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The Importance of Continuing the Heritage of Lipman's 

Philosophical Fiction:  

Writing Stories for the Contemporary World 

 
 

Maria Miraglia   
 
 
Abstract 
The aim of this contribution is to argue for the continuing effectiveness of the Lipmanian novel, and the 
usefulness of producing new stories in the Lipman style. While the use of philosophical texts created by Lipman 
and Sharp is still significant from a pedagogical point of view, recalibrations are needed to address new 
educational emergences. Going back to the pedagogical aims that moved Lipman in the construction of 
philosophical stories and to the intentions behind the creation of such a literary genre, I will suggest that the 
Lipmanian novel represents a device for recovering the dialogical origins of the Western philosophical tradition 
through a reappropriation of the orality that is said to have characterized Socratic dialogue in its original form 
—beyond the representation made of that dialogue from Plato onwards which served as a literary expedient, 
designed to expose and clarify theories already previously defined (Cosentino, 2017). Instead, Lipman’s stories 
place dialogue, although embedded in writing, as close as possible to orality, and thereby recover the 
authenticity of the inquiry that the early Greek philosophers are reputed to have put in the field with their 
questioning. As such, the philosophical novels of Lipman and Sharp represent the best device for achieving 
both the pedagogical purposes of P4C and the authenticity of dialogical philosophical inquiry. However, while 
continuing the novelistic form that he initiated, we should remain mindful of the need to construct story-
settings in which we can clearly identify the connections between the fictitious community of inquirers as 
represented in those stories —which is the Lipmanian trademark— and the complex, emergent, shifting frames 
of reference of the contemporary world. To illustrate this, I offer an example of the construction of an ad hoc 
curriculum within the framework of the European project PEACE (Philosophical Enquiry Advancing 
Cosmopolitan Engagement) —a specific project designed to provide a particular understanding of 
cosmopolitanism that seeks to generate a “reflective loyalty to the known and reflective openness to the new” 
(Hansen, 2011, p. 99) through communal inquiry prompted by a philosophical text. I will examine the aims 
and purposes that led to the construction of this text, and how it attempts to remain as faithful as possible to 
the Lipmanian model, while updating its themes and frames of reference. 
 
Key words: Matthew Lipman, Dialogue, Philosophical stories, Cosmopolitanism. 
 

  
or several years, Lipman’s stories have been used worldwide as a stimulus for philosophical 
dialogue within the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI). We know that for Lipman 

dialogue is the focus of the very conception of Philosophy for Children (P4C), not only because of its 
use in his philosophical narratives but also because of the way the discussion that takes place in the 
CPI is conceived. Dialogue is central to the building and transmitting of knowledge. It has a 
fundamental role in its function of developing complex thought, the means of which is the 
philosophizing itself that can only be realized through dialogue. 
 

F 



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The structure according to which Lipman’s stories are built is mirrored in the P4C session. The 
characters that set up the stories are as close as possible to the real children to whom the stories are 
addressed, speaking their language and experiencing their daily routine. A destabilizing situation 
breaks the linear course of everyday life: it puts the characters in front of a problem, something that 
had not been taken into consideration until that moment. It is necessary to consider it, weigh it, 
discuss it, examine its various interpretations, find an agreement however temporary it may be. It 
generates perplexity and perplexity generates doubt, doubt questions, which will bring out the 
epistemic positions of each character. The confrontation consists of a dialogue, through which the 
characters give life to a sincere research that will develop throughout the narrative, opening up 
possible constructions of meaning. There is no position more valid than the others, there is no 
privileged conclusion, and everything can always be questioned: the characters develop research paths 
through which they bring into play critical, creative and relational abilities, share points of view, build 
their own thinking on that of the others, agreeing, when necessary, to change their beliefs. Similarly, 
the children in the real community of research are faced with a destabilizing situation introduced by 
the stimulus-text, which encourages the formulation of the questions collected in the agenda and 
paves the way for the discussion plan, in which, through dialogue, the children confront, investigate, 
research, bring into play the same tools suggested by the text. Thinking is distributed among the 
members of the community of research, enhancing at the same time the individual and the 
community of which s/he is a part.  
 

The stories, in this way, constitute a model that inspires the research process of the children 
engaged in the session, implicitly providing examples of questions, heuristic proceedings, investigative 
attitudes and behaviors. The “dialogued writing” activates the community of research constituting “an 
extension (a realization?) of that within the story, which serves in some way as a paradigm” 
(Cosentino, Striano & Oliverio, 2011, p. XXVIII).1  

 
Lipman’s stories are skillfully constructed in such a way as to inspire philosophical dialogue 

within the CPI through which the thinking abilities that the curriculum aims to develop are exercised. 
Furthermore, they constitute a kind of presentation of the methodology, in the sense that they open 
the ceremony of the session, functioning as a model for the CPI.  
 

