El asombro en el filosofar

una perspectiva de los estados de ánimo en la enseñanza de la filosofía.

Abstract

Wonder has traditionally been understood as an affective experience closely linked to knowledge and, in contemporary approaches, as a mood constitutive of philosophizing. From these perspectives, wonder typically arises from an experience of strangeness that interrupts the world’s familiarity and opens a disposition of attentiveness and openness toward the unknown. This article takes up such philosophical elaborations, from antiquity to contemporary thought, in order to examine them in the field of education, with special attention to the teaching of philosophy. On the basis of this survey, the article problematizes the conception of wonder as a purely individual or solipsistic experience and instead proposes understanding it as an experience that can be elicited, supported, and cultivated in the classroom. In this sense, it suggests conceiving wonder as an interaffective mood that emerges in the relationship between teachers and students and is shaped through dynamics of shared attention, dialogue, and joint exploration. From this perspective, the teacher does not transmit philosophy as a repertoire of finished knowledge, but rather fosters a questioning and reflective attitude toward knowledge, one that unfolds in the shared experience of the classroom and with which students can resonate in meaningful ways. Finally, the article reflects on the thesis that the teaching of philosophy constitutes a philosophical problem in its own right, on the proper object of philosophical teaching, and on the kind of attunement that wonder encourages in the practice of philosophizing. This article was carried out within the framework of Project MIN-UPN-937-24 (Contract No. 112721-482-2023, April 25, 2024), entitled The problem of training: updating a fundamental concept in education and its deployment in the teaching of philosophy, financed with resources from the Autonomous Heritage National Fund for Finance for Science, Technology and Innovation, Francisco José de Caldas.