A Study of the Ontological Foundations of Merleau-Ponty’s and Lipman’s Approaches in Order to Develop an Integrated Model in the Philosophy for Children Program

The purpose of this paper is to study the ontological foundations of Merleau-Ponty’s and Lipman’s approaches in order to develop an integrated model in the Philosophy for Children program. The main research questions are: what are the ontological foundations of Merleau-Ponty’s and Lipman’s approaches and, on this basis, what is the integrated model of the two approaches in the philosophy for children program? In this paper, in identifying the ontological foundations, the analytical-inferential research method has been used, and in presenting the integrated model, the integration composition research method has been used. The results indicate similarities and differences between the Merleau-Ponty’s and Lipman’s approaches. Given the basic commonalities in the ontological foundations and the emphasis on the importance of childhood and its impact on adulthood in the two approaches, by eliminating disparate elements and overlapping commonalities through necessary corrections, a combination of the two approaches can be used to improve the philosophy for children program.