Philosophy continues to rely on a particular fiction of the knower. Serious thought is still imagined to require a subject who appears autonomous, self-regulating, and detached from experience. Credibility within the discipline depends less on the quality of inquiry than on the performance of maturity. Detachment functions as an index of reason, and adulthood operates as philosophy’s largely unexamined premise. What counts as philosophical seriousness remains bound to how convincingly one can appear in control of one’s thinking and oneself.
The premise that philosophical seriousness is tied to the performance of control does not simply describe who philosophers are supposed to be; it defines what philosophy can recognize as thought at all. The adult thinker appears as one who has outgrown dependence, affect, and vulnerability. The child marks what has been left behind. Philosophical adulthood is not a biological state but a disciplinary posture. It secures authority by treating curiosity, need, and relation as deficiencies to be overcome rather than as the conditions under which thinking actually takes place.
Efforts to include children in philosophical inquiry often leave this structure intact. Even when children are invited into philosophical spaces, the adult remains the one who frames the questions, translates the responses, and decides what counts as philosophy. Inclusion expands the field’s reach without altering the grammar that organizes its authority. The problem lies less in exclusion itself than in the standard of adulthood that governs recognition. Philosophy changes who is allowed to speak without changing how credibility is distributed.
Philosophy as children names a refusal of that standard. It does not refer to pedagogy, advocacy, or nostalgia. It describes an epistemic stance that interrupts philosophy’s attachment to maturity as the measure of knowledge. The shift is not dramatic but it is consequential. Traits that adulthood disciplines out of view, such as curiosity, receptivity, and dependence, are treated as resources rather than as obstacles. The ideal of adulthood defines clarity through control. Philosophical clarity may require something less defended.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception helps illuminate what is at stake. Perception, on his view, is not a detached act of observation but an unfinished openness to the world, a process in which meaning emerges through contact rather than mastery. The image of the philosopher as a spectator standing outside the world dissolves under this description. Thought begins within relations rather than above them. If perception itself depends on exposure, then detachment cannot be the condition of thinking. It functions instead as a strategy for managing its risks.
The logic of maturity extends far beyond philosophy. Developmental models of mind and morality establish hierarchies of temporal standing that continue to structure how rationality is recognized. The adult appears as the endpoint of a linear progression toward autonomy, while those who do not conform to that trajectory are defined as incomplete or backward. Colonial and gendered narratives of progress rely on the same temporal ordering, linking value to mastery, and treating dependence as something to be outgrown. Philosophy’s ideal of adulthood reflects this history even when it presents itself as neutral or universal.
A discipline organized around control struggles to account for the conditions of its own knowledge. Dependence and relation do not disappear when they are denied. They become infrastructural, supporting every act of reasoning while remaining officially unacknowledged. Language, care, and shared practices make thought possible before any argument begins. The adult posture obscures these supports behind an image of solitary agency. What is structurally necessary becomes something philosophy learns to forget.
Philosophy as children brings that dependence back into view. Relation appears not as a threat to rigor but as an epistemic condition. Knowledge does not emerge from distance but from contact. Attention, dialogue, and interpretation all depend on a willingness to be affected by others and by the world. Philosophical adulthood often treats this vulnerability as something to be managed or concealed. Seriousness becomes indistinguishable from composure, and composure comes to stand in for clarity.
Miranda Fricker’s concept of testimonial injustice clarifies why this posture matters. Credibility is not distributed according to epistemic merit alone. It follows social hierarchies that determine whose speech is heard as authoritative. The adult philosopher, imagined as composed and self-possessed, receives credibility that more visibly dependent or expressive subjects are routinely denied. The hierarchy of maturity functions as an epistemic injustice, shaping not only who speaks but what kinds of reasoning the discipline can register at all.
Adopting a childlike stance within philosophy does not involve idealizing childhood. It rejects the assumption that independence guarantees understanding. Inquiry develops through responsiveness to what exceeds one’s control. A thinker who refuses that responsiveness does not demonstrate rigor. That refusal often signals avoidance. The adult posture becomes a way of protecting oneself from the uncertainty that genuine inquiry entails.
This claim is not psychological. It describes a structural habit. Philosophy’s institutions, methods, and styles reproduce the image of adulthood through expectations of voice and tone. The polished argument, the controlled prose, and the preference for closure all signal mastery. Authority becomes inseparable from composure. Philosophy as children takes that expectation apart by distinguishing seriousness from restraint. Precision does not require emotional distance. Responsiveness does not undermine clarity.
The same correction applies to moral theory. Dependence does not negate agency. It provides the context in which agency becomes intelligible. Fantasies of moral autonomy mirror fantasies of epistemic self-sufficiency. Both confuse responsiveness with weakness. By treating care, emotion, and relational intelligence as secondary to cognition, philosophy has misidentified the conditions under which judgment actually operates. The hierarchy between maturity and immaturity reinforces exclusions that appear across political and cultural life.
A decolonial approach to philosophy must therefore begin by questioning the equation of maturity with authority. Distance does not guarantee objectivity, and control does not ensure truth. Dependence names how knowledge functions in practice. Curiosity describes how inquiry begins. Receptivity determines whether understanding can register what it encounters. Recognizing these facts does not lower the standard of rigor. It offers a more accurate account of what rigor demands.
Philosophy as children outlines a revision of method rather than a return to innocence. It asks whether philosophy’s performance of adulthood reflects confidence or anxiety. The insistence on composure often protects the discipline from confronting how much thought depends on what cannot be mastered. When philosophy stops defending its maturity, it becomes possible to examine those dependencies directly rather than disavowing them.
The implications extend to form. Academic prose rewards the appearance of stability through assured tone and decisive conclusions. Another measure of seriousness would acknowledge what thought requires rather than what it wishes to project. Writing that makes visible its reliance on shared language and provisional understanding would not signal weakness. It would offer a more faithful description of how reasoning unfolds.
Philosophy does not need to include children. It needs to stop defining itself through their exclusion. The division between mature and immature thought secures a false hierarchy of legitimacy. Philosophizing as children dismantles that hierarchy by showing that every act of reasoning begins in dependence, that clarity arises through relation, and that detachment often functions as an avoidance strategy rather than a virtue.
When philosophy accepts this dependence, it gains realism. It can study how knowledge actually forms rather than how it imagines itself to form. It can recognize the networks of care, translation, and attention that sustain its work. Receptivity becomes a methodological necessity rather than a disciplinary failure. The task is not to grow up, but to understand what the demand for adulthood has concealed.
Rachel McNealis
Rachel McNealis is a philosopher whose work examines how maturity, authority, and legitimacy function as epistemic standards in philosophy and political life. Her research focuses on the coloniality of age, queer temporality, and the governance of development across legal, educational, and epistemic contexts. She also develops public philosophy through Philosophy as Children, a project that explores how dependence, curiosity, and relationality shape philosophical inquiry. She shares this work through the Philosophy as Children project on Instagram (@philosophizingchild).
