Teaching and Learning > DISCOURSE

Text-Based Teaching and Learning in Philosophy

Author: Keith Crome and Mike Garfield

Journal Title: Discourse

ISSN:

ISSN-L: 1741-4164

Volume: 3

Number: 2

Start page: 114

End page: 130

Return to vol. 3 no. 2 index page

Introduction

This article addresses the role of text-based teaching and learning in philosophy. Text-based teaching and learning can be defined as teaching and learning in which reading a text with students is the focus of pedagogical activity, the objectives of the course being primarily related to, and fulfilled through, the reading of a text, or series of texts. The practice differs from the more traditional lecture and seminar discussion based approach.

The basic points and arguments that we put forward here derive from a report that was written in order to clarify the distinctive and significant features of the text-based method of teaching as it is practised in the Department of Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). However, we believe that the issues that the report raised have a broader relevance, for there has recently emerged a concern with the role of reading in the teaching of philosophy. In January 2003 the LTSN Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies organised a one-day conference on Teaching the Reading of Primary Texts.2 In the same year S. Guttenplan, J. Hornsby and C. Janaway—all of whom teach at Birkbeck College—published Reading Philosophy: Selected Texts with a Method for Beginners, an introduction to philosophy that attempts to instruct students in the “skills which experienced philosophers use in reading”.3 These two events are perhaps no more than beginnings, but they are nevertheless significant in their raising the issue of the relation between reading and the fundamental aim of all philosophy tuition—getting students to do philosophy. It is our intention to contribute towards the understanding of this connection, and we hope that our remarks will serve to stimulate further debate concerning this topic.

1. Reading

Reports on educational provision often draw attention to the fact that a significant proportion of students who have attained the pre-requisite standards for admission to Higher Education lack many of the reading skills demanded by the course of study they are to follow. The authors of one study remark that whilst “the term ‘reading for a degree’ has been around for a long time (…) reading is a skill that relatively few learners have developed as systematically as they could”.4 They continue that it is important to explicitly acknowledge that the activity of reading involves numerous skills, the development and continued exercise of which should form an integral element of teaching in Higher Education.

It is sometimes suggested that the numbers of students lacking such skills points to a systemic failure of secondary education to provide them, as under pressure from league tables, etc, schools look to impart just that information that is required for their pupils to perform successfully in examinations. On the other hand, it could be said that what has increased is the recognition of the deficit of such skills, and this is perhaps attributable to the increased emphasis in HE upon students’ acquisition of explicit, transferable skills and competencies in addition to subject-specific content. Irrespective of the particular merits or faults of these identifications of the cause of the problem, the acknowledgement that a significant proportion of students in HE lack the reading skills required by their course of studies would seem to be important. Without acknowledging that there is a ‘skills deficit’ in this area it is impossible to take any action to remedy it. It is tempting to attribute the recent interest in the pedagogical importance of reading in philosophy to a combination of these two factors. Whilst it would perhaps be wrong to suggest that both concerns over the inadequacy of students reading skills upon entry to HE and the necessity to impart to students transferable skills and competencies through the course of their studies have not, in some measure at least, played their part in this interest, it would be as wrong, we will argue, to reduce this interest entirely to such concerns.

In the first instance, however, it is important to note that the best insights of studies into this aspect of learning and teaching show that it is far from being the case that students can simply be taught a series of reading skills that form a fixed acquisition which can then be deployed in the act of reading. As many educationalists have come to realise, it is always possible to read without any genuine insight or understanding of what is read: the act of reading does not absolutely require either the intuition or imaginative apprehension of what is at issue in order for the words on the page to have meaning.5 Such a failure of comprehension is frequently referred to in studies on the subject as ‘passive’ as opposed to ‘active’ comprehension. It is passive because the reader relies on a stock of previously acquired meanings in order to understand the text she is reading, rather than actively engaging with the text itself. In an active comprehension the act of reading is inherently reflexive: one learns to read by reading. In other words, the activity of reading is not reducible to the simple act of deciphering characters on a page, and in all but the most straightforward of texts, the text itself defines its own terms, and defines how it is to be read. The ability to read well is not acquired through a fixed set of abstractly acquired skills, and cannot be abstractly imparted: if it is necessary to teach students to read, then this must be done concretely and by repeated engagement with various types of writing and texts.

