A virtual workshop to stimulate the philosophical thinking through literary reading in university students

Abstract

This article reports the findings obtained from an online reading promotion workshop for university students of philosophy. The purpose of this intervention was to promote reading literary pieces of work for pleasure to stimulate the philosophical thinking practice by reading existential topics. The initial context of this specific group showed that there were some students who just did utilitarian reading and that philosophy studies were not of their main interests. Furthermore, these learners considered philosophical texts difficult to read. This situation demanded to implement instruments that could complement the philosophical tasks with the pleasure to read. The outcomes revealed that most of the participants were more aware of the importance of reading for pleasure while performing the academic process, their inferential interpretation was favoured (preamble to the philosophical practice), their philosophical interest was arosed and they were motivated to have dialogic literary circles.