Marco calls me “philosophical dad.” He says it with a smile, and every time I hear it I smile too. Our conversations have a particular quality, he trusts me, he opens up, and they often end up in unexpected places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last Tuesday he was having a difficult moment. Something had unsettled him emotionally, and he wanted to talk about it. It does not always happen like that, and when it does I try to be there in the right way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a lot of emotion. Strong words, sharp judgements, that tendency kids have to lash out at someone they actually care about. I listened. I did not interrupt, I did not correct straight away, I did not say “calm down” or “it is not that serious.” Those phrases, however understandable, rarely work. They close things down instead of opening them up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I tried something different. I used myself as an example, telling him about situations where emotion had distorted my reading of what was happening. How sometimes, when we are inside a strong feeling, we see only part of reality and mistake it for the whole. He was listening. He did not agree straight away, but he was listening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At a certain point Socrates, Kant and Wittgenstein came in. Not as a lesson, as a way of being in the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Socrates I asked questions instead of giving answers. Questions that did not attack his position but led him to look at it from the outside. And I could see him stop, observe, think. His eyes changed. That is the moment I recognise, when maieutics actually works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Kant I introduced the concept of bias, just that word, without categorical imperative or transcendental analysis. I asked him whether the way he was reading the situation would hold up if he applied it to himself, in a similar situation with someone else. That small shift in perspective did something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wittgenstein I named explicitly, once only and quickly because this was not a philosophy lesson. I told him about language games through a work conversation with Mattia, where I had used a word and he had understood something completely different. No tension, a calm work exchange, and yet the word had landed somewhere else entirely. I told him that words are powerful, that their meaning depends on context, on how you say them, on when you say them. Marco nodded. He had understood where I was going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Plato and Aristotle were there, silent, in the way the conversation sought the values beneath the surface and moved them toward something concrete. Dewey was intrinsic, in the sense that every step was empirical, tested in the moment, without fixed schemes. Gadamer arrived at the end, for me more than for him, in that feeling that something new had emerged from the conversation, something neither of us had when it began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the end Marco had settled. Not because someone had told him to, but because he had thought. I could read it in his eyes and body language, that shift I know well. He was still processing, but he was different from before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He walked into school calm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That morning I saw the philosophical framework become more mine than ever. Not applied, inhabited. Not displayed, lived. And I understood once again that philosophy is not stuff from books. It is a way of being with people, even with your nine year old son who calls you “philosophical dad” and does not yet know how much you are teaching him while he talks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marco calls me “philosophical dad”, and every time I smile. Last Tuesday he was having a difficult moment and wanted to talk about it. I listened, asked questions, shared examples. Without telling him to calm down, without lessons. Socrates, Kant, Wittgenstein entered almost without being named. In the end Marco walked into school calm. <\/p>\n
And I saw the philosophical framework become even more mine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,1],"tags":[1879,368,1169,323,1749,1855],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connections","category-free-thoughts","tag-growth","tag-metacognition","tag-parenting","tag-philosophy","tag-reticularthinking","tag-socrates"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":430,"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions\/430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}