Hello dear reader!
If anyone who reads my blog is planning to go back to school, then I suggest one thing: Do not take a philosophy class! At least not one taught by a Ph.D. holder. The reason for this is that a doctorate has many ideas that they wish to share, yet just do not have the time to do it in. This isn't a bad thing, although it does tend to hamper the understanding of what is going on in the course!
If you are planning to take a philosophy class, you should be advised to familiarize yourself with the works by Plato, Aristotle, DesCartes and Hume. If you have no understanding of any of these works, then you should plan on re-taking the course at least twice. Also you may wish to take a physics class, as a lot of instructors use physics examples to convey their points. If you do not, you will most certainly be re-taking the course.
A few words on the authors mentioned:
Plato - Plato writes in dialogue. Socrates is always the protagonist that seeks to find the truth in all matters. While he would be a most aggravating person to chat with, he does eventually get to the point he is trying to make. If you like reading plays or screenplays, you will not enjoy Plato's dialogues as there is no story arc, although, if you are looking for a story arc in philosophy, then you have missed the point and should pursue it no further.
Aristotle - Aristotle is an interesting case. All of his works were written primarily from student notes taken in his class. At times it is very choppy and switches formats a lot! The reason for this is that people that have translated his work were working to not only translate student notes, but also to fill in the gaps to make some sort of flow. Don't be surprised if the text suddenly changes from a paragraph to bullet point.
DesCrates - DesCartes is the most interesting of all the philosophers. His life story is extremely interesting and his meditations tend to get to a point, then move to the next point. It seems like DesCartes was playing a game of connect the dots and an artistic rendition of what the human mind looks like came out.
Hume - Hume is the worst philosopher to try and understand, as you never understand just where it is he is coming from. He only has three philosophical books to his credit and all of them are difficult to fully grasp. At times he attempts to explain things through a psychologist's perspective, then in the next sentence he disregards all scientific explanations he set forth. This is the one philosopher that requires the most time to understand.
If you have a natural inclination to philosophy, then you should take all the philosophy that you possibly can. For the rest of you that are wanting to understand it, explore it a bit before you whimsically decide it will be an essay class and sign up for it! Philosophy may have no right or wrong answers, but there are failing marks. If you do not have a great GPA and you don't understand philosophy, it is a great way to drop your GPA even lower!
I must disagree Andy, a Nicholas Buck math course did worse for my GPA than Phil 101 did. And alot of the examples he pulls physics wise can be understood using high school level physics and chemistry.
ReplyDeleteGranted the essay was a undertaking, but his marking system makes this course pretty easy to score well. FFS he GIVES you the questions to his midterms a week ahead of time! If you prep, you can't do badly. And to boot, for the essay, he asks you submit it, and tells you how to change it, and is willing to help you workshop it before he grades it 2-3 weeks after rendering commentary.
And I must say, John's class doesn't give you the right to assume all Philosophy classes are this way, he tends to be very prejudiced and teach a very narrow scope, that mostly agrees with his opinions.
I know, this isn't a slag on John's class, he is a great person and a good (if a little bit pressed for time) instructor. This was merely to point out that Philosophy is not as easy as one would assume. It is a lot of hard work, and for someone with no physics classes taken at all, it can be very confusing.
ReplyDeleteThis also isn't a post to say there is no value at all in philosophy. I did horribly, even though I studied a lot. However, even though I did poorly, it served to make me want to understand it better, a task which I am currently working on.
I doubt very much that anyone that wishes to take a philosophy course would or should be discouraged from doing so. It is challenging and as I said earlier, makes people who don't do so well to understand it more thoroughly. If they choose not to after, well they are missing out on an adventure!
I believe the phrase, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" would suffice as the point of not only my post, but also my retort.