She can't really understand politics without an understanding of logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Her political views will inevitably be naive.
LOGIC: You could look at logical fallacies and rhetorical techniques together. (
RationalWiki,
Wikipedia) This can help her (and you) spot manipulative rhetoric or logical errors by any politicians, or even in your own reasoning. You could even take a step further, into psychology, and study the cognitive biases and heuristics that lead people to make logical errors or be manipulated—this may be a bit much, but it can be fun to take a little peek.
(
Wikipedia)
EPISTEMOLOGY: Besides the more general but still important, “What is knowledge?,” there are are epistemological questions specific to ethics (and ultimately politics). From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP): “The basic moral categories are those of right and wrong action. When we do theoretical ethics, we wish to find out what it is that makes a right action right and a wrong action wrong. When we do practical or applied ethics, we attempt to find out which actions are right and which are wrong. The epistemological question these areas of philosophy raise is this: How can we
know any of that?” (SEP:
short,
long) Strictly speaking, you
know zip about ethics or politics if you don't know how to answer these questions. More pragmatically, you can probably skip most of this with your daughter and understand politics
well enough—although some appreciation of
a priori vs.
a posteriori knowledge at least could be helpful. (
Wikipedia)
METAPHYSICS: Similar to epistemology, you can skip most of this. Sentience is important to moral status, and causality is of course important. A rough understanding would be
good enough.
ETHICS: Three areas, in logical order:
- (1) Metaethics: What does “good” mean? What does “right” mean? Etc.
- (2) Normative ethics: How do we determine what is right or wrong?
- (3) Applied ethics: What is the right/wrong action in situation xyz?
Political philosophy falls into applied ethics (although sometimes considered distinct).
I would suggest the following order of study for a reasonable understanding:
- (1) LOGIC: logical fallacies + METAPHYSICS: sentience;
- (2) METAETHICS: good/bad, right/wrong, moral patiency, moral agency;
- (3) METAPHYSICS: causality + NORMATIVE ETHICS: consequentialism;
- (4) EPISTEMOLOGY: a priori vs. a posteriori vis-à-vis pure reason vs. science.
This should give her a lot of the necessary context to think critically about any politician's arguments, or even create some of her own ideas about how things should be run. Step 4 can help better understand science and pure reason, and why both are important to politics (and why ignoring science is bad). If I
had to remove any item from the “curriculum”, though; it would be 4.
Hope this helps! A structured approach like this might be more like what your husband would favor, too.