In fact, if the stories of the curriculum serve as a model for the community of research, not only 
for what they want to model but also for how (De Marzio, 2011), then these stories have to be 
constructed in such a way as to shape the philosophical dialogue that hopefully will take place within 
the CPI. The exercise of reading the model, in which the dialogues of the fictitious community are 
reproduced, and the dialogue that will develop in the real CPI, constitutes the means to realize the 
educational purposes of P4C. Through this exercise, dialogue will be interiorized and with it the 
forms that characterize it: the inference, the mutual request for clarification, and the attack on 
superficial thought that take place in the common space are some of the elements that build the 
attitude to critical investigation (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 1992, p. 78). However, for dialogue to 
take place and involve all the members of the CPI, it is necessary to internalize the conditions needed 
for its implementation; therefore, it is important that the Community be the place where mutual 

                                                 
1 The English translations of the quoted texts are mine. 



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respect is exercised among its members (Lipman, Sharp, Oscanyan, 1992, p. 79), a fundamental 
prerequisite for the ability to listen to one another, without which there can be no real dialogue. In 
addition: 

 
A research community is a deliberative society characterized by multidimensional thinking. 
This means that its deliberations are not reduced to simple chats and conversations: they 
are dialogues governed by logic. The fact that they are logically structured does not prevent 
them, however, from providing a scenario for a creative representation” (Lipman, 2005, p. 
278). 

 
As we know, Lipman developed a special curriculum, consisting of short stories suitable for 

different age groups in which the tradition of Western philosophy is not taught to students in a 
systematic or conceptual way, as would be expected in an expository text, but it is conveyed through 
schemes and translated into a type of text that is a perfect balance between an expository text and a 
narrative text (De Marzio, 2011). In the stories Lipman performs a reterritorialization of the 
philosophical tradition, thanks to which he triggers a movement that turns philosophy inside-out 
when he retrieves the question, the generating source of the cognitive investigation, from that 
primordial scene that philosophers must have inhabited before building their theoretical systems 
(Oliverio, 2015).  

 
From that scene Lipman also recovers the dialogue, which is supposed to have been the 

way of philosophizing that characterized the meetings of philosophers at the time of Socrates. 
 

The model for making philosophy is the great solitary figure of Socrates, for whom 
philosophy was not an acquisition, nor a profession, but a form of life. What Socrates 
teaches us is not to know philosophy, nor to apply it, but to practice it. It challenges us to 
recognize that philosophy is, as a doing, as a life form, something that any of us can imitate 
(Lipman, Sharp & Oscanayan, 1992, p. 30). 
 

This is how dialogue, when it takes possession of the space within the community of research, brings 
to light that way of understanding philosophy, as a form of life, as a practice. And the stories represent 
it and shape it when, in the fictional world of its characters, the routine is interrupted by an event, as 
banal as it is extraordinary, in the face of which the characters can do nothing but question and give 
life to a philosophical dialogue through which philosophy itself is made, is practiced. 
 

However, in order to reproduce the authenticity of the philosophical dialogue that took place at 
the time of Socrates, Lipman had to operate a movement that went beyond what dialogue, as a literary 
genre, represented from Plato onwards. Nevertheless, it is true that the tradition of that world was 
handed down to us by Plato, who crystallized in writing the dynamic movement of orality that 
characterized the Socratic philosophising.  
 
Dialogue: Literary Expedient or Heuristic Necessity? 

 
If we consider how dialogue has been used in the philosophical tradition from Plato onwards 

(think for example of Cicero, Galileo, Berkeley, etc.), we realize that this was mostly a literary 



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expedient to expose theories already packaged, a strategy that allows the treatment in a less tedious 
way of a system that the philosopher already possesses accomplished in his mind. Take, for example, 
the Three Dialogues of Berkeley (2007 [1713]). It is clear that the author’s concern is to expose the 
doctrine of esse est percipi. The discussions between Philonous and Hyla are nothing more than a way 
of affirming the philosopher’s theses and refuting the contrary ones that are expressed by Hyla. This 
latter is none other than the alter ego of Berkeley-Philonous, who possesses the truth which he 
demonstrates consistently making use of the rational method. Hyla often falls into contradiction, is in 
many places superficial, and often has to change his mind and go back on his own positions. There is 
no authenticity of the exchanges, the ground is already drawn, the relationship between the two is 
asymmetrical. 
 

No «written» dialogue is the fruit of the authentic research of the dialoguers. [...] In fact, the 
dialogue games are already played before the dialogue is written and, as in all other cases, 
they are already played in the author’s head. Even in the case of Plato, the interpreters who 
adhere to the «theory of the spokesman» reduce the dialogue to a literary artifact that has to 
do with the form of speech, but not with the substance of thinking […because] the writing 
proceeds with a logic not comparable to that of orality (Cosentino, 2017, pp. 12-13).  

