Community of Enquiry and Ethics of Responsibility

The article assumes that Lipman’s paradigm of ‘Philosophy for Children’ (P4C) as a ‘Community of Inquiry’ (CI) is very useful in extending the range of philosophical practices and the benefits of philosophical community reflection to collective life as such. In particular, it examines the possible contribution of philosophy to the practical and ethical dynamics which, nowadays, seem to characterise many deliberative public contexts. Lipman’s idea of CI is an interesting interpretative key for such contexts. As a result, the article highlights the possibility of understanding a CI essentially in terms of an ethics of responsibility.