The Philosophical Conversion of Experience: Thresholds of Philosophability in Philosophy Teaching

Abstract

This article proposes the notion of a threshold of philosophability as a theoretical-didactic category for Philosophy teaching in high school. To prevent “experience” from functioning as a self-evident term, the article adopts a relational definition mainly inspired by Dewey: school experience is a situated transaction among subjects, language, environment, and social conditions, and is already mediated before its philosophical elaboration. Larrosa and Freire are treated as interlocutors who limit this option by preserving, respectively, the character of experience as an event and its political historicity. Through a bibliographic-documentary and theoretical-propositional approach, confronted with secondary empirical indications, the article formulates a matrix composed of six open and non-sequential functions: problematizing suspension, conceptual delimitation, explication of assumptions, argumentative conflict, problematic expansion, and critical return to lived experience. It delimits the relational meaning of philosophability, distinguishes the didactic use of “threshold” from anthropological and political-legal meanings, and presents scope conditions, one possible didactic itinerary, and assessment criteria. It concludes that philosophical questions may arise spontaneously, but sustaining them as public and conceptually treatable problems often constitutes a formative result of the class.