Why am I passionate about this?

I experienced being a parent as a return to my own childhood. As much as I enjoyed teaching my children, I loved learning from them as well. That got me thinking about how one might recapture the joys and insights of childhood. As a philosopher interested in education, I have long wondered whether we leave childhood behind or somehow carry it with us into old age. I discovered that several important philosophers, such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Rousseau have keen insights about the relation of childhood to adulthood. And the biblical Jesus seems to have been the first person to suggest that adults can learn from children. 


I wrote...

Your Whole Life: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood

By James Bernard Murphy,

Book cover of Your Whole Life: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood

What is my book about?

When we talk about human development, we tend to characterize it as proceeding through a series of stages in whichā€¦

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Emile: Or On Education

James Bernard Murphy Why did I love this book?

ā€œNever rush childhood but let it ripen in the childā€: Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the first philosopher to see children as more than adults-in-training. As someone who loved revisiting childhood as a parent, I simply adored this celebration of the world of a child.

In this philosophical novel, Rousseau is tutor to Emile from infancy to adulthood, and we watch Emile discover the world without any use of schools or books: ā€œI hate books!ā€ says the world-famous author. Purely through experiential learning, Emile matures, falls in love with Sophie, and becomes a model citizen. Rousseau pioneers the idea of learning through natural consequences: if Emile breaks the window in his room, he gets to enjoy a cold room. 

By Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Allan Bloom (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Emile as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Alan Bloom's new translation of Emile , Rousseau's masterpiece on the education and training of the young, is the first in more than seventy years. In it, Bloom, whose magnificent translation of Plato's Republic has been universally hailed as a virtual rediscovery of that timeless text, again brings together the translator's gift for journeying between two languages and cultures and the philosopher's perception of the true meaning and significance of the issues being examined in the work. The result is a clear, readable, and highly engrossing text that at the same time offers a wholly new sense of the importanceā€¦


Book cover of Childhood and Society

James Bernard Murphy Why did I love this book?

I was fascinated by Eriksonā€™s theory of the eight stages of human life, from infancy to old age. At each stage, he says, we must solve a dilemma, starting with: ā€œtrust or distrust?ā€ Our ability to mature properly depends on meeting the challenges of each stage, which then propels us to the next stage.

I was disturbed, however, by the implications of his theory: if we fail to succeed in any given stage, our future development is permanently compromised. In short, we never really fully grow up. 

By Erik H. Erikson,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Childhood and Society as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The original and vastly influential ideas of Erik H. Erikson underlie much of our understanding of human development. His insights into the interdependence of the individuals' growth and historical change, his now-famous concepts of identity, growth, and the life cycle, have changed the way we perceive ourselves and society. Widely read and cited, his works have won numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Combining the insights of clinical psychoanalysis with a new approach to cultural anthropology, Childhood and Society deals with the relationships between childhood training and cultural accomplishment, analyzing the infantile and the mature,ā€¦


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Book cover of Me and The Times: My wild ride from elevator operator to New York Times editor, columnist, and change agent (1967-97)

Me and The Times by Robert W. Stock,

Me and The Times offers a fresh perspective on those pre-internet days when the Sunday sections of The New York Times shaped the countryā€™s political and cultural conversation. Starting in 1967, Robert Stock edited seven of those sections over 30 years, innovating and troublemaking all the way.

His memoir isā€¦

Book cover of Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study

James Bernard Murphy Why did I love this book?

I loved hearing the stories of these men, both Harvard College students (including the young John F. Kennedy) and Boston ā€œtownies,ā€ as they mature from ages 20 to 90. The largest long-term study of human development, each of these 600 men was interviewed and studied every two years, creating a vast data set for students of human development.