Such a consideration is particularly relevant to philosophy. The Subject Benchmark Statement for Philosophy stresses that “learning in philosophy has to be an active process”, a requirement that necessitates that “provision in any module should include a substantial element of learning through the student’s own thoughtful reading”.6 As the observations above have shown, it cannot be assumed that students already possess this ability to read critically and thoughtfully, nor should it be assumed that they will discover it spontaneously for themselves. It follows that an integral aspect of teaching philosophy will be teaching that involves the act of reading. But, for the reasons already given, it cannot be assumed that the requisite type of reading can be taught as a skill or competence within a single study skills type unit, in abstraction from a continuous engagement with a single, or series, of philosophical texts. One of the best ways for tutors to encourage and facilitate the development of a flexible, independent capacity to read in students is to develop a pedagogical practice of text-based teaching and learning in the classroom.

2. Text-based Teaching and Learning and the Definition of Philosophy

The intrinsic difficulty of reading a philosophical text leads one to expect that the relationship between the act of reading and the teaching of philosophy would have featured as a subject of explicit pedagogical and philosophical reflection. In the introduction to this study we cited two indications of a growth of interest in this area. It would perhaps be unrealistic to think that this interest has emerged ex nihilo, and yet this is how things seem when one looks for preceding pedagogical studies. We were unable to find any directly relevant studies ourselves, and nor were the PRS-LTSN able to suggest any sources when we contacted them. The comprehensive review of the American journal Teaching Philosophy, undertaken by John Sellars for the PRS-LTSN Journal, did not identify any material connected to the issue of text-based teaching and learning.7 Moreover, whilst Sellars argues in his concluding reflections upon teaching scholarship in philosophy that “philosophy is a subject primarily devoted to the analysis of complex arguments” and expressly draws attention to the fact that such arguments do not take place in the “ether” as it were, he only remarks the necessity for reflection on the issue of “teaching students how to write well”.8 The question of reading, and of text-based teaching and learning does not emerge as a pedagogically relevant issue, despite its implicit importance to the issues that Sellars raises concerning the teaching of philosophy.

Sellars’ oversight is indicative of the general tendency to ignore the role of reading in the teaching of philosophy. The tension between the admission of the necessity that philosophy students read primary texts critically and well, expressed in the Subject Benchmark Statement for Philosophy,and the tendency to overlook practices that would serve to develop this ability is caught nicely in a statement by K. Hawley in an article concerned with evaluating different formats for philosophy teaching. She writes:

We cannot teach philosophy through lectures alone. Lectures can play an important role in introducing issues and literature, but reading, writing and discussion are also required. So lectures are usually supplemented by tutorials or seminars—these provide a forum for discussion, an incentive for reading, and preparation for writing.9

What this quotation expresses is that view according to which learning philosophy requires reading on the part of the student, whilst reading itself is not to be taught: seminars and tutorials merely having the function of encouraging the student to read.

It will be helpful to attempt to determine if there is a correlation between such a view and any specific presuppositions about the nature of philosophy, as clearly how philosophy is taught, and how it is supposed best taught, is consequent upon what philosophy is thought to be. Without doubt it is important to recall that, as the authors of the Subject Benchmark Statement for Philosophy state, in its academic form, philosophy is a rigorous discipline that is traditional in nature. It is therefore impossible to imagine that philosophy could ever be taught without reference to canonical texts. Nevertheless if the pedagogical significance of text-based teaching and learning is underemphasized or nor recognised at all, it is because a certain understanding of philosophy conceives the discipline as essentially ahistorical, that is to say, as primarily concerned with abstract and supposedly universal skills of critical reasoning and argumentation. On the basis of this understanding, and in relation to the skills of formal reasoning, logical analysis and argumentation, hermeneutics may be considered as important, but will nevertheless nearly always form a secondary or subordinate element of a philosophical education. According to such a view, depending on its provenance a canonical text will contain a more or less clear, more or less adequate, expression of a philosophical issue or idea, which is susceptible to further clarification and greater adequacy of expression. Where taught, hermeneutical skills would simply enable the student to recognise the necessary obscurities within such canonical formulations.

