In an earlier publication, titled, “What Happens in Philosophical Texts,”1 I present what I refer to as Matthew Lipman’s model theory of the philosophical text. I argue there that the distinctive form of Lipman’s own philosophical novels—the curricular flagship of the Philosophy for Children program—lies in how they perform a modeling function, in the sense of being both a model of and a model for philosophical thinking. In addition, I attempt to locate through this theoretical rendering the place that Lipman’s (...) novels occupy in the history of written philosophical discourse, and argue that the novels are simultaneously retrospective and futuristic: harkening back to a time when philosophical texts served as a technology with which we form our philosophical thinking, rather than as an exposition to which, as readers, we are merely exposed; and, at the same time, I suggest that Lipman’s novels point toward a hoped-for future in which narrative discourse might once again establish a position of priority over exposition in the development of philosophical curriculum. (shrink)