What the Snorgh Taught me about Emmanuel Levinas

When thinking about the relationship between philosophy and children’s literature, it is often assumed that philosophy should have the last word. In this view, if children’s literature has any philosophical interest at all, it is because it can become the object of philosophical analysis, the vehicle for demonstrating some philosophical point or other, or a starting point for an exploration of the philosophy of childhood. In all such approaches, however, the real, serious, grown-up business is ultimately still considered to be that of philosophy. In this paper, I will be reversing the traditional hierarchy between philosophy and children’s literature. As an academically trained philosopher who has only later fallen into the writing of stories for children, I will explore how the discipline of writing for children has affected my own approach to philosophy, and opened up new possibilities for philosophical thinking.