 
However, beyond this, we have to recognize that Plato is the first and indispensable reference when we 
speak “of the dialogic form as an instrument of philosophical communication” (Trabattoni, 2012, p. 
105).  
 

Plato, in the same way as Socrates, condemned writing, as expressed in the famous passage of 
Phaedrus, in which the Pharaoh, addressing the god Theut, inventor of the alphabet, shows the faults 
of writing: it will generate, instead of wise people, dreamers, filled with doctrines expressed by others 
(Fedro, 275 a-b). However, the need to defend the memory of his master against the accusations that 
led him to condemnation by the Athenian democracy, and to pass on his true doctrine against the 
“Socratic” interpretations of the Megarians, Cynics and Cyrenaics, prompted Plato to seek a literary 
form that was as close as possible to orality. From then on, dialogue becomes a literary genre and 
moves further and further away from the authenticity of research. 
 

In fact, according to Trabattoni, Plato did not make a conscious choice between literary genres, 
simply because at the time there were no genres codified as such, but rather chose, discarding other 
alternatives, a particular form of writing.2  
 

Indeed, insofar as the very term “philosophy” acquires only with Plato that completeness and 
fullness of meaning which will then maintain throughout the history of Western thought, it 
is fair to say that philosophy as we understand it today is born, with Plato, in dialogue form 
(Trabattoni, 2012, p. 111). 

 
However, if we want to know why Plato chooses that form to express philosophy, we could answer by 
asking what thinking means for Plato; and the answer, according to Trabattoni (2012, pp. 113-115), is 

                                                 
2 There was, for example, no treatise as we know it, but there were forms in which writing was expressed; think, among 
others, of Democritus' prose or of Empedocles' verses. 



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that for the philosopher thinking is dialoguing with ourselves. So, it is the real movement of thinking 
that is embedded in the dialogue.3  
 

Dialogue is a way of verifying the truth or falsity of our assertions, through a process of affirming 
or denying, until, when we arrive at some conclusion, it is interrupted and judgment is formed. And 
dialogue, in the form of thinking or acting in the community of dialoguers, is the only form of 
knowing, because we cannot have any certainty about some things that do not fall directly under our 
senses4, but we can try to remember what the soul holds of what it saw when it was disembodied: 
dialogue is the only means that can help dispel the mists of memory. This, however, does not 
guarantee the achievement of absolute truth, but we will have to settle for a series of final 
approximations, always contestable and subject to review: 
 

[D]ialogue has the task of replacing an eternally elusive absolute truth with persuasion, 
which is as reasoned and as solid as one wishes but which is nonetheless provisional and 
subject to new doubts and new arguments. 
[…] For Plato it is far better the condition of the disembodied soul, in which the direct 
vision of the intelligible in its pure evidence is not weakened by the mediation of logos, 
assertion and judgment, with all the inevitable uncertainty that goes with every act of 
judgment. For Plato dialogue, together with the rhetorical/persuasive precondition that is 
inherent within it, is the only way in which the truth can appear to mankind: where it is 
clear that it will always be a provisional, questionable, approximate truth (Trabattoni, 
2012, p. 116). 

 
Dialogue, then, for Plato becomes the privileged instrument through which the resolving role of 
homologia is carried out, that is, the agreement among the dialoguers, who, unable to reach the truth 
because the demonstration alone is not enough, need a common, albeit momentary, understanding of 
the problems dealt with.   
 

The choice in favor of dialogue is explained in Plato, in other words, by the same reasons 
on which his preference for oral rather than written communication is based: namely, the 
awareness that no human speech can contain a definitive or incontrovertible truth, but it 
can only represent a provisional agreement among dialoguers valid and true in the absence 
of any evidence to the contrary. Orality and dialogue, therefore, are recommended for 
philosophical use because in philosophy no one has strong enough arguments to exclude 
the possibility that his current convictions, however plausible and well argued, may be 
denied in the future (Trabattoni, 2012, p. 119). 

 
Dialogue, in this way, functions as a means to compose the distance between orality and writing. 
Furthermore, it is a literary form that lends itself rather to, 
 

                                                 
3 To give a few examples of other explanations of why Plato chose the style of dialogue, some scholars have assumed that 
the use of dialogue was a device to assert Plato’s philosophical system, rather than Socrates’; others have seen the assertion 
of the skepticism of Socratic philosophy that would be easily expressed through the dialogues, since they give the 
opportunity to put arguments and counter arguments without ever reaching a conclusion. 
4 Here Trabattoni’s reference is to the doctrine of reminiscence. 