George Vaillant, a Harvard psychiatrist, decided to test Erik Eriksonā€™s theory of the stages of life using the Harvard Grant data. What he found gives hope to all of us late-bloomers: early deficits could be redeemed by later successes. What matters, he found, is not IQ or perfect health but close relationships with family and friends. ā€œMaturation is the evolution of teenage self-centeredness into the disinterested empathy of a grandparent.ā€ 

By George E. Vaillant,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Triumphs of Experience as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At a time when many people around the world are living into their tenth decade, the longest longitudinal study of human development ever undertaken offers some welcome news for the new old age: our lives continue to evolve in our later years, and often become more fulfilling than before.

Begun in 1938, the Grant Study of Adult Development charted the physical and emotional health of over 200 men, starting with their undergraduate days. The now-classic Adaptation to Life reported on the men's lives up to age 55 and helped us understand adult maturation. Now George Vaillant follows the men intoā€¦


Book cover of Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism

James Bernard Murphy Why did I love this book?

David Norton really shakes up our assumptions about human lives. According to him, we develop within the stages of life but not across them. The goal of life, he says, is self-actualization, meaning to become who we really are, but this goal excludes childhood because children donā€™t have a self to actualize and old age because the elderly cannot actualize their selves.

At each stage, we solve problems unique to that stage: for example, reconciling ourselves to death is a stage that might happen at any age from 18 to 80. Each stage is unique and cannot be compared to other stages. I found Nortonā€™s book to be very insightful and thought-provoking. 

By David L. Norton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Personal Destinies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What is the meaning of life? Modern professional philosophy has largely renounced the attempt to answer this question and has restricted itself to the pursuit of more esoteric truths. Not so David Norton. Following in the footsteps of Plato and Aristotle, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Jung and Maslow, he sets forth a distinctive vision of the individual's search for his place in the scheme of things. Norton's theory of individualism is rooted in the eudaimonistic ethics of the Creeks, who viewed each person as innately possessing a unique potential it was his destiny to fulfill. Very much the same idea resurfacedā€¦


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Book cover of Not So Little Things

Not So Little Things by Kyle Ann Robertson,

Not So Little Things by Kyle Ann Robertson unravels the meticulously crafted life of Tina, an artist engrossed in the intricate world of historically accurate miniatures. As she dutifully honors her deceased father's desire for her to follow in his artistic and historical footsteps, Tina's controlled existence is shaken byā€¦

Book cover of The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life

James Bernard Murphy Why did I love this book?

What if children are not little adults but a different species? Perhaps children are butterflies who develop into caterpillars? Child psychologist Allision Gopnik asks wonderful questions about human development. She notes that most of us produce our best art and ask our deepest questions (ā€œWhy is the sky blue?ā€) as small children.

Childhood, she says, is our time of basic research; adulthood is the time for practical applications. Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, she celebrates the unique gifts of childhood, but she does not offer suggestions about how we might recapture those gifts. 

By Alison Gopnik,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Philosophical Baby as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the last decade there has been a revolution in our understanding of the minds of infants and young children. We used to believe that babies were irrational, and that their thinking and experience were limited. Now Alison Gopnik ā€• a leading psychologist and philosopher, as well as a mother ā€• explains the cutting-edge scientific and psychological research that has revealed that babies learn more, create more, care more, and experience more than we could ever have imagined. And there is good reason to believe that babies are actually smarter, more thoughtful, and more conscious than adults. In a livelyā€¦


Explore my book šŸ˜€

Your Whole Life: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood

By James Bernard Murphy,

Book cover of Your Whole Life: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood

What is my book about?

When we talk about human development, we tend to characterize it as proceeding through a series of stages in which we are first children, then adolescents, and finally, adults. But growth is not limited to the young nor is decline limited to the aged. We are never trapped within the horizon of a particular life stage: children anticipate adulthood, and adults recapture childhood. The very idea of stages of life undermines our ability to see our lives as a whole.

James Bernard Murphy offers, instead, a holistic view in which we are always growing and declining, always learning and forgetting, and always living and dying, and finds that only in relation to oneā€™s whole life does the passing of time obtain meaning.

Book cover of Emile: Or On Education
Book cover of Childhood and Society
Book cover of Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study

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