Such an idea of philosophy has been more closely associated with the analytic—as opposed to the continental—variant of the discipline, the latter having a more historically based approach to the subject than the former. For what is called continental philosophy what is at issue is less a matter of discovering what is right of wrong with a particular philosopher’s conception of causality say, but of recognising in it a particular constitution of reality. What matters is not so much the adequacy of approach evinced by different philosophers towards a particular problem, but power and creativity of philosophical discourses that have effectively constituted our experiences of the world and ourselves since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Given such a conception of philosophy it would seem that there can be little question of seeking to abstract philosophical ideas from their embodiment in a text.

It is unquestionably important to attempt to determine if there is a correlation between the analytic and continental conceptions of philosophy that predispose theoretical reflection and practical implementation towards or away from a recognition of the potential importance of text-based teaching and learning in philosophy. Yet it is necessary to be avoid being to schematic, or for that matter, schismatic: rather than suggesting that an analytic and ahistorical approach to philosophy excludes text-based teaching and learning whilst a continental approach privileges it is necessary to recognise that in practice things are more complex and open. In the first instance, it is difficult to imagine a situation in which any philosophy tutor would not help a student in reading a text. Secondly, and as the Reading Philosophy textbook testifies, important pedagogical reading practices are undertaken in departments that are not traditionally regarded as espousing a ‘continental’ approach to the subject. However, it seems to be the case that the origins of the lack of concern with teaching reading in philosophy can at least be attributed to the ahistorical and analytic conception of philosophy.

3. The Practice of Text-Based Teaching and Learning at MMU

In the following section, we outline the text-based teaching and learning strategies practiced at MMU, with the intention of making clearer what such a practice might involve, its advantages and disadvantages. It is important to remark that whilst the method of text-based teaching and learning is practiced throughout the department it is not something imposed unilaterally upon staff. It is more an ethos that has evolved from a shared, coherent commitment to the importance of the practice of reading to the teaching of philosophy, and it is actualised through a range of differing approaches.

The philosophy courses currently available to students at MMU are of both author and theme based types. All courses are taught through a mixture of lectures and seminars, and students are able to see tutors for individual tutorials by arrangement. Year One units do not include any single-author courses; all units are introductory, and the preponderance are concerned with the study of particular texts rather than issues. Exemplary in this respect is a course entitled Problems of Philosophy, which does not directly address canonical problems, but concentrates on the study of four canonical texts: Plato’s Phaedo, Descartes’ Meditations, Hume’s Enquiry and Kant’s Prolegomena. The unit seeks to introduce the student to historically and philosophically different modes of argumentation. Students are encouraged to make comparisons and draw distinctions between the different modes and styles of argument and the different concerns of the four authors, not with the aim of assessing their validity, but in order to arrive at an appreciation of their creative potential and limitations and their historical significance. Second and Third Year courses are a mixture of single author, joint author and subject area units. Second and Third Year units that are subject area oriented are still predominantly directed towards consideration of authors and texts. Thus whilst text-based teaching and learning does not preclude issue based courses, it inflects teaching towards the study of texts and authors.

