"Since all human beings start life as children ..."

The importance of the young and the young at heart

If you are free tomorrow, 19th of November, at 5 pm UK time, a kind reminder and warm invitation to join Beth Macintosh and me for a chat on one of my favourite topics in Midgley: the importance of childhood, the child’s “quest for variety”, talent for “befriending the unpopular” and “scurrying through species boundaries” — and, perhaps most importantly, our ability to keep “the inner child” alive.

The sentence by Midgley from which I took today’s heading states in full:

Since all human beings start life as children, this has the quite important consequence that hardly any of us, at heart, sees the social world as an exclusively human one. (Animals and Why They Matter, p. 118)

Beth, whom you might remember from one of the first interviews here, has done a lot of philosophy with children, both in general and for “Philosophy in the Wild: Finding Hope in Mixed Communities” (Team Wales’ section of the website now features pics and lots of resources I encourage you to explore).

I really look forward to talking with Beth about our experiences, the experience of childhood nowadays and how the inner children are doing. (I know mine has grown up a little bit since I talked to my dogs about this, back in 2020, for the first round of the Biscuit Tin. But just a bit.)

Here is the link to the live.