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Philosophy Shorts

Philosophers on Children

by Matt Qvortrup

‘More songs about Buildings and Food’ was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads. It was about all the things rock stars normally don’t sing about. Pop songs are usually about variations on the theme of love; tracks like Rose Royce’s 1976 hit ‘Car Wash’ are the exception.

Philosophers, likewise, tend to have a narrow focus on epistemology, metaphysics and trifles like the meaning of life. But occasionally great minds stray from their turf and write about other matters, for example buildings (Martin Heidegger), food (Hobbes), tomato juice (Robert Nozick), and the weather (Lucretius and Aristotle). This series of Shorts is about these unfamiliar themes; about the things philosophers also write about.

Your columnist recently received a request from a reader called Dawn. She was due to give birth soon, and asked, “What have the great philosophers written about babies and children?” Not much, I thought.

I was wrong. Philosophers have actually written a fair bit about small children. Take for example Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who was very poetic: “The baby is innocence and forgetfulness, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred yes.” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p.56). In contrast, Hannah Arendt (1906-1973) wrote rather portentously that we have “come to the point in history where it is little children who are being asked to change the world” (Reflections on Little Rock, p.496).

Like Nietzsche and Arendt, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) didn’t have any children of his own, but he probably had more direct experience with infants than either of them. For starters, he spent part of his life as effectively the male nanny of the son of an Earl. He expressed his frustration with the little toddler running wild at the time when he wanted to read Euclid and write his Leviathan. He concluded that the naughtiness and bad behaviour of children originated in the “natural indulgence of parents” (Elements of Law, p.23).

G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) was a speculative metaphysician, unlike his empirical English colleague. Very few philosophers have been further apart than these two men. However, they shared similar experiences – and drew similar conclusions on this topic. Reflecting on his own time as a childcare professional, Hegel mused that “subordination” had to be “nurtured in children” as this would “create the longing to grow up.” Without this discipline, the children would have a “cheeky nature and nosey wisdom [would] arise.” (Philosophy of Right p.175)

But not all philosophers were strict disciplinarians. John Locke (1627-1704) was rather progressive. His Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) is an example. He admitted that many a parent has been annoyed by questions from little children, but he saw it more positively: “Curiosity in children is but an appetite after knowledge and ought to be encouraged.” Locke also wrote that “Children hate to be idle, and should be constantly employed in something” (Thoughts Concerning Education, p.117)

Locke was one of the inspirations for the Swiss thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote a book on the upbringing of children. It was called Emile or On Education (1762). In the section on toddlers, he reflected on how we should not scold children; not tell them off. But, if a little child was unruly and broke a window, the parent should let him (or her) sleep in there. It might give the toddler a cold, but that wouldn’t cause him or her lasting harm, and they would literally be taught a lesson.

I understand that Dawn has now given birth. Hopefully these philosophical points will come in handy.

Matt Qvortrup is author of Great Minds on Small Things, published by Duckworth.