Typically the practice of text-based teaching and learning involves students reading a text—or selection from a text—in seminar sessions. It is, in essence, a method of teaching through textual interpretation. The students are required to demonstrate their understanding by identifying, re-articulating and discussing the particular philosophical point at issue in the text. The advantage of such an approach is that it places the student at the centre of the philosophical activity. The text is addressed in such a way that the students are brought to see the philosophical issue for themselves by way of reading. The text offers the students a common material focus, which dislocates or displaces the tutor as the centre of attention within the seminar as an individual who is able to offer an authoritative account or summary of an argument or an issue. Under the guidance of the tutor, but with the text as their focus, students are brought themselves to engage with an issue in its philosophical significance.

In addition to providing a common focus to pedagogical activity which forces the students into a direct engagement with the philosophical issues at stake in a particular text, such a method also has the advantage of bringing students to recognise that philosophising is intrinsically demanding. Far from being the negative point that it might at first seem, such a recognition means that the student comes to see that doing philosophy is not a matter of ‘having ideas’ that are simply clothed in written language, but rather the act of articulating an idea is itself philosophical, and that every idea needs to be worked out and worked through. As a consequence, “thinking for oneself” as the Subject Benchmark Report puts it, considered as a process of engaging with, working out, articulating and re-articulating a given argument, becomes the centre of the teaching process.

Such a method of teaching can be contrasted with the practice of providing students with introductions to, and summaries of, philosophical arguments, texts and positions. Whilst apparently restricting the student’s focus to a text, and eschewing critical assessments of that text, text-based teaching and learning provides students with the opportunity to discover for themselves both the questions that underpin any given concept or text, and the significance of philosophical thought as such. It is here that one of the difficulties of the text-based approach to teaching and learning becomes apparent: in being asked to engage directly with a text, students can quite often feel that they are involved in a philological rather than critical and philosophical exercise. However, such a difficulty is perhaps one of the intrinsic challenges of teaching philosophy that the tutor has to meet. The primary role of the tutor being to bring the student to an independence of approach from out of their textual engagement, rather than providing them with abstractly imposed criticisms that separate them from the text and its argument. Only through a direct approach to the text, which runs the risk of being simply philological, can the student develop an articulation between themselves and the text that neither simply repeats it without engaging with it, nor expresses arguments that are only, and at best, occasioned by it.

It is because it provides a means for encouraging students to engage philosophically with philosophical arguments that text-based teaching and learning is held to be important. In relation to the reading of a text, students are found to be able to articulate for themselves a philosophical issue, and thus discover their own philosophical voice. As one member of the Philosophy Department at MMU has suggested, such a method of teaching might even be regarded as the touchstone of philosophical pedagogy: without that students are brought and taught to engage with, understand and re-articulate primary philosophical texts, they will never understand philosophy itself, and will always remain insecure in their own philosophical judgement. Certainly it is always possible that the tutor can end up repeating an argument to students, but reading in seminars with students, and allowing the text to become the central focus of the seminar, reduces the likelihood of that happening. For with text-based teaching, the text is not treated as a repository of issues and arguments that are more or less well expressed, but as the place of a genuine and unique philosophical experience. The text can fulfil this role because, when the student is directed towards a close engagement with it, he or she is required to repeatedly hypothesise and interrogate it in order to understand it. At its most successful this kind of engagement transforms the words on the page into a living force that asks questions of the student, and forces him or her to reflect on their own assumptions and experiences.

In the introduction to this article we said that text-based teaching and learning could be defined as teaching and learning in which the reading of a text is the focus of pedagogical activity. It is an approach in which the text has a unique, irreplaceable value for the teaching of philosophy. It is perhaps now possible to add that such an approach must be distinguished from one that simply acknowledges that it is desirable that students undertake the reading of primary texts insofar as doing so enables them to develop the capacity for independent analysis and critical engagement with philosophical ideas. It should also be distinguished from an approach that simply stresses that where it is an objective of a degree course that students should read primary texts, they should be taught how to do so. Such an approach does not necessarily have any specific philosophical reason for requiring students to read, but only the pedagogical justification of showing students what they are supposed to do when they read. In contrast, underpinning a text-based teaching and learning approach to philosophy is the understanding that there is an intimate and unique bond between an appropriately engaged or active reading of a philosophical text and the act of doing philosophy itself.

