Wisdom’s Edge: My Ongoing Journey Using Philosophy to Educate and Heal
This article was originally published June 29th, 2024 on Hanahau`oli School’s Progressive Philosophy and Pedagogy Blog
In this post we share a glimpse into the impact studying philosophy can have on mental health and well-being. Dr. Sophia Stone provides candid and emotional insights into the hardships she faced as a young woman and how philosophy, and incorporating philosophy in people's lives, came to be her calling. In reading about the work she conducts through Wisdom's Edge, it is our hope you will find empathy, curiosity, inspiration, and your own healing. Content warning: this blog discusses mental health issues, eating disorders, and drugs, which may be difficult for some readers.
If we are willing to conceive education as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and fellow men, philosophy may even be defined as the general theory of education
– John Dewey, Democracy and Education, 1916, p. 328
In eighth-grade science class, a college counselor spoke to us about the importance of a college education and that getting good grades in school now would make it easier to get into a good university. I remember the message so clearly even now—if I invested energy and time into my education, no one could take that away from me. From eighth grade on, I dedicated myself to earning good grades, especially in English, Math, and Science, so that I could have a good future. While I was incredibly academically motivated and attentive to the intellectual parts of my educational journey, as Dewey references above, the emotional dispositions needed to be successful were absent from my schooling experience.
I also struggled at home. My mother was overprotective, and when I was with my friend Noel, studying for a math exam after school, she demanded that I come home because she did not want me to be hanging around with boys without her supervision. We had a fight, and she kicked me out of the house. That was when I went to live with my father, who was moving to Santa Cruz. But the move was isolating. Starting over with a new group of friends was difficult. My father was also very much into health, fitness, and appearances. He would tell me that my thighs were fat and would comment on my eating habits. I didn’t realize this at the time, but I had anxiety, which I would alleviate by eating and vomiting, an activity I had learned about from reading Teen magazine. I managed to do well in school, and when I became a senior, I enrolled in the high school honors program at UC Santa Cruz, where high school students could take college classes and gain automatic admission without submitting SAT scores. My anxiety was worse when it came to standardized testing. So, I thought this program would guarantee admission to a good university, securing a promising future without suffering through an exam. The fear of failure was overwhelming.
The first course I took at UC Santa Cruz was Professor Rick Otte’s Introduction to Logic class. I loved the way symbolic logic worked like math but differed from math, as instead of thinking about relationships with numbers, logic focused on relationships with concepts and propositions. I also enjoyed how the philosophy students were challenged in the class and their competitive drive to solve the logic problems on the board. But studying for the exams was stressful, and I continued to cope with anxiety by binging and purging, a self-destructive process. I had the same issue in other classes, and my eating disorder became acute, with my father eventually agreeing to place me in an eating disorder recovery center for 30 days. On my way to recovery, I took a special leave from the center for my high school graduation, only to learn from my father that he wasn’t going to pay for my college education. He made too much money for me to qualify for financial aid, and he would not co-sign for student loans. I enrolled at Cabrillo Community College, taking philosophy classes, but I didn’t finish that fall. I relapsed. I fell into severe depression. It didn’t seem like I could do anything right. I lost my part-time job as an aerobic instructor. I came home, only to find all of my belongings on the porch. My younger brother answered the door and said, “Mom and Dad don’t want you living here anymore.” I was homeless.
I will never forget the feeling of unworthiness, of not belonging. I will never forget walking to the other side of the sidewalk whenever I saw a productive member of society with a job and a home approach. I didn’t feel like I belonged on the same side as someone with a job and home. I had a deep sense of shame whenever I saw anyone. I will never forget that longing to be at the university, to be studying, and to be one of those philosophy students with self-confidence, working to solve the logic problems on the chalkboard for all to see. I will never forget living at the Santa Cruz homeless shelter with people who were also similarly discarded: veterans, people suffering from mental health issues, and people newly recovering from addiction to heroin, crack cocaine, speed, and alcohol.
Ten years later, after cobbling together classes from community colleges in the Bay Area, I was admitted to UC Berkeley and pursued my degree as a philosophy major. I no longer had an eating disorder, and my recovery, strangely enough, meant that I became an excellent cook and a foodie, where I could appreciate the gourmet ghetto without going into a spin of self-destruction. I managed my anxiety with swimming and yoga. I met the love of my life in philosophy class and married him four years later. I got a full scholarship to Purdue University’s PhD program in Philosophy & Literature. When I graduated, I landed my first job at Lynn University as an Assistant Professor in Philosophy. Five years later, I organized a panel on Ancient Greek Philosophy and Mathematics at the Pacific Division conference for the American Philosophical Association. Right before our session, I attended Masato Ishida’s session on p4cHI - Philosophy for Children, Hawaiian style. There, I met professors connected with the Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and we gathered together in a circle with everyone. We participated in a “plain vanilla inquiry” (Jackson, 2001). We engaged in a very welcoming and inviting participant-led philosophical discussion where everyone had the right to speak, the right to invite, and the right to pass. After our discussion, we evaluated ourselves according to community, inquiry, and progress. I will never forget the feeling of belonging I had been searching for. I found it in philosophy for children Hawai‘i (p4cHI).
Photograph from a classroom visitation with the Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education’s Summer Symposium, 2022. Photo credit: Sophia Stone.
That fall, I founded Wisdom’s Edge Foundation with the help of Jerry Hildebrand, the director of Lynn University’s Social Impact Lab. The Social Impact Lab helps students and community leaders begin social impact organizations. I wanted to supplement my philosophy teaching at the university with public teaching philosophy; however, I wanted to teach philosophy at the edges of society, where people are discarded and feel unworthy. I wanted to bring that feeling of ‘ohana, of family/community, and that feeling of aloha, of welcoming and of gratitude for being. I wanted to share with others what I always knew but had to learn again–that a good education cannot be taken from you once you acquire it and that the right kind of education can lead one to new opportunities and new approaches to solving problems. I also knew that one’s mindset could lead to self-destruction or self-improvement and that philosophy could help adopt habits of mind that could lead to self-healing from life’s misfortunes.
The mission of Wisdom’s Edge is based on the claim that Socrates makes in the Apology written by Plato, that "the unexamined life is not worth living." The Wisdom’s Edge Foundation seeks to give meaning and value to every life through deep exploration of philosophical texts, through democratic discussion, dialogue, and personal introspection. Because we are an outreach organization, we go to communities and bring philosophy-based classes to groups that otherwise would not have access to traditional university philosophy classes. We are funded through grants and generous donations. We do not charge any fees for our services. What we provide is a gift to communities.
Since the late 1960’s, philosophy has been used in schools to help children develop their ability to think and care–both critical elements of life in a democratic society. Matthew Lipman spearheaded this now worldwide movement by developing strategies for students and teachers to engage in philosophy as a regular part of their education. The aim was to support students in becoming more thoughtful, reasonable, and judicious. He recommended turning the classroom into “a community of inquiry” and that the discipline of philosophy could provide the concepts and values missing from the curriculum.
Picture of Dr. Thomas Jackson. When he enters the classroom, the children whisper to one another, “look, Dr. J is here!” Photo credit: Sophia Stone.
In the late 1980’s, Thomas Jackson expanded on Lipman’s original vision by introducing a “Gently Socratic” (2001) approach to doing philosophy with children. In addition to cultivating the academic benefits of doing philosophy in the K-12 setting, Jackson’s approach also focuses on the social-emotional benefits of doing philosophy in community with others. It evolved in response to the tensions that arose while doing P4C in a multicultural community context and from how the Hawaiian concept of aloha is used to mediate these tensions and build community between diverse groups of people in the islands. I was drawn to Jackson’s philosophy for children Hawai‘i (p4cHI) approach because of my own life experiences and how I believe the activity of philosophy can be used to find meaning and heal. Today, I use p4cHI in my work with Wisdom’s Edge.
In January 2024, Wisdom’s Edge had the privilege of partnering with the Second Chance Initiative in Boca Raton, Florida. The organization is dedicated to helping women in recovery from addiction return to society from incarceration through a work training program, thereby breaking the cycle that perpetuates relapse and recidivism. We believed that participation in the activity of philosophy and doing philosophy in an “intellectually safe community of inquiry” (Jackson, 2001) could be a meaningful experience for the women in this program.
To pilot the process with the women, we read a graphic novel portraying the essential question of Plato’s Euthyphro – is the pious because it is god-loved, or is it god-loved because it is pious? A modern rendition of the so-called Euthyphro problem is whether there can be morality without appealing to religion. We engaged in a process that included question forming and voting, participant-led discussion, and self-evaluation. Keep in mind that the women had recently been released from prison and were in recovery from alcohol and addiction. Only one woman had taken a philosophy class before.
We first began introducing ourselves with the community ball. The community ball is a helpful tool for speaking and sharing: whoever holds the community ball has the right to speak, invite, and pass. Most women were from Florida, but some came from other states, such as Virginia or Wisconsin. After reading the comic on Plato’s Euthyphro, everyone but one participant offered a question for discussion. We reviewed the questions together, and the women voted on two of their favorite questions.
The question the group voted for was: who decides what is moral? My notes from our conversation are included below. The names of the participants are removed to protect their privacy.
“My first question is, what is morality? But then I wondered, who chose my moral code?”
“It is open-ended – as children – our moral code is dictated; it’s so open-ended. Our morals are dictated at work by our bosses. There is not one being that picks morals – it’s all of us. And whether or not you believe in God and how He dictates.”
“You just made me realize that I’ve said [in the past], ‘you go against my moral fiber of my body’ – my moral fiber is weaved into me.”
“Your question made me think of a bunch of things. Am I justifying my actions? Is this the right thing to do? It’s a difficult space to be in – more questions than answers. Not sure if I’m doing the right thing.”
“All my life, I’ve been struggling with being hard on myself. I have a checklist – we all have a small basis for what morals are. At the end of the day, my moral compass is not determined by a book I’ve read. It’s instinctual. Like a dog – he chews up a couch, he looks at you guilty – he knows he’s done wrong. We change, but our base foundation is pretty universal.”
“I agree – we all have that base-that moral compass inside. We get it from different places. In an act of addiction, my actions were not aligned with my morals. I knew what I was doing was wrong; I just didn’t care. Being aware of these feelings in sobriety strengthens this moral compass.”
“When we do what is against our moral understanding, it’s a moral dilemma – then the mind chatter, there is something wrong here.”
“I was just thinking where everyone’s morals come from. I know I hate hurting people. Then I was thinking of people who don’t have a problem of hurting people.”
“When you say people who hurt people, then they clearly have no definition of morality. It’s not fair for children who were never taught morals; they might not have grown up with morality.”
“It makes me question, what if they’re too gone – as you did, maybe God gave us morality – maybe morality is taken away from them rather than given to them.”
“Isn’t it the definition of a psychopath when you don’t have any feelings about hurting others? Cultivating a moral code is all about establishing boundaries; when I was in addiction, I didn’t care – I violated my boundaries. I try not to think about how I’ve hurt others and it makes me sad.”
We didn’t have much time. The conversation took less than forty minutes. The women gave a thumbs-up in all three categories: community, inquiry, and progress. I left with that sense of ‘ohana, family, and belonging, even though my problems were not the same as theirs.
The women's openness and willingness to explore profound questions immediately touched me. They were respectful, even when one member shut down and said she didn’t understand or know anything. I left this out of my notes, but she was still invited to respond even when she said she couldn’t think up a question. Even when she said she didn’t have anything else to say, she invited the next one to speak, thus making even the most reluctant participant a participant. I noticed minor remarks about childhood and off comments about ‘my parents didn’t care’ and ‘I didn’t have a parent that cared.’ I deeply identified with these remarks.
I realized after this session how important it was to start these questions about morals and ethics to children who are young and perhaps already abandoned–we need to catch them from falling without a moral safety net. What I mean by a moral safety net is a web of principles, virtues, and thinking that can provide a foundation for thinking things through when you have no one left in the world but yourself to figure things out. This is one of the reasons why I believe doing philosophy with children, as a regular part of their K-12 education, is so critical.
I also came away with awe at how open the women were to include reflections about their sober journey and the guilt that comes with knowing they hurt someone. With sobriety comes knowledge and wisdom, while using and addiction keep one either ignorant or apathetic or both. I wonder, though, if just six sessions of reading Plato’s dialogues: Apology, Euthyphro, Meno, and Phaedo coupled with gently Socratic inquiry, would improve their thinking and outlook and improve their overall mental well-being over time, just like the study of philosophy had helped mine.
Sadly, the organization won’t continue its sessions for various reasons, some of which are due to logistics like limited time, overscheduling, and the women needing to work. With that said, I will continue my outreach with other organizations. Recently, Val Stanley, Director of the Women’s Program at the Lord’s Place, has agreed for me to teach the women at The Lord’s Place, Burckle Place III, a housing facility for women ages 55 and up and women in their 30’s who are transitioning from homelessness and hardship. All of this is funded with the money Wisdom’s Edge receives from P.L.A.T.O., the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization, and the texts are donated by Hackett Publishing. So far, we’ve met once, making our community ball and creating our community rules and expectations. Some women were concerned about learning new vocabulary, and others were excited to learn new thinking tools they could apply to their lives. I believe that the community-building tools, the philosophy lessons Plato teaches in his dialogues, and the approach to progressive pedagogy I learned at the Uehiro Academy will be an excellent beginning to their journey.
Once acquired, a good education is something no one can take away. Philosophy should be available to everyone, and this approach to teaching philosophy should be a social and public good. This is why I’m on the ongoing journey to find wisdom’s edge with the communities I work with and why I invite you to explore how we can all use philosophy to educate and heal.
Sophia Stone is an associate professor of philosophy at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, and founder and executive director of Wisdom’s Edge Foundation, an organization that brings free philosophy classes to communities that don’t have access to the university. Dr. Stone has nearly twenty years of teaching experience in philosophy. Dr. Stone started Wisdom’s Edge in the Fall of 2019.