Children's Ideals as a Philosophical Topic

Several decades ago psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut pointed out that ideals should be seen as a core dimension of the infantile personality — a dimension that is crucial for the self's formation and the flourishing of the self. In this essay, Krassimir Stojanov begins by reconstructing Kohut's conception of children's ideals, and then, drawing on Axel Honneth's philosophical conception of intersubjective recognition, he explicates the social and pedagogical prerequisites for the formation of ideals and their transformation into values. According to Honneth's conception, the emergence and development of a coherent, autonomous self depend on various forms of intersubjective recognition, specifically empathy, cognitive respect, and social esteem. One of Stojanov's central claims here is that the educational practice of philosophizing with children is probably best equipped to provide children and adolescents with those experiences of intersubjective recognition that enable the articulation of infantile ideals and the transformation of those ideals into values. This practice is essential to development of the self because these articulations and transformations are basic preconditions for living a free and autonomous human life. Moreover, this practice is also important to the "rechilding" of philosophy — that is, the process of revitalizing philosophy through getting in touch with children's ideals. Thus, Stojanov concludes, these ideals deserve social esteem precisely because of their childish character