A clear and positive justification can thus be given for adopting a text-based approach to teaching philosophy. Text-based teaching and learning should not be considered a remedial method, intended to make good a deficiency in students’ reading skills. Rather it should be viewed as an approach that is intrinsically linked to what must be the aim of all philosophy teaching, getting students to do philosophy. In addition, a further motivation for this approach can be given: we have often found lecturers expressing the concern that, increasingly, students have acquired writing skills that are good enough for them to reach an average level of attainment in assessments, whilst the lecturer still has the feeling that they have not made a genuine attempt to engage philosophically with the issue in question. As we have already suggested, such a tendency is sometimes ascribed to developments in secondary education, where students are encouraged to master skills that will secure them good marks in exams. However, it is probably worth remarking that this concern goes back as far as the problem posed to the very first philosophers of distinguishing their own work—or a genuine philosophical understanding—from the skilful, but empty, use of words that marked out the practice of the sophists. In the end, irrespective of whether one attributes this particular problem to recent causes or views it as an ancient, and perhaps constant, phenomenon, text-based teaching and learning offers one way of dealing with it, insofar as it compels students towards a philosophical engagement with a particular issue. What should be noted, and it is worth underlining this, is that this particular justification for text-based teaching and learning derives not from a concern that students lack certain skills, but rather from a concern that they have mastered certain skills all too well.

4. Writing and Text-Based Teaching and Learning

As we have already noted J. Sellars, in his wide-ranging review of the journal Teaching Philosophy, suggests “teaching students how to write well should be every philosophy teacher’s highest priority”.10 Sellars prefaces his recommendations concerning teaching writing skills by observing that philosophers have tended to view with suspicion a concern with ‘style’ rather than ‘content’. Locating this suspicion in a Platonic disdain for rhetoric, oratory and, indeed, writing, Sellars suggests that such an attitude is unhelpful. Taking as an alternative the views of John of Salisbury and Cicero, he invokes the idea, common to both, of the “eloquent philosopher”. To modify the well-known Kantian expression, for Sellars words without wisdom are empty, whilst without words wisdom is mute. Sellars is cautiously insistent upon the reciprocal envelopment of thinking and articulating. He argues that it is not just that one without the other is of little value, but that “thinking clearly and writing clearly cannot really be divorced from one another”.11 Sellars makes the point that, given that students are primarily assessed by means of written examinations and essays, their ability to write should be scrutinised and nurtured. Moreover, for Sellars such modes of assessment are not contingent to doing philosophy; rather they reflect the very nature of philosophy itself. Drawing out the implication of his claim that thinking and writing are inseparable, he remarks that philosophical arguments are not disembodied, but “exist in language”.12 Thus the issue, he says, is less whether to teach students writing skills, but how best to do so. Accepting the force of Sellars’ argument, the question that we want to address in this section is how the method of text-based teaching and learning might answer to such an imperative.

Sellars’ claims concerning the essential reciprocity between philosophical thinking and writing are echoed in the arguments we have put forward in the previous section. However, as we have already remarked, whilst Sellars clearly identifies a number of weaknesses and omissions in the scholarship on the teaching of philosophy, and despite his emphatic arguments for the need to teach philosophy students how to write, he nevertheless fails to identify text-based teaching and learning as an issue. This, we suggested, was surprising given Sellars’ own characterisation of philosophy as a subject primarily devoted to the analysis of complex arguments. One might suppose that such a view would dispose anyone who held it towards acknowledging the importance of teaching students not only to present such arguments in written form, but along with that, teaching them how to read and respond to such arguments. This in itself would be sufficient to justify the method of text-based teaching and learning. However, not only is it the case that we contingently encounter such arguments in the form of written texts that must be read, but, as we have argued, it is in the reading of a text that the student comes to encounter the full richness, complexity and difficulty of a properly philosophical articulation of a problem. This response to Sellars’ argument, we should note, does not invalidate his point that teaching students to write well is one of the most important pedagogical issues for philosophy, even though a recognition of the role text-based teaching and learning in philosophy provision might recast some of his considerations, recommendations and conclusions.