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a conception of philosophy as research and a conception of knowledge as a process that 
continually poses and proposes problems and, only through the confrontation and 
collaboration of the individuals who participate, manages to establish the meanings and 
values of human life (Casertano, 1986, pp. 118-119).  

 
Now, if we amend the structure of Plato’s dialogue from the metaphysical demands of his 
philosophical doctrine, we can recognize some of the elements that characterize the dialogue of 
Lipman’s stories:  
a) the focus is on research;  
b) knowledge is understood as a process;  
c) there is no trace of an absolute truth;  
d) the agreement among the dialoguers can always be questioned. 
 

Therefore, the operation carried out by Lipman is to recover the philosophical dialogue and 
reshape it into a new form, a way of translating the philosophical tradition going beyond the literary 
structures that it had assumed from Plato onwards. The polyvocality of the exchanges between the 
characters in the stories reproduces a way of reasoning and questioning and giving meaning to things, 
which, although it is crystallized in writing, reproduces a movement as close as possible to orality. It 
does not allow a single epistemic interpretation or position to prevail over the investigation carried 
out: the narrative is in this way a means of conveying a way of doing, that is, of practicing philosophy.  
 

The originality of the Lipmanian realization lies in reproducing that type of orality in a double 
movement: on the one hand (and paradoxically), with the writing of the stories —that reproduces that 
research and that process that characterize the dialogue among the fictitious characters of the stories— 
and, on the other, the dialogue, the real one, the acted one, that will have to be implemented 
(animated by the same research and the same process that the story models) among the real children 
of the CPI. In this way, 
 

the traditional text has given way to the philosophical narrative, a work of fiction that 
consists, as far as possible, in dialogue, so that the annoying voice of the adult narrator is 
eliminated (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 1992, pp. 24-25). 

 
In fact, when this annoying storyteller creates children’s literature, children are being put on the stage 
responding to certain characteristics, which bring into play certain mental acts, but that reflect the 
idea that the adult has of how a child should be or how s/he should become.  

 
In most childhood stories the children represented are happy or unlucky, beautiful or 
ungainly, obedient or disobedient, but it is rare that they appear thoughtful, capable of 
analysis, critical or speculative […] A curriculum that aims to make children think about 
their own situation and life must also represent children who reflect both on their own 
lives and on the world around them (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 1992, p. 356). 

 
The children, left alone without the supervision of the adult, become the real protagonists of the 
narrative, and with their thoughts and reflections bring into play an open, sincere dialogue, a true tool 
of research. The text thus constructed guarantees the stimulus of the inquiry it models. 



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Every single part of the text is imbued with philosophical ideas “so that it is rare for a child to 

read a page without stumbling upon a problem, controversy or perplexity” (Ivi: 24). It is true that very 
often facilitators use different materials to stimulate the investigation of the CPI (videos, paintings, 
music, texts of various kinds); but it is assumed that this is done by experienced facilitators, who have 
internalized the methodology in such a way as to know how to choose the appropriate material and 
how to manage it so that it functions as a spring for the inquiry. Personally, I think that it is not 
advisable for teachers who are in training or are novices to use texts other than those of Lipman, 
because these are a consolidated guarantee of the stimulus to reflection. 
 

Almost fifty years after the publication of the first story, Lipman’s stories are still used around 
the world and continue to be the medium through which the CPI is formed and consolidated, 
making it possible to implement the pedagogical aims of which the P4C methodology is a harbinger.  

 
Limitations of Lipman’s Curriculum 

 
However, we have to recognize that there are some limitations related to Lipman’s stories. The 

first, and perhaps most obvious, concerns the transposition of stories into specific geographical 
contexts.  

 
In a brief presentation of P4C in Thinking, Lipman and Sharp (1988, p. 3) state that in that year 

the materials of the curriculum had already been translated into 15 languages. Translating the 
curriculum into another language involves the implementation of some measures to adapt the story to 
the particular context in which it is translated. It is Lipman himself who points out (Santi, 1999, p. 
56) that, in the operation of translation, it is important to adapt the texts to the cultural context of 
reference, adapting the values, languages, and lifestyles of the country in which the story is used; 
otherwise, the children’s process of identification with the characters of the text, which is a necessary 
condition to achieve an engaging dialogue, will not take place.  
 

However, this is not the only point to highlight. In fact, there are some other aspects which we 
should be aware of when we use Lipman’s stories. As Waksman and Kohan argue in Fare filosofia con i 
bambini (2013, pp. 57-65), it must be recognized that the texts are not as neutral as is claimed in the 
reconstruction of the philosophical tradition. This is in fact the history of Western philosophy that is 
dealt with in the stories (mostly presented according to a pragmatist perspective) and this does not go 
beyond the nineteen seventies, excluding de facto a large part of the contemporary philosophical 
tradition. However, also some significant aspects of European philosophy of earlier times, such as 
those relating to the Frankfurt school, seem to be absent from the curriculum. Moreover, the claim of 
the universality of the problems dealt with cannot fail to take account of the fact that the groups of 
children and their families are representative of a well-defined social class and the questions they raise 
are likely not to be relevant to children living in conditions of economic and social hardship. 
 

