180163 UE VO Didactics of Philosophy/Ethics I (2022W)

The term didactics (Greek: διδάσκειν, didáskein) stems from antique Greece (see also: παιδεία, paideia, which means education and in German: Bildung). We can observe the idea of didáskein in Plato’s dialogs, notably with Socrates as its central character. Although Socrates denies that he was anyone’s teacher, the dialogs establish a conception of what it could mean to impart knowledge and to commonly search for truth and wisdom.
To the present day it is widely discussed if philosophy is a teachable discipline, or such a trial would be a hopeless endeavor. Socrates argues in Plato’s dialogs that we cannot teach philosophy because, to do so, we would need a reliable knowledge of the issues that we want to communicate. The only knowledge we possess is of practical or technical kind, but we have no certainty whatsoever concerning the essence of being and related subjects. Plato’s dialogs widely discuss issues concerning knowledge, truth, beauty, the common good, justice and so on, but none of these conversations lead to a satisfying answer.
In the twentieth century Theodor W. Adorno renews the idea that philosophy is not a teachable discipline. His perspective is twofold, on the one hand it articulates a fundamental skepticism regarding philosophy as a discipline between others and on the other hand this very difference becomes part of its own identity. Therefore, it seems important to begin with an awareness for the specific task of teaching philosophy within a seminar of didactics.
Insofar as philosophical thinking implies an irritation of common beliefs, we must focus as well on systematic considerations about didactics of philosophy to analyze possible solutions for the potentiality of how to communicate philosophical knowledge. In this context we will discuss competing concepts of didactics in the first part of the seminar.
Of course, we finally cannot miss the practical task of such a seminar, and therefore it will be necessary to perform different arrangements of teaching by orientating ourselves on the curriculum and approbated textbooks. We will select the subjects from different subdisciplines like the theory of knowledge, ontology, ethics and esthetics.
Beginning with a general introduction into the main problems concerning the didactics of philosophy, we will then (in the second part) work and analyze together different theories of philosophical didactics. In the third part of the seminar the main concern lies on exercise courses and presentations about individually chosen subjects, that enable us to prove how to teach philosophy in a simulated setting.
The main goal of the seminar is to receive major concepts of philosophical didactics as well as to open a chance for sounding the consequences of didactic considerations by exploring the complex requirements of teaching philosophy.