Aside from any of the particular differences between the views expressed in this article and those expressed or implied in Sellars’ review, and beyond any particular similarities, we feel that what is most obviously shared is a commitment to enabling students who are studying the subject to do philosophy. The arguments that we have advanced have gradually moved beyond the initial considerations we made concerning the act of reading and have sought to express the vital bond that links doing philosophy to the act of reading a philosophical text. We have tried to suggest that in the context of teaching, what doing philosophy means is nothing other than the process of articulating an argument. Such a process will more often than not be difficult for the student. Again, and it is important to emphasise this, admitting that students do struggle to articulate philosophical arguments should not be seen as an indication of intellectual weakness on their part. The opposite is perhaps the case: such a struggle can be an indication that they have genuinely encountered a philosophical argument, encountered it as what it is—something that intrinsically makes demands of anyone, and not just the ‘student’, to articulate. In this respect, showing students philosophers formulating and reformulating a problem in a text can help them to realise that their own struggle is not a peculiar, personal difficulty, and not even a difficulty that is peculiar to students alone, but one that is intrinsic to the discipline of philosophy as such.

What we understand by ‘articulation’ should not be limited simply to the articulation of thought and voice, but also covers written articulation. Through text-based teaching and learning students are brought to develop not only their powers of philosophical comprehension; they are also to build upon their ability to write philosophically. Engaging with an argument, an idea, or a problem from the ‘inside’, that is to say, through its expression and development within argument of a text, rather than through its abstract representation by a tutor or commentary, allows the student to gain a valuable perspective on what it means to articulate an idea, to open it out and explore it as a living philosophical issue. It is perhaps worth remarking that it is important not to confuse the ability to articulate an issue philosophically with the ability to write well: teaching someone to write philosophically is not the same as teaching them to write eloquently; it is matter of getting them to express—perhaps sometimes with difficulty—a philosophical issue philosophically. It is the difficulty and demands of a genuine philosophical articulation that lie behind Plato’s disdain for superficial oratory and his valorisation of ‘content’. It is because Plato knew that it is the struggle to allow the matter of philosophy to speak itself through words that is important, that he did not condemn speech, writing or articulation as such, but only the superficial preference for elegance of expression over a real and genuine attempt to say or write something. Recognising this lends weight to a view we have already expressed and that Sellars also shares: teaching students to write ‘well’ in relation to philosophy should not be regarded as making good a deficiency, providing them with something that they should, ideally, already possess. Perhaps what, if anything, needs to be remedied is the ability of students to write well in a rhetorical sense without doing any philosophy.

5. The Subject Benchmark Statement for Philosophy

Subject Benchmark Statements have the function of making explicit the academic characteristics and standards of an honours degree in specific academic disciplines. The Benchmark Statement for Philosophy provides a set of standards for the provision of philosophy, gives an account of the attributes and competencies that philosophy students can expect to have acquired, and gives benchmark standards for assessment. Along with an institution’s own evaluation documents, the Benchmark Statement provides a means for reviewers to assess provision when assessing a particular degree programme. G. MacDonald Ross has argued that the significance of the benchmark document is likely to become all the greater in the future inasmuch as any new cycle of subject reviews that take place will most likely abandon a method of evaluating a department’s provision on the basis of its ability to meet self-set objectives, and will instead consider the appropriateness of the standards its has set itself.13

We have already shown that the Benchmark Statement for Philosophy gives sufficient grounds to justify a programme of philosophy that embraces text-based teaching and learning. Where it is held to be desirable or even necessary that a student should be able to read philosophical texts philosophically, and do so independently of secondary literature and tutor-provided summaries, then it is also necessary that students be taught how to read. Given the nature of the texts that they are required to read, and the very nature of reading itself, such teaching cannot be accomplished by precept, but by example.14

