“I want to gather shards of that world, because childhood is an age of the world and ages don’t follow each other, they are superimposed over each other.”

I look at my children. They are four, five, six years old… I look at their childhood: I’m not trying to rediscover my own. I’m not seeking life lessons, or re-enchantment. But I would like to understand what they are experiencing. In this book, I talk about their childhood, as it is unfolding before my eyes, even if I inevitably use those lovely optical instruments known as memory and nostalgia.

“I’m not going to try to figure out what philosophers thought about childhood, whether they valued it highly or not, whether they understood it well or not, whether, ceasing – if only for an instant – to systematically see the adult through the child, they paid it justice. I’m simply looking at how philosophy can proliferate in building blocks, playing with Playmobils, going to the zoo, and in a lock of hair twisted around a little finger.”