Meme: Passion Quilt

It’s about time I did something about those memes, which have come my way. I’ll Start with the one Shahar has kindly passed over to me. Here are the parameters:

Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about.

Give your picture a short title.

Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt.”

Link back to this blog entry.

Include links to 5 (or more) educator

So here’s the image, which I have entitled, rather boringly, Thinking:

So, why the Rodin? Why thinking? Because it seems that the most important aspect of philosophy, its greatest potential, its ‘emancipatory possibilities,’ have very little to do with a given subject being discussed, or a particular ‘method’ or approach. Rather, it seems to me that the ability to independently think through something, which is the core of philosophical thinking, makes philosophy valuable. Philosophy, at least as I’ve come to understand it, is productive precisely when it doesn’t fall back on a codified manner of thinking, when it doesn’t rely entirely on a series of pre-given, uninterrogated techniques, or when it doesn’t simply try to convince us to change our minds on some given point. Philosophy is productive when those engaged in it think. Above anything else, that’s what I try to get across to my students.

I’ve decided not to pass the meme along, since most of the folks I’m acquainted with have already responded to it.