Whilst the general remarks made in the Benchmark Statement justify the practice of text-based teaching and learning, it is necessary to show how the Benchmark criteria are applicable to this in practice. The document identifies nine General Philosophical Skills that should be acquired by students enrolled in a degree programme in philosophy. These skills in turn form the basis for assessment of a student’s level of attainment, a typical level of attainment reflecting an adequate ability in most of these skills. These skills are:

  1. Articulacy in identifying issues in all kinds of debates
  2. Precision of thought and expression in the analysis and formulation of complex and controversial problems
  3. Sensitivity to the interpretation of texts drawn from a variety of ages and/or traditions
  4. Clarity and rigour in critical assessment of arguments presented in such texts
  5. Ability to use and criticise specialised philosophical terminology
  6. Ability to abstract, analyse and construct sound arguments and identify logical fallacies
  7. Ability to recognise methodological errors, rhetorical devices, unexamined conventional wisdom, unnoticed assumptions, vagueness and superficiality
  8. Ability to move between generalisation and appropriately detailed discussion, inventing or discovering examples to support or challenge a position, and distinguishing relevant and irrelevant considerations
  9. Ability to consider unfamiliar ideas and ways of thinking, and to examine critically presuppositions and methods within the discipline itself

It will be obvious that the method of text-based teaching and learning directly answers to some of these criteria. The skills listed under 3 and 4 are explicitly hermeneutical in character. However, inasmuch as the method is premised on an intrinsic link between doing philosophy and reading, then a good number of the other skills listed will also be developed. Insofar as the student is encouraged to engage with the philosophical point being raised in the text that is being read, then he or she will necessarily be called upon to articulate the underlying point at issue (1). The skill listed in last place (9)—the ability to consider unfamiliar ideas and ways of thinking—will also be developed through an engagement with primary texts taken from across the philosophical tradition. The other skills and abilities listed will be progressively fostered from out of such an engagement and in relation to other tasks, teaching methods and modes of assessment. For example, a genuine ability to appreciate the nuances and range of use of philosophical terminology (5) is derivable from teaching that focuses upon close textual engagement.

Undoubtedly these are abilities that it is necessary for graduates in philosophy to have acquired, and abilities that any competent philosopher must possess in some significant measure. However, it should perhaps be acknowledged that such abilities do not suffice of themselves to distinguish, nor to produce, a philosopher: on the one hand, students from many disciplines within the humanities would be required to have such skills; on the other hand, a student with all these skills would not necessarily be a philosopher, nor would he or she necessarily make a good philosopher. When philosophy is taught it is not just a set of skills or abilities that are being nurtured in the student, but a disposition or attitude. The Benchmark Statement implicitly recognises this in the definition that it gives of philosophy. This definition can be seen to comprise of two aspects, one positive, the other negative. In the negative sense it recognises that an education in philosophy cannot consist in the simple acquisition of facts and arguments; in the positive sense it states that “philosophy seeks to understand, and critically question, ideas concerning the nature of reality, value and experience that play a pervasive role in our understanding of the world and ourselves”15 Taking both the negative delimitation and the positive appreciation of what philosophy is into account leads us to recognise that being a philosopher or doing philosophy is not about what one knows, but is a disposition towards knowing (in this sense it is not inappropriate to recall that the very term ‘philosophy’—the love of wisdom—speaks of a disposition). In this sense, to teach philosophy is to awaken or intensify an attitude on the part of students towards the world and towards experience, an attitude of openness that allows the world, and their experience of it, to ask questions of them.