For example, the question that begins the first episode [of Lisa]: “Can we love animals and 
at the same time eat them?” proposes the question of coherence: if we consider that it is 
not correct to kill animals, why do we eat them? The question may be significant for urban 



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middle-class American children of the 1980s but not for children (American, Argentine or 
wherever it is) for whom what they eat is not a free choice (Waksman and Kohan, 2013, p. 
63). 

 
Nor can we ignore some stereotypes (especially in stories addressed to teenagers) that feature in the 
description of the characters: moms are often busy at the stove while dads are represented sitting in an 
armchair reading the newspaper; the boys embody analytical (Harry) or critical (Tony) thinking skills; 
Mark is a rebellious protester while his sister Maria is docile and obedient; and Lisa and Suki 
represent intuitive and creative thinking.  
 

Many of the criticisms and limitations so far described are due to the historical epoch in which 
the stories were written, and nothing should detract from their genius and the fact that they are 
fundamental to shape the behavior and the critical, creative and caring attitude of the children who 
take part in the CPI. However, precisely because the stories have this function, we must be very careful 
that the stimulus activity gives the possibility to touch the minds and hearts of all the children to 
whom it is proposed and allows them to identify with the characters of the stories and their problems. 
 

Then, we should add that the historical and social contexts have changed since the 1980s-1990s: 
now social media have powerfully entered the lives of children (especially due to the pandemic); the 
phenomenon of migration has increased and involves a large part of the world, and many migrants are 
unaccompanied minors who are fleeing war and poverty; and climate change has become a serious 
problem and is one of the causes of migration. These are all phenomena that cannot be excluded 
from philosophical reflection. 
 

As we have already argued, Lipman’s stories are the best device to achieve both the pedagogical 
purposes of P4C and the authenticity of dialogical philosophical inquiry. For this reason, it is 
important to continue the novelistic form he initiated but we should remain mindful of the need to 
construct story-settings in which we can clearly identify the connections between the fictitious 
community of inquirers as represented in those stories —which is the Lipmanian trademark— and the 
complex, emergent, shifting frames of reference of the contemporary world. Recalibrations are needed 
to address these and other new educational emergences. 

 
The PEACE Curriculum: An Example of Updating the Lipmanian Heritage 

 
The European project PEACE (Philosophical Enquiry Advancing Cosmopolitan Engagement - Project 

number: 527659-LLP-1-2012-1-IT-COMENIUS-CMP) was a specific project designed to foster 
inclusion among children at risk of poverty and marginalization. It was carried out between 2012 and 
2015 managed by the Department of Humanities of the University of Naples Federico II. It involved 
four international partners (Italy, Austria, Spain and Israel) in the creation of a new curriculum, 
according to the Lipman model, in order to promote a cosmopolitan frame of mind in children 
between the ages of 8 and 14. 



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In this context, cosmopolitanism is not intended as repurposing the philosophical tradition of 
the past5 but it has to do with a contemporary frame of reference that sees cosmopolitanism go 
beyond the mere multicultural matrix to reflect critically on the bonds that the current globalized 
social context brings into being.  
 

To promote social inclusion in a historical moment in which women and men leave their 
countries of origin and arrive in foreign places, driven by the search for better economic and/or 
political conditions, it is necessary to construct and implement educational paths aimed at building a 
new syntax of reality and a new grammar of thinking (Beck, 2004). 
 

The meeting between different cultures generates the formation of new cosmopolitan societies 
that interact in a world that is both local and global, in which it is desirable to build an education to 
cosmopolitanism that through critical reflection seeks to generate a “reflective loyalty to the known 
and reflective openness to the new” (Hansen, 2011, p. 99). 
 

Cosmopolitanism seen in this light is understood as “a method through which to theorize the 
transformation of subjectivity in terms of a relationship with the self, with the Other and with the 
world” that generates the creation of a third space that drifts “neither from the native cultures nor 
from the culture of the other, but from the interaction of both” (Delanty, 2009, p. 11). 
 

In the direction of a reflective education to cosmopolitanism the European Project PEACE met 
the methodology of P4C. The CPI is the best place in which to explore the loyalty to one’s own 
experience and the possibility of an openness to the new. It is the place where thinking discerns 
horizons of meaning and investigates them in their prismatic facets. This is the place where the four 
Cs of P4C (Critical – Creative – Collaborative – Caring, intended as the four main features of 
thinking) meet the fifth C of Cosmopolitanism (Oliverio, 2017). 
 

