Philosophy Across the Ages (PAA) is a service-learning outreach program that has been\u00a0connecting University of Maine undergraduate students with local high school students and\u00a0retirement community members through seminar-style discussions of accessible and exciting\u00a0philosophical texts since 2009.<\/p>\n
Participants come voluntarily, and are united by the desire to\u00a0discuss questions of philosophy and their relevance to everyday life. Readings often engage with\u00a0issues arising in participants\u2019 own lives such as those of race, gender, sexual identity, disabilities,\u00a0and mental and physical health\u2014for example, Franz Fanon\u2019s \u201cThe Lived Experience of the\u00a0Black Man,\u201d Iris Marion Young\u2019s \u201cThrowing Like a Girl,\u201d and portions of John Russon\u2019s\u00a0Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everyday Life<\/em> and Alva No\u00eb\u2019s\u00a0Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of\u00a0Consciousness<\/em>. While respecting specific interests, PAA balances its reading selections with\u00a0texts and ideas that participants may otherwise not be inclined or likely to encounter\u2014e.g.,\u00a0philosophical \u201cclassics\u201d such as Aristotle\u2019s Physics<\/em>, Ren\u00e9 Descartes\u2019s Meditations on First\u00a0Philosophy<\/em>, Simone de Beauvoir\u2019s The Second Sex<\/em>, and John Dewey\u2019s Democracy and\u00a0Education<\/em>.<\/p>\n No matter what the particular reading may be, PAA opens up the space for cross-generational discussions centered around the principles that 1) questions of philosophy belong\u00a0neither to people of a certain age nor to people of a certain profession; and, 2) these questions are\u00a0most fruitfully discussed in a cosmopolitan context\u2014that is, in a context in which we are\u00a0challenged to recognize that the diversity of ideas is a reflection of a reality that will forever need\u00a0to be examined and interpreted anew. Since PAA\u2019s inception, somewhere in the range of 70 high\u00a0school, 30 undergraduate, and 25 retirement community participants have engaged in\u00a0approximately 75 two-hour discussions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Philosophy Across the Ages (PAA) is a service-learning outreach program that has been\u00a0connecting University of Maine undergraduate students with local high school students and\u00a0retirement community members through seminar-style discussions of accessible and exciting\u00a0philosophical texts since 2009. Participants come voluntarily, and are united by the desire to\u00a0discuss questions of philosophy and their relevance to everyday life. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":893,"featured_media":0,"parent":2195,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"templates\/page-withsidebar.php","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2380","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n