Abstract

We wish to share the thought experiences we have undergone in philosophical dialogues with children through the outreach project we developed at a municipal school in Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The project intends to research philosophy with children at a public school, creating possibilities to experiment, think, and be in different ways, as well as comprehend the actions and transformations undergone by the project’s agents inside the school. We highlight the singularity of the practices and the multiplicity of the processes which create the philosophical experience, by means of the reflective, aesthetic, and sensitive participation of the subjects. Here we describe a number of encounters that lead us to think about philosophical dialogues and music in schools; both in their own domains of creation as well as their coexistence, thus creating a rich, polyphonic weave: “thought as heterogenesis”. The powerful notion of “experience” opens the encounters to a movement on the axis of intensity. In this movement, many questions are raised through the encounters: what makes an experience philosophical? What makes an experience musical? What are the possible connections? How does childhood magnify such experiences? Which kind of school are we referring to when we think of the thought experience in its relation with music and philosophy? We discuss Freire, Deleuze & Guattari, Kohan, Larrosa & Masschelein & Simons to reflect upon these and other questions. We also drew upon the children’s descriptions about the experiences they had undergone in these encounters. We will use film and audio transcripts to rescue the dialogues of these encounters. Our goal is to think about the invitation we have come to inhabit through the philosophical-musical experiences with the children; places and times heretofore unexperienced in schools bring upon us different ways of listening and composing the world.