The stories and the handbook produced during the project are divided into three units and 
addressed to three age groups. Each unit consists of two stories:  

• 1° unit: 8-10 years (Tina & Amir – Ella) 
• 2° unit: 10-12 years (Hanadi - Christian) 
• 3° unit: 12-14 years (In and Out of the Park – www.whatisyourname.com) 

The first unit was created by the Austrian partners, the second by the Spanish and the third by the 
Italians. Israel did not participate in the writing of the stories but aided in supervision and who took 
responsibility, among other things, to test the stories in mixed communities of Palestinian and Israeli 
children, translating some of the materials into Arabic. The whole curriculum has been translated into 
the three languages of the consortium and into English.   
 

The manuals for each story have been combined into a single text so that teachers can have at 
hand various possibilities to develop and integrate exercises and discussion plans, adapting them to 
different age groups. The main Leading Ideas, in fact, recur in all the stories because they are 
                                                 
5 Cosmopolitanism has ancient roots that develop from Diogenes of Sinope (who described himself as a citizen of the 
cosmos), passing through the Stoic idea of a political cosmopolitanism based on moral virtues and love for humanity (cf.: 
Delanty, 2009) up to the Enlightenment universalism and the Kantian idea of a "league of nations" (Kant, 1995 [1795]). 

http://www.whatisyourname.com/


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constructed, according to Lipman’s model, with a spiral movement that achieves greater degrees of 
complexity as you move from one age group to another.  

 
For the writing of the stories the affective and cognitive skills that the educational project 

wanted to foster in children and the Leading Ideas focused on issues related to the cosmopolitan 
framework of thinking were identified. Both formed the basis on which we built the stories and 
manuals.  

 
Below is a scheme of the cognitive and affective abilities and of the Leading Ideas identified: 
 

COGNITIVE SKILLS AFFECTIVE SKILLS 
❑ Problematizing  
• Reflexive thinking about one’s own 

assumptions 
• Identifying, assessing, and using multiple 

perspectives (even conflicting ones) 
• Recognizing and being attentive to 

different points of view  
• Learning a better understanding of 

problems 
• Ability to ask good questions 
 
❑ Conceptualizing  
• Understanding the meaning of words 

used in everyday life 
• Showing a clearer use of language 
• Identifying moral values 
• Contextualization  
• Establishing relationships 
• Universalizing 
 
❑ Reasoning  
• Making good judgments 
• Conditional reasoning 
• Anticipating the consequences 
• Causal thinking 
• Utilizing moral imagination: generating 

new possibilities (i.e., the third space) 
• Explaining oneself to others 
• Distinguishing between good and poor 

reasons 

❑ Self-oriented skills: 
• Showing self-awareness 
• Having confidence: becoming aware that 

one’s own thoughts are valuable and 
that everyone has unique ideas 

• Developing self-resilience 
• Being appropriately assertive 

 
 
 
 

❑ Relational Skills 
• Manifesting tolerance, and becoming 

open-minded 
• Expressing cordiality 
• Being cooperative: Engaging 

collaboratively to advance a deeper 
inquiry with others 

• Having flexibility 
• Showing empathy 

 
 
 



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LEADING IDEAS 
 
Unit 1 (Age 8-10): Tina and Amir, and Ella: The 
foundation is cosmopolitanism as a concept and 
way of being in the world. 

• Cosmopolitan relationships (empathy, 
understanding, tolerance, different 
perspectives, diversity, caring), and 
reflexivity in critical reflection on one’s 
own subjectivity as an orientation to the 
self, Other, and world 

• Language/cultural translation 
(communicating and meaning-making) 
 

Unit 2 (Age 10-12): Hanadi and Christian: The 
foundation is cosmopolitanism as a culture and 
ethics; (What ought we to do?) 

• Local and Global (Loyalty) multiple 
overlapping spheres of engagement, 
breaking down notions of 
inside/outside, internal/external, the 
dynamic relationship of openness and 
loyalty 

 

 
• Individual and community 
• Tradition – Customs – Social Rules – 

Habits 
• Human Rights 

 
Unit 3 (Age 12-14): In and out the park and 
www.whatisyourname.you: The foundation is 
cosmopolitanism as a cosmopolitan politics. 
(How ought we to live as a society?) 

• Truth 
• Justice (universalism generalization, 

particularity, theories of justice) 
• Friendship, social networks, gangs 

(subjectivity as essentially relational, 
multiple overlapping spheres of 
engagement) 

 

 
Each partner then developed additional Leading Ideas for each unit that formed the scaffolding 

for the story building. For example, the Leading Idea of Human Rights has been extended to the 
Leading Ideas of Children’s Rights and Rights and Duties; the Leading Idea related to Social 
Networks has been added to the Ideas of Space, Virtual Space and Real Space; and the Leading Idea 
of Justice has been expressed as Right and Wrong, Distributive Justice, Instrumental Justice and The 
Rule of the Majority. 

