Filozofija za djecu i mlade i integrativna bioetika
Philosophy for Children and Youth and Integrative Bioethics

Summary/Abstract: The contemporary age has been marked by a shift in epistemology and theory of education. The idea of usable knowledge has been exterminating those sorts of theoretical knowledge that promote certain values. There is a trend in an epistemological reductionism that gives monopoly on knowledge to scientific discourse, which is legitimized through cybernetic and economical efficiency, while diminishing the orientation-driven knowledge intended for purposes and ethical values. However, integrative bioethics requires the latter through the model of pluri-perspectivism, demanding the appropriate educational system, which would allow the development of bioethical sensibility. In the 1970s, Matthew Lipman established the philosophy for children, a discipline based on Bloom’s cognitive psychology, Peirce-Deweyan community of inquiry and critical thinking movement. According to the evidence, children are capable of abstract thinking from the early schooling age. The authentic thinking is multidimensional; critical, creative and caring. It is being developed through Socratic dialogue in the children’s community of inquiry. Integrative bioethics, as a discipline with an essentially educative role, may reach its goal, i.e. development of the bioethical sensibilities, precisely through philosophy for children, since the epistemological and methodological preferences of both disciplines are consistent with one another. The paper seeks to introduce this new discipline – philosophy for children – and to explore its relation to integrative bioethics.

• Details
• Contents