Philolog

Philosophical Stages deals in experimental pedagogy at the intersection of philosophy and drama with both traditional and new media. Yesterday I witnessed James Collins and Corby Kelly (the two creators of the project) present with Antonia Blumberg and Sina Kimiagar (two of the Philosophical Stages 2005 alumni) a brief history of the Philosophical Stages program. This history included three phases for the current 2005-06 academic year. After screening a DVD of last summer's final performance--Antigone Reflected--Blumberg and Kimiagar unveiled their Dialogues on Virtue project in which they and the other alumni tried their hand at putting the ancient art of Socratic method into practice with peers, family, and mentors. The process of this innovative work is recorded on the Philosophical Stages collaborative authoring environment: http://www.philsophicalstages.org.

Collins and Kelly are pushing the envelope of creative and interdisciplinary pedagogy within the digital humanities. This they hope to continue in the next phase which is an experimental undergraduate seminar at Stanford. Acting Socratic, CLASSGEN 10 will be offered in the Spring quarter 2006.

The third phase involves the expansion and improvement of the Philosophical Stages 2006 summer program for high school and early-college students. According to Collins and Kelly this summer's program will include four-times the number of students through outreach efforts, continue to involve participants from last summer as mentors and advanced students, and expand the scope of the wiki and the size of the interdisciplinary collaborative network. The latter already includes dozens of graduate students, faculty, and acting professionals from the Bay area, Stanford, Berkeley, and the University of Texas at Austin.

Philosophical Stages works from the basic premises that (1) philosophy as an art of living aims to examine, evaluate, and transform our most basic assumptions and ways of thinking, our use of everyday words and ideas, our everyday habits and actions; (2) highly performative, experimental, and collaborative learning environments provide the best opportunities for this art which (3) is something we all can do and naturally want to do.