What’s in a TV series? Moral education and a question of reading
Paul Standish (UCL IOE)

(also live-streamed on Zoom)

For several years Sandra Laugier (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) has led a project entitled Demoseries that explores philosophically the hold of TV series on our lives. Laugier argues that the philosophical thinking embodied in series has a democratizing force, offering an ethics in which morality can be found not in general rules and abstract principles but in the narrative texture of characters in everyday situations. I shall offer an appreciative critique of Laugier’s initiative, contextualising this in reflection on TV studies, and providing a worked example drawing from my own discussion (available OA: https://www.exeterpress.co.uk/products/television-with-stanley-cavell-in-mind?variant=42380742885564) of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe.

Paul Standish is Professor and Head of the Centre for Philosophy of Education at UCL IOE. He has extensive teaching experience in schools, colleges and universities, and is the author or editor of some twenty books. Recent publications include Wittgenstein and Education: On not sparing others the trouble of thinking (Wiley, 2023), co-edited with Adrian Skilbeck, and the special issue Walden in Tokyo: Stanley Cavell and the Thought of Other Cultures, (JOPE, 2025), co-edited with Naoko Saito. He is President of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain and Co-Editor of the Journal of Philosophy of Education.

Note: all sessions this term will be in hybrid form. They will take place both face to face in a room at UCL IOE and on Zoom.