 2014). This method carries theories and thoughts into practices, questions each and every ontology, and up-roots established epistemologies. Philosophy as a method remains one of the methodologies that despite being named, covers a vast territory of thinking and methods.

Perspective: Philosophy as a method has diverse epistemological and ontological commitments, and they are not linear or compatible with each other. In this paper I will trace the histories of present (Foucault, 1980) of philosophy as a method, and question how this method can perhaps deterritorialize educational spaces. Methodologies and methods can become an entrapment that desensitizes, if not paralyses researchers. The casting of philosophy of education as a form of research has been written about at length. As Moses (2002) points out, “policy, methods, and practice in education presuppose philosophy and theory, though they often remain hidden” (p. 17). A recent special issue of the British Journal of Philosophy of Education was devoted to method in philosophy of education (Standish, 2009; Smith, 2009; Ruitenberg, 2009). According to the last of these authors, ‘Methods’ refers to “the various ways and modes in which philosophers of education think, read, write, speak and listen, that make their work systematic, purposeful and responsive to past and present philosophical and educational concerns and conversations” (Ruitenberg, 2009, p. 316). So philosophy as a method enables working within philosophy of education to analyse, interpret, and portray educational concerns.

Numerous classical examples demonstrate how philosophy was used as a method (see for instance Plato, Aristotle), and more in modern philosophy, however what is ecstatic is how qualitative inquiry has embraced philosophy as a method through post-qualitative methodologies (Lather, 2013; St Pierre, 2013). Thus, this paper ambitiously traces the histories of philosophy as method, and through a genealogical exercise it considers how ‘philosophy’ and ‘method’ work and play together. How do theories enter practice, how do methodologies gain their traction, how does the ‘thinking,’ ‘doing’ of philosophy as a method influence the educational research space, then and now?

Conclusion: Philosophy as a method remains unnamed in this session – there are multiplicities and non-singular conceptualisations and performances of this method. However, providing an historical analysis allows qualitative researchers to think the unthinkable, to play with the temporalities and space, and allows the notions of continuous thinking and doing philosophy to take place.

Author

• Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland