THERE IS NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN LIFE – REFLECTIONS ON TEACHING PHILOSOPHY TO CREATE AND DONATE

Abstract

This article proposes a singularizing approach to teaching Philosophy, articulating a series of classroom experiences with the concepts of intersectionality – created by Kimberlé Crenshaw – and Nietzsche’s will to power. Inspired by a poem by Catullus, we argue that it is necessary to ignore rigid traditions – or “the rumors of the most severe old men” – so that the act of philosophizing, understood as an act of love and creation, can flourish. Intersectionality is presented as a crucial tool for recognizing the oppressions that structure the multiple crises of contemporary life – irremediably latent in the reality of students. The will to power, on the other hand, is conceived as the source of an education that aims to create and give, transforming teaching into an experience of self-improvement and affirmation of life. The text reports on the practical application of these ideas in teacher education programs, in which the distinction between active (creative, affirmative) and reactive (resentful, negative) forces is used to nourish and inspire liberating pedagogical practices. Linking life and thought in a complex and indivisible unity, it is concluded that the singularization of students and teachers is the main objective of an education that aims to give and create territories in which living, philosophizing, and loving play the role of transformative powers – which Ailton Krenak summarizes in the maxim that gives the article its name: “There is nothing more important than life.”