New York Times highlights growing interest in philosophy
April 8, 2008
The New York Times published an article last Sunday on the increasing interest in philosophy at colleges and universities around the United States. I always advise my college students to pick up a second major in philosophy in addition to what they are already studying, as I have found no other discipline comparable in terms of aiding in the development of critical thinking, linguistic skills and practical application of concepts.
I was pleased to see that my own university, Texas A&M, got a nod in the article. Click here to read it.
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The value of philosophical study is simply incomparable. Anyone who, say, succefully works through and comes to appreciate sufficiently what is at play in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Heidegger’s Being and Time renders him/herself capable of rigorous intellectual analysis and deep cultural undertanding of the main cross-currents of the Western mind.
Niiiceee…some of the people I know made it to the pictures…the picture with the girl is a picture of my Nietzsche class. I should start going to classes so I can be in the NYT. :-P
I think a lot of people do not find value in philosophy because they find it useless. There is some good in this and bad. Some philosophical matters do in fact seem to be pointless or useless in a person’s life (what does solving the Zeno’s paradox do?). At the same time, it does educate us to love the truth more than ourselves. If there is ever a place where a person values truth in itself, this is it. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose the integrity of his reason?” (Maritain) What I love about philosophy is the skills you learn, what gives you the tools to understand, in the end, Christ.
Very cool. Any chance philosophy will one day become a lucrative profession?
What am I to do if I am not particularly interested in Western philosophy? I think it’s a worn out suit.
What am I to do if I am not particularly interested in Western philosophy? I think it’s a worn out suit.
I assume you mean the dominant strands of Western philosophy (i.e., European philosophy and analