Questions:
How many people here studied philosophy in college? How many just think and read philosophical texts? (I did do the former and now do the latter.)
Is going to college/grad school truely worthwhile even if you don’t plan to teach as an occupation?
If you have gone to college and can brag about it’s quality, please post here. 
Another question I would like to ask: is modern philosophy the love of wisdom?
Cordially questioning,
me
I never studied philosophy and didn’t even know that it is offered as a subject to study. That’s kinda funny. How can you study philosophy? Philosophy is NOT the love of wisdom, wisdom is just what comes from experience. Philosophy is a love of TRUTH. A true philosopher will hound it out, pound it out, whichever way and will get to the truth.
Is going to college, school, etc., truly worthwhile even if we won’t teach or use that education? YES it is. That’s because, education not only teaches us how to make a LIVING but also, how to make a LIFE through our interaction with peers, teachers, professors and others. That’s what I believe.
As to reading philosophical texts, I’ve only read some of Bertrand Russell’s essays essentially.
In essence, I believe that education upto grade 10 or 12 should be taken by every child because it makes you more aware of life in general and that is a very worthwhile experience. Above that, it should be your choice. My mom was literate but had no education really, and even though she was very intelligent, but I know that she had a very narrow view of things. Education, going out into the world, interacting with this and that, broadens your horizons a lot. So in this sense education offers a lot too I believe.
And the dictionary meaning of philosophy being, love and pursuit of wisdom, in my view is wrong! For philosophy is the pursuit of TRUTH. For this reason, since nobody can study truth only brainstorm for it, so in my mind I don’t think that anybody can study philosophy, you can only philosophize!
wow, what garbage! 
i say that as respectfully as possible, of course. if you never officially learned how to play the piano but you figured out how to make sounds with the keys, would you call yourself a piano player? you wouldn’t, because that would be an insult to everyone else who has actually ‘done the work’ and studied/practiced the piano. you don’t just start “thinking deep thoughts” and magically get admitted into the philosophy club. its insulting to me to hear you talk like that. anyone else feel this way?
i have a B.A. in philosophy from saint anselm college in NH (usa). and i may continue on to the master’s and the ph.d.
ps: philosophy literally IS the love of wisdom. this is a very rugged translation but this is completely BASIC KNOWLEDGE. “phil.” - greek meaning “love”. “soph.” - greek meaning “wisdom”. HOLY SHIT I LAUGHED SO HARD WHEN I READ WHAT YOU WROTE!!!
PHILOSOPHY REALLY IS SOMETHING YOU CAN STUDY IN AN ACADEMIC FASHION!!! IMAGINE THAT!
As far as I’m aware, jimi hendrix taught himself to play guitar, without ‘officially’ learning it, as have many musicians.
But back to the topic of philosophy, of course you can study philosophy. At my university they told us that we’re here to learn how to do philosophy rather then learning about it which happens at other unis. It’s like telling someone ‘well how can you be studying english (ie literature)?! Surely that just involves reading books’.
you’re absolutely right …both about jimi hendrix and about “doing” philosophy as opposed to “learning about” philosophy.
however, when it comes to jimi, he was not just “noodling around”. he knew what he was doing, and i know for a fact that he had some (highly advanced) technical knowledge of music theory and of his instrument AS WELL AS some of his own unique techniques/approached to music and his instrument (which he did develop pretty much on his own). jimi heard other guitarists and took as his own those other players’ techniques and so on. prior to engaging in the act of playing, jimi had “done some homework” concerning his subject matter. though it was not “official” (he didn’t study at berklee or anything like that), it was still some definite knowledge.
and with philosophy, it doesn’t fit the hendrix/piano player comparison perfectly… but its still pretty true. you could read a bunch of plato or aristotle or russell or wittgenstein on your own and come to your own conclusions. you could probably use that knowledge as a basis from which to form your own unique ideas. but you would not have a comprehensive view of philosophy if you approached it that way.
and i totally agree that the ultimate goal in studying philosophy is to become an “original” philosopher… to be able to do it on your own. i just don’t think you can do a very good job of it until you learn about all of the philosophy of the past. like, who can analyze arguments properly until they’ve taken one of those terrible classes in logic? that’s a prime example of the necessity of the academic shit.
personally, i can tell immediately when someone hasn’t had any academic philosophy in their background. they sound immature and naive… just sayin’.
DarkMagus just wants to prescribe meaning to all those papers he’s written up to this point.
The truth is, there is no meaning. Get your filthy Ph.D. What does it matter if you’re working at f-in McDonalds as a manager for the rest of your life?
Writers write, musicians muse, Philosophers philosophize.
You’re defined by your actions and you words, not papers you wre forced to write, how many sorority parties you attended at the near by all-girls catholic schoolm, and certainly not by a silly peice of paper which says nothing more than, “Yes, he DID INDEED attend class.”
If you dont see this, I fail to see how you passed Intro to Symbolic Logic and Reason.
But let’s see how much you know. P is Philosopher, Good Grades are G and Knowledge is K.
All P have K.
Some G have K.
Does this mean that no K have G?
Does it mean that all G have K?
Is this deductive argument valid with the premises?
(K & (G)‘) ^ P == (P & (G)’) ^ K
In English, all those who have knowledge and not good grades who intersect with all philosophers are also those philosophers who do not have good grades intersecting with all those of knowledge.
So, grades have nothing to do with whether one is a good philosopher, yes?
Then what does your degree represent?
i would agree with rafa’s reasoning if good grades were that easy to get in philosophy. they’re not!!! oh, are they not!!! what aren’t they??? who knows.
philosophy is different from other disciplines (espcially arts) because doing philosophy is required in all methods of evaluation. this means that everything must stand the test against sound logic and demonstrativable proofs.
doing this is very hard. because logic is easy to get messed up in (i.e. using ‘all’ instead ‘almost all’ etc) and there’s always things that can go unconsidered.
fulfilling these requirements will get you a pass (50%). every mark from there is earned tooth and nail.
darkmagus, what was your concentration in philosophy?
i read history, not philosophy at university (although i did do several philosophy modules last year), and i often think that a lot of the information i gain from lectures/tutorials could be gained from books. especially since i only have five hours of lectures/tutorials a week. but without the structured academic approach to my degree, i would not have been able to get half as much out of the subject, even if i had read all of the books. and i’m guessing it’s the same for philosophy, especially since a lot of the work i did for my philosophy modules involved structured debates. in short, i think that university is important, but i wouldn’t laugh at anyone who didn’t attend.
by the way - what exactly is a ‘good philosopher’? someone who uses the power of thought for good not evil?
exacally the delemma i had. If i was to continue taking philosophy i was going to be forced to do two things. One, get a PhD in it which means a good many extra years of school. Or Two, finish my 4 years and work on a construction site or something similar more then likley for the rest of my life.
I quit after a year, cause neither option was worth the debt load i was getting purley for the sake of “wisdom” that i could easily find a much, much cheaper way. Now im taking computer programming. Which actually has some opportunities for me when im done… i hope 
It seems to me that there was a rather basic misunderstanding (and a bit of incorrect defining) a few posts up. The etymology of Philosophy is two Greek words philia and sophia, love and wisdom. More literally, the cojoining of the terms yielded “the love of wisdom.” I think this has been touched on above; however, I think many people are emphasizing the moral aspect of wisdom. Perhaps a better translation would be knowledge, which can be taken as synonymous with truth (rightly defined). The earlier philosophers (specifically the pre-Socratics) were as much physicists and as they were metaphysicians (see Aristotle’s De Physica and De Poetica for some thematically varied works by a so-called mere philosopher). The concern was more with knowledge in general, than with fractured fields of specialization in particular.
A little known fact of the history of philosophy (or knowledge?) is that many of the major fields in Academia are acutally the products of highly specialized philosophy. Physics is a highly specialized form of Metaphysics; Psychology is an advanced form of Epistemology; Logic is a more rigourous form of Critical Reasoning. These are not fields that developed separate from Philosophy, but were born from it. Observing this trend of specialization helps understand the earlier conception of Philosophy, specifically its translation, “The love of knowledge.”
Can philosophy be taught? Certainly, just as knowledge can be taught. The rigours of logic can be imparted just as easily as Hobbesian political philosophy. But one thing that I think should be taught more often (and is perhaps infinitely more valuable than just memorizing philosophical systems by rote) is the methodology of philosophy: the phenomonological method, the Socractic elenchus, dialectics, Foucaultian critiques of power, &c. All of those tools may be aquired by any ready student, and be used to much potential benefit. They are, in truth, the tools that drive philosophical reflection and investigation, and no Philosophy can be done without them.
I’m sorry, but narrowing down your options that much seems ridiculous. Nowadays, as someone mentioned in another thread, you can pretty much go into any field with any degree (apart from subjects like engineering etc). With any arts/humanities subject you can get into journalism, business (human resources, administration and any managerial position), media, teaching, there’s plenty which slip my mind- anything requiring analytical skills and so forth. Most employers will ask from future employee’s to have a good degree (2:1 in the uk) and won’t specify in what subject. Finding a job is hard regardless of what degree you have, so I don’t think that a degree in computer programming offers a much broader future.
there’s all that ‘transferable skills’ bollocks in the prospectus too, although i don’t see that my ability to write essays on long-dead cultures will help a great deal in the real world…
anyway, i think people should learn because they have a passion for thier subject, not because they want to spend three years getting drunk in majestyk (read trashy student nightclub) and shagging northern birds, or with the express purpose of going into a definate career. there are vocational degrees/apprenticeships (sp?) for that. unless you’re going into teaching or plan on becoming a very learned academic in the future, most people will never ever use their degree to get into a job directly related to it. i know i won’t.
Well, if you get a degree in basket weaving and pull a 4.3 GPA, you’re still not getting a job as an astrophysicist, not matter what you know.
You’re not going to become a psychiatrist or brain surgeon with a philosophy degree.
Here:
1. Anesthesiologists $70.01+ $145,600+
2. Internists, General $70.01+ $145,600+
3. Obstetricians and Gynecologists $70.01+ $145,600+
4. Surgeons $70.01+ $145,600+
5. Pediatricians, General $64.11 $133,300
6. Psychiatrists $62.95 $130,900
7. Family and General Practitioners $62.79 $130,600
8. Chief Executives $60.70 $126,300
9. Dentists $59.24 $123,200
10. Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers N/A $109,600
11. Podiatrists $45.61 $94,900
12. Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates $45.23 $94,100
13. Air Traffic Controllers $44.04 $91,600
14. Engineering Managers $43.71 $90,900
15. Lawyers $43.41 $90,300
16. Optometrists $41.39 $86,100
17. Computer and Information Systems Managers $40.98 $85,200
18. Physicists $40.88 $85,000
19. Petroleum Engineers $40.08 $83,400
20. Natural Sciences Managers $39.54 $82,200
21. Astronomers $39.27 $81,700
22. Nuclear Engineers $39.11 $81,300
23. Law Teachers, Postsecondary N/A $80,800
24. Political Scientists $38.73 $80,600
25. Marketing Managers $37.62 $78,200
26. Computer and Information Scientists, Research $37.38 $77,800
27. Pharmacists $37.04 $77,000
28. Mathematicians $36.77 $76,500
29. Sales Managers $36.08 $75,000
30. Computer Software Engineers, Systems Software $35.60 $74,000
employmentspot.com/lists/highpay.htm
NONE of these jobs below 25 will hire you without some form of clearly documented training.
None of those jobs listed are even in this ballpark of pay.
I dont know what kind of areas you’ve lived in, but where I’m at, if you’re not making 50k/yr, it’s not much of a living to support a family.
Post secondary teaching positions pay well…but are also cut throat. You wanna teach philosophy? You’re probably going to be at a community college. Philosophy teachers aren’t even on the top 100…and this is post secondary. The highest paid post secondary teachers are even in science and technical fields too, not liberal arts and humanities studies.
…but if you want to be the only doctor on your block that’s making less than the Dental Assistants…
And trix, my logic is sound, my argument is cogent. The difficulty of the classes are variable with the school, the teacher, the material, and most importantly, the student. For instance, CS, at my school, is considered one of the hardest subjects next to math and computer and electrical engineering (although, Communication majors here bitch ALLLL the time…but they’re just writing papers after paper…not hard concepts or tests). But CS is easy as friggin HELL to me (it’s the math that’s hard) becquse I’ve been personally researching the material. Philosophy is easy as hell…mostly because the degree program here is virtually non-existant. I do very well in those classes, needless to say. gloats
Grades are not indicative of knowledge. It is a good knowledge reinforcer, but recall all those math classes you studied the hell out of, passed with decent marks, and immediately forgot EVERYTHING.
i don’t know what a 4.3 GPA is. and i would rather chew off my own legs then become an astrophysisist. but then i realised the other week that nearly all of my friends at uni do BAs, as do most of my friends back home (except a couple of medics and one or two BSCs that slipped under the net). so i think i may be influenced by the fact that i only hang out with fuzzy minded arts students.
furthermore, i think i’m a tad elitest when it comes to degrees, and i don’t see a great deal of point in media studies. i’d much rather study a language that no one has spoken for two thousand years, or read a play that was written before christ was born. there’s probably more chance of getting a job out of that anyway…
i want to work in television (i think) and i’m probably far more likely to do so (because my parents do) then half the obnoxious twats reading media studies and journalism at leeds met. (i’m at the uni)
and university lecturers in england are notoriously badly paid.
