We fail if all we teach students is to be critical.

Philosophy, far from being an intellectual diversion for the elite, can be central to the empowerment of those who are so often disempowered outside of the classroom. It is, therefore, one of the ironies of our current times that an increase in inequality has been accompanied by a systematic attack on the humanities.

Doing so will allow her to construct her own vision of what justice requires. Her interest in political organizing might be reawakened. She might reach out to other politically-minded friends or join a political student organization. If she doesn’t have the time, she might simply express those opinions to her children and family. Her daily life might be largely unchanged, but she will be transformed because she will no longer uncritically accept the injustices she confronts as given and she will have an inkling of a better alternative. Ideally, the philosophy classroom is the place where she has the time and space to engage in this transformation. But this transformation can only happen if philosophy not only arms her with the critical tools she will need but also with the ability to imagine and construct an alternative.

Armed with a philosophical education, our protagonist is now in a better position to think about the challenges she confronts. She will be indignant because many of them are the product of unjust political institutions, but she will also have a critical understanding of what makes them unjust.

The deep underlying idea is that if we have to choose a social and political arrangement without knowing the position that we may occupy in society, we will choose fair principles to govern our social and political institutions. My teacher had our class re-enact a scenario very much like this one in class. We discussed the principles that would govern our imagined society before we picked our fate out of a hat. Until that point in my young life, I had never thought about justice in that way. The power of this exercise contributed in no small way to my becoming a philosopher. I have recreated a similar activity in various classes I have taught. The discussion it generates among students is reliably superb, but the best moment is when students discover their fate – whether they end up being a doctor or a garbage truck driver or a poor young mother – and have to reckon (at least for that class period) with their principles. Many philosophers have persuasively criticized Rawls’ use of the original position as an argumentative tool. But we often forget, I think, how successfully it harnesses the power of the imagination to construct an alternative vision of what society could be like.

During the first round of this exercise, students inevitably take so many fish that there are none left in the lake. Students then discuss what has happened and what they ought to do differently in the next round. Some students have strong intuitions that everybody should take an equal amount, while others insist that all that matters is that in the end there are enough fish left to repopulate the lake. Not only is this exercise pedagogically engaging, but it leads students to develop proposals and to evaluate them critically.

The imagination allows Plato to crystalize his answer to the question of how we ought to live into a vision that we can subject to critical examination.

we perceive as reality might not be but an imperfect version of the truth.

His ultimate aim was to reconstruct the foundation for knowledge.

moment that philosophy starts its work.

how can it be that we can’t know any of what we thought we knew?

Therefore, the first step in this kind of philosophical education is to shake students out of a complacent and uncritical acceptance of the world as it is.

encourage students to be critical thinkers, we push them to ask questions, to rigorously examine their assumptions, to unearth weaknesses in arguments. Consider the questions our protagonist could ask herself: Why should she have to take out student loans to finance her education? Why can she only find jobs that don’t pay a living wage? Do her children have an equal opportunity to succeed? What might her life be like if the world was more just? To what extent are her actions explained by her situation? Do these explanations undermine her responsibility? How does her gender or race shape her identity? Why do the answers to these questions matter?

should go beyond showing students how to be critical thinkers: it must also teach students to imagine how the world could be different than it is and, in so doing, to consider better ways for them and the world to be.

because it is they who stand to lose the most if the world stays as it is.

Why, these students might ask, is the knowledge that philosophy aims at any deeper than that of more practical fields such as medicine, science, or the law? And why should they care about this kind of knowledge? Even if most professional philosophers aim at the deepest kind of knowledge, this does not show that it is a valuable enterprise for all students, especially for those who are already overcoming significant hurdles to attend university.

philosophy aims to discover fundamental truths.

philosophy teaches you to think and write logically and clearly. This, we tell our students, will be of use to them no matter what path they pursue.