Philosophical Stages: Spaces for Practical Ethics

"We are discussing no small matter, but how we ought to live" (Republic 352d).

There are plenty of applied and professional ethics groups out there, and even practical ethics groups too, but the applied groups do not explore how we make moral decisions and cannot provide working accounts for applying principles to particular situations; the professional groups merely reinforce technical codes for professional life; and most importantly, practical groups are not developing learning spaces which help people explore decision making and critical thinking in performative ways. We propose to assemble an inter-institutional working group of educators, students, artists, and professionals (as we have on a small scale with Philosophical Stages) to investigate how much making or imitating making decisions of all kinds in experimental and performative spaces builds character.

Subject matter and general approach

The Practical and Performative Ethics (PPE) Working Group focuses primarily on finding ways to make philosophy a functional and practical activity by which young adults can explore and articulate their ideas and principles with confidence. PPE believes that action-oriented, dramatic exercises, in particular, make ethical investigations more accessible to pre-college and early college students, and foster skills in critical thinking and effective self-presentation. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that through the sustained and systematic modulation of voice, body, and thought, people can deliberately condition and refashion their lives into different characters. PPE proposes to build on its interdisciplinary study of and experience with using ancient pedagogical models (e.g. tragedy, comedy, declamation) in modern contexts to explore how we make decisions and how we might make them better.