Okay, i guess my question on the love of wisdom assumed a lot. Taking wisdom to mean knowledge of the highest causes, philo-sophy takes on an almost religious meaning. This is a heritage of the ancients and scholastics, i think. Doesn’t modern philosophy appeal more to the sceptic?
I’d also like to offer a further thought on “just philosophysing”. I believe it was Confucius who said, “Reading without thinking is useless; thinking without reading is dangerous.”
tdB wrote:
i think that’s a misconcpetion. the presocratics had very thorough, and rich, epistemological and metaphysical views that they extended to natural science, only after the philosophy was established. and the extension was based probably in response to the early milesians.
rafa,
you’re right to say that marks are contingent to the type of school. my school’s very strong in that area, with profs who are quiet well known. in theory, the idea is that this will pay off b/c ppl will recongize that this school is well known in that area, but as you also pointed, philosophy scholars and philosophers generally aren’t well known. except derrida. he’s like the world’s man-whore.
but, i do think marks measure the knowledge in the course. making a well crafted arguement is similar to making the right equation; once made, there is really very little option to not recongize it, as you did create it. so there’s really no option but to use and apply it correspondingly. someone called this the effect of clear and distinct ideas, and this posed a great problem for figuring out freewill. in any event, there is no doubt that those who learn philosophy proper are not the same as those who don’t. but, not all who study philosophy are the same. i met with a certain person who goes to a crummy school for philosophy, and he’s got a really fucked philosophy that is profoundly dumb. in part, this is b/c the philosophy program’s crap. other part, he probably always was a minor retard.
No, you’re wrong. the only true philosophers in the world go through ENORMOUS emotional pain in their life, it could be any kind of emotional pain but not physical. And this pain in their life is what gives them the ability to philosophize. So you can get a B.A. in philosophy and consider yourself a philosopher my dear Dark Magus, but that won’t make you one, ALRIGHT? Only pain in your heart will, emotional pain. Is that such a difficult concept to understand? And philosophy as I said is the pursuit of TRUTH, let me add to it. It is also the pursuit of knowledge because you WANT TO GET TO THE TRUTH, so you will love going after knowledge to get to the truth. And once again, philosophy is NOT the pursuit of wisdom. Wisdom dawns upon us through experience like sunshine does in our life. We can’t pursue wisdom, we can only pursue knowledge for more and more truth.
ok dude, i’ll give it to you 
sounds like you just finished reading “notes from the underground” and now you’re all hyped up on this “pain of existence” shit. KEWL, BUT THERE’S MORE TO IT! i mean no disrespect, honestly… you just seem to be representing a very tiny corner of philosophy. personally i have experienced some of that “emotional pain” as part of my philosophical development… so i really do know exactly what you’re talking about. that “mental torture” DEFINITELY impacted the way i think about life, the universe, and everything. but god DAMN its lame to just stop there. you’ll end up sitting in some shitty cafe chain smoking and lamenting about how you don’t have a girlfriend or some other lame horse shit like that. you have to use that “pain” and “sickness of too much consciousness” as a stepping stone to take to you higher mountain-tops.
trix, my good (wo)man. now here’s a guy (or girl?) that knows his (or her?) shit. i like your positive attitude.
i had a taste of pretty much everything in philosophy, except pragmatism and process philosophy which my school pretty much ignored entirely. i’m attempting to take care of those deficiencies now though, reading on my own.
i had a VERY HEAVY DOSE of medieval philosophy which i absolutely hate but learned about it nonetheless. i focused a lot of my time and effort in the direction of the epistemologies of the modern, late modern, and contemporary periods. i also consider myself a major FREAK when it comes to the philosophy of science.
what about you? are you in school? what’s your thing?
ok now…
well clearly i’m in no position to argue with someone who has a higher post count than me. do you really think that means something? that’s the best example of philosophical masterbation i’ve EVER SEEN. seriously, A++ work right there. that’s my grade for you. i’m guessing you don’t have a girlfriend or nothin’? “LOL”