Jean Kazez, “The Philosophical Parent: Asking the Hard Questions about Having and Raising Children” (Oxford UP, 2017)
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What is the central premise of The Philosophical Parent and why is parenting philosophically important?
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Hello, thanks for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy. I'm Robert Talese. I'm professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the program with Carrie Figder, and Carrie is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. My guest today is Jean Cazez. Jean teaches philosophy at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She's also an editor and a writer for the Philosophers Magazine. Her new book is titled The Philosophical Parent. Asking the hard questions about having and raising children. It's published by Oxford University Press. Now I take it we all recognize that parenting involves a seemingly endless succession of choices, beginning perhaps with the choice to become a parent.
Through a sequence of decisions concerning the care, upbringing, acculturation, and education of a child. And I guess we also all recognize that many of these decisions are impactful. More specifically, we know that the choices parents make often deeply impact the lives of others, including especially the life of the child. Now given the sheer number of impactful other regarding decisions that are involved in parenting One might expect parenthood to be a major site of philosophical attention, but it isn't really. In her new book, Jean Caz philosophically engages with the broad range of questions that parents must confront. Philosophical parent is a lively and accessible book that addresses deep philosophical questions in a way that a non academic reader could appreciate, but nonetheless it's philosophically nuanced.
So there's a lot to talk about. But let's begin by greeting our guest. Hello, Jean. Hi Bob. Uh thank you for having me
on
the podcast. Well, thank you for joining us. Um why don't you start off, as we usually do with these uh uh uh episodes, why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Okay. I'm uh from State College, Pennsylvania, and uh that's the town where Penn State is. It А май фатла возникс профессор there. And uh He was the uh the advisor for the pre med majors. So he was very pleased when I uh told him I was going to be a premed. However, in my freshman year in uh in college. I took an English class where we read the uh that famous uh Sartre article, Existentialism as a Humanism. And I just loved that article. And uh I was just right away a philosophy major, uh not a pre med. Um so he seems good. What did he make of that? Well, you know, he's actually a fairly philosophical person. So I think I may have inherited my philosophical tendencies from him. Um so I think he he recovered fairly quickly and it was okay.
Um So at Penn State the the philosophy department is very continental and so I had a kind of a little bit of a strange introduction to philosophy.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the central premise of The Philosophical Parent and why is parenting philosophically important?
0:00–7:32
2
How did Jean Kazez’s personal journey from academia to parenthood shape the book’s focus?
7:32–18:35
3
What philosophical arguments does Kazez use to understand children as ‘second selves’?
18:35–28:42
4
How does Kazez critique anti‑natalism and David Benatar’s claim that creating a child harms them?
28:42–40:37
5
What insights does the book offer on gender, gender‑reveal parties, and raising gender‑neutral children?
40:37–51:52
6
When, why, and how is it ethically permissible for parents to lie to their children?
51:52–53:42
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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