It is perhaps not possible to say anything more about such a disposition here than this. Any attempt to do so is sure to provoke disagreement. What can be said, however, is that the method of text-based teaching will help to develop in students to this disposition as it is instanced in philosophers philosophising. It might be objected that such a disposition is a prerequisite of reading philosophically, and without assuming the possession of such a disposition it would be impossible to explain how anyone could be sensitive to anyone else’s philosophising. But such an objection only has a purchase if teaching is thought to be imposing something from the outside, rather than allowing something innate to develop and refine itself by being actualised. Indeed an attitude of disposition is disclosed and learns to recognise itself and refine itself through its being exercised.

Concluding Remarks

Text-based teaching and learning has received scant attention as a form of pedagogical practice within philosophy provision. However interest in the role of reading in the teaching of philosophy is beginning to make itself apparent, and our reviews of both the small amount of literature devoted to pedagogical issues in relation to philosophy and the Subject Benchmark Statement for Philosophy indicate that there is a clear justification for such a method of teaching. It is important not to allow the positive aspects of the method to obscure the difficulties that such an approach entails. It is certainly the case that this method asks more of students than simply outlining arguments for them does, and not all students will appreciate this. However, it does seem that the majority of students do finally come to appreciate the honesty of such a direct, unmediated engagement with philosophical texts, and because of this, develop a genuine confidence in their own critical and philosophical abilities. It is also the case that such a method demands a lot more from the tutor: not only must they carefully prepare each session, they must themselves listen carefully, sympathetically and critically to what students say about a text. It is clear, however, that both student and tutor benefit from a commitment to this method of teaching and learning philosophy.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, who commissioned the report on which article is based. They would also like to thank the Philosophical and Religious Studies Subject Centre of the learning and Teaching Support Network for their assistance. Thanks are also due to all the members of the Philosophy Section at MMU.

Endnotes

  1. A longer version of this paper is available at: http://www.prs-ltsn.ac.uk/philosophy/articles/cromegarfield.html where it can also be downloaded as a .pdf file.
  2. Teaching the Reading of Primary Texts, January 2003, Leeds University. Contributions from this day conference are available on the PRS-LTSN web-site: http://www.prs-ltsn.ac.uk .
  3. S. Guttenplan, J. Hornsby and C. Janaway, Reading Philosophy: Selected Texts with a Method for Beginners (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), p. 2.
  4. P. Race & S. Brown, 500 Top Tips for Tutors (London: Koogan Page Ltd, 1993), p. 20
  5. See, for example, Race & Brown, op. cit., and also G. J. Fairbairn & C. Winch, Reading, Writing and Reasoning: A Guide for Students, 2nd Edition, (Bristol, Open University Press, 1996).
  6. Subject Benchmark Statement for Philosophy, Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2000, §29 (1).
  7. J. Sellars, ‘Some Reflections on Recent Philosophy Teaching Scholarship’, The PRS-LTSN Journal, Vol.2., No. 1, Summer 2002, pp. 110-28.
  8. Ibid., p. 125
  9. K. Hawley, ‘Using Independent Study Groups with Philosophy Students’, The PRS-LTSN Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, Summer 2002, p. 90. My italics.
  10. J. Sellars, op. cit. p. 125.
  11. Ibid.
  12. Ibid.
  13. G. MacDonald Ross ‘External Pressures on Teaching’, The PRS-LTSN Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2, Winter 2002, p. 111.
  14. In a document issued at the PRS-LTSN day conference on Teaching the Reading of Primary Texts (Leeds University, 8th Jan. 2003), G. MacDonald Ross argued: “If it is an objective of a module that students should read a primary text, then this should be clearly stated as a learning outcome; time should be spent on developing the skill; and success should be explicitly assessed… A classic method of teaching is to teach by example. You can demonstrate the process of making sense of a text in class, so that students can practise a similar technique in their own private reading. This helps to answer the question of what students are supposed to do when they are told to read slowly and deeply”. This document can be found on the PRS-LTSN web site at: http://www.prs-ltsn.ac.uk/generic/readingmain.html.
  15. Subject Benchmark Statement for Philosophy, §9.

Bibliography

Return to vol. 3 no. 2 index page

This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.

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The British Association for the Study of Religions
The Religious Studies Project