 
All the Leading Ideas and the cognitive and affective abilities, together with the philosophical 

tradition of reference, have been inserted in a scenario that represents a cosmopolitan frame, 
understood as an environmental and theoretical context in which the characters have taken shape.  
 
Retracing the tradition of Lipman’s stories, the PEACE stories were built according to the following 
steps: 

• Research of the themes that make up the Leading Ideas 
• Research of different epistemic positions on a topic 
• Problematization of the themes 
• Transposition of the Leading Ideas into a narrative 
• Formulating a destabilizing problematic situation 
• Problematization of the situation  



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• Dialogue: 
a) Philosophical question 
b) Plurivocality (translation of the epistemic positions of the philosophical tradition into 

contextual language) 
• Age of the target audience (characters are the same age as the target audience) 
• Cosmopolitan context (most likely close to that of the target audience) 
• Language (the ordinary language that the target audience would use) 

 
The fictitious children were designed to embody all those qualities typical of the characters in 
Lipman’s stories (reflexivity, predisposition to research, openness to the others’ points of view, etc.) 
but they also play the role of children who are faced with everyday issues that can arise from the 
encounter between different cultures, whether they are represented by conflict or by a curiosity 
towards a different perspective. 
 

Thus, the story of a child waiting for the arrival of her relatives from Iran becomes an 
opportunity to reflect with her friends on the use of the hijab (Ella); or the conflict that arises between 
boys and girls competing for the use of a football field for a championship provides an opportunity to 
reflect on belonging and origin, children’s rights and gender equality (Christian); or, again, the episode 
of a theft committed in the school attended by the characters of the story, for which a Roma boy is 
accused, constitutes the spring to reflect on tolerance and prejudice (In and out the park). 
Here are some examples of how the issues in question have been developed: 
 

Isabell, who just came round the corner, looked curious and listened while Dina talked about her 
relatives. So she went on telling us: “You know, my family from Iran is very religious, when they 
are here in Austria the women don`t go without a scarf (hijab), not even if it is as hot as today. 
And whenever a man is walking up the stairs in our house, my aunt and my cousin put the scarf 
around their head tightly. I don`t care.”  
“I think they have to accept that they are in another country now and rules here are different than 
in Iran,” Isabell said.  
“Of course they obey the rules here, but...” Dina said. 
“Headscarves will not hurt anybody, so why should people not be able to wear a hijab?” I asked. 
“My mother said Muslim women have limits and rights that they believe in. It is part of their 
religion and you have no right to mess around with other people`s religion. If you are a Christian 
would you like people to tell you to take off the cross? Isn’t it the same thing?” Dina asked (Ella, 
pp. 25-26). 

 
“Come on! Let’s go to the playground,” says Bochdan. 
A tanned boy named José asks my new friend, “Are we going to set up a football team to play in 
the school league this year?” 
“I don’t think so. We don’t have anywhere to train,” answers a boy named Mohamed. 
“What do you mean we don’t? We could train on the courts at the sports center,” says Bochdan. 
“You can forget those courts, you know they won’t let us in,” says Mohamed. 
“You’re wrong, we can use the courts. Those courts are for all the kids in the neighborhood and 
we are kids from this neighborhood, so those courts were built for us. The problem is the 
Ecuadorians are always there and there are more of them than us. And they are stronger. They are 
the ones who won’t let us train there, but it’s just not fair,” says José. 



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“But they are from our neighborhood too, so they could say that it’s their right to play on the 
courts too,” Bochdan replies. 
“They are foreigners,” says José, “because they weren’t born here.” 
“I wasn’t born here either and I feel like this is my home,” Mohamed answers, slightly annoyed, 
“and the same thing goes for Raul who is from another neighborhood. I’m both Moroccan and 
from this neighborhood - and don’t you talk about your ‘village’ in Extremadura? I think we can 
be from several places at the same time.” 
[…]  
“What’s up?” asks Chema. 
“Two girls have signed up for the league,” Kevin answers nervously. 
“And? What’s the problem?” Chema responds.  
“What do you mean? The probleeeeeeeem?” His words don’t come out well. Or maybe, the ideas 
don’t come out. “It’s one thing is to have them as an audience, watching the game, but it’s a 
different thing to have them playing with us!!” 
“And me?” says Silvia, angrily. “Do you have any problem with me? Either you don’t know what 
you are saying, or you’ve had a problem with me since I started playing, and you didn’t want to tell 
me.” 
“With you it’s not the same … you’re different,” answers Kevin, a little unsure of himself, “you are 
one of us, and you’ve been here since the beginning” (Christian, p. 28 and 37). 

 
Everybody was in the park, including Mario. Jensika wanted to hug him tightly and make him 
understand that, as long as they were together, he didn’t have to fear anything, not even the 
charge of robbery, but she restrained herself and just said hello and that she was sorry about the 
rumours. 
“Who cares?” Mario said. “If I listened to all the stupid things they usually say I’d be consumed 
with rage. I don’t give a damn.” 
“Indeed,” Mariella said, “those people don’t know what tolerance means.” 
“Tolerance?” Mario laughed. “I don’t want to be tolerated.” 
“Mario, what do you mean?” Mimmo didn’t understand. “Tolerance is the basis of civil life. For 
example, it is tolerance towards different religions or cultures that makes us live in peace and 
allows us to study in the same school with Rahma and Jensika. It makes us know cultures different 
from ours.” 
“Yes, but this is not the point. First of all, we aren’t living in peace today, and it doesn’t seem to 
me that the Islamic religion is tolerated...” 
“That’s right,” Rahma interrupted him. “Yesterday in class we read the newspaper article on that 
boy who died in Syria. He was Italian but had decided to convert to Islam and, for this reason, was 
investigated by the Italian political police. Why should the police be interested in a person only 
because he converted to Islam?” 
“Because of the whole September 11th incident,” Mimmo affirmed.  
“Ok, but if you convert to Islam, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are a terrorist! I’m Islamic, 
ok, even if I’ve decided not to wear the veil and all the rest, but that is my religion, so am I a 
terrorist too?” 
“This is the same mentality that affirms that all Roma people are thieves,” Mariella said. 
“For this reason, I insist that we all should learn to be tolerant,” Mimmo claimed.  
“Still with this story,” Mario snorted. “You’re speaking from the other side of the fence. Go to a 
foreign country and then you’ll see what it means to be tolerated. Sometimes, I assure it’s really 
humiliating. You feel as if you were a disabled person and people pity you. I want to be known, 
loved, and appreciated for what matters” (In and out the park, pp. 25-26). 



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The stories were then tested by teachers and educators (already trained in P4C) who participated 

in a training course organized by the Department of Humanities of the University of Naples Federico 
II. This was a valuable experience because the trainers helped the authors to verify if the texts worked 
in the creation of a Cosmopolitan Community of Inquiry, giving advice on which were the most 
effective passages and which needed to be improved.  
 

The curriculum is still used in many Italian schools and educational contexts and is entirely 
downloadable, free of charge, from the website https://peace.kinderphilosophie.at/.  

 

Conclusion 

 
Retracing the motivations that prompted Lipman to use the dialogue in his stories in order to 

recover the authenticity of philosophical research —that we imagine inhabited the scene of 
philosophers at the time of Socrates— this contribution has tried to highlight the originality of the 
Lipmanian curriculum, but also its limitations, suggesting new recalibrations of the original design. 
 

The PEACE curriculum is an example of how, following Lipman’s tradition and teaching, this 
wonderful tool can be updated and adapted so that it can be addressed to contemporary children. 
Engaging in the creation of new stories, trying to remain as faithful as possible to the system created 
by Lipman, means, on the one hand, broadening the philosophical reflection, updating its themes and 
reasoning, and, on the other, understanding how to meet the new educational challenges that 
contemporary society imposes on us. There is a need, now more than ever, to create inclusive 
communities, in which the perspectives of different cultures are compared. However, it is also very 
important to bring out opportunities in which to reflect on the use of new technologies that impact 
with increasing urgency on the lives of educators and students, providing children and young people 
with spaces of meaning in which to build awareness of their use. 
 

For this reason, it is desirable to create new stories inserted in new frames of reference through 
which to reach children of all social and cultural backgrounds and to widen the range of situations in 
which the fictitious children of the stories act. This does not mean renouncing or abandoning the 
work of Lipman and Sharp. On the contrary, this would certainly be the best way to keep alive their 
heritage.  
 
Bibliography 

 
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     -405. Torino: UTET Libreria. 
Casertano, G. (1986). Storia delle filosofie. Napoli: Il Tripode. 
Cosentino, A. (2017). Il dialogo filosofico come strumento di ricerca. Nòema. 8(1), 9-19. 
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https://peace.kinderphilosophie.at/


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Delanty, G. (2009). The cosmopolitan imagination. The renewal of critical social theory. Cambridge:  
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Address Correspondences to:  
Maria Miraglia, PhD student at DSU (Dipartrimento Studi Umanistici) of the University of Naples 
Federico II (Italy) 
Email: maria.miraglia@unina.it 

 

 
 
 

https://www.pedagog.uw.edu.pl/fckeditor/userfiles/file/INPE%202016/Concurrent/Oliverio.pdf
https://peace.kinderphilosophie.at/
https://www.academia.edu/2264454/Dialogo
mailto:maria.miraglia@unina.it

