Abstract

How might we teach philosophy with untranslatables? This paper develops an answer to this question by examining discussions of teaching in the work of Barbara Cassin, with a particular focus on one scene to which she consistently returns — her early experience in the Étienne-Marcel hospital. Taking its lead from a keyword that she uses to describe this experience, ‘invention’, and analysing her discussions of this word in ‘ Topos/Kairos: Two Modes of Invention’ and Nostalgia: When are We Ever at Home?, the article argues that Cassin teaches according to a model of sophistic improvisation that we might imitate in turn.