The Thinker by Jonathan Mahler
....Being a philosopher requires you to engage in the practice of relentless inquiry about everything, so it's not surprising that Jolley has spent untold hours puzzling over how to best teach the discipline itself. What he has decided is that philosophy can't be taught -- or learned -- like other academic subjects. To begin with, it takes longer. "Plato said that you become a philosopher by spending 'much time' in sympathy with other philosophers," he told me. "Much time. I take that very seriously." We were sitting in his office, which was dark with academic books and journals; a large paperweight reading "Think" sat amid the clutter on his desk. "Plato," he went on, "talked about it as a process of 'sparking forth,' that as you spend more time with other philosophers, you eventually catch the flame. That's how I think about teaching philosophy."
....Being a philosopher requires you to engage in the practice of relentless inquiry about everything, so it's not surprising that Jolley has spent untold hours puzzling over how to best teach the discipline itself. What he has decided is that philosophy can't be taught -- or learned -- like other academic subjects. To begin with, it takes longer. "Plato said that you become a philosopher by spending 'much time' in sympathy with other philosophers," he told me. "Much time. I take that very seriously." We were sitting in his office, which was dark with academic books and journals; a large paperweight reading "Think" sat amid the clutter on his desk. "Plato," he went on, "talked about it as a process of 'sparking forth,' that as you spend more time with other philosophers, you eventually catch the flame. That's how I think about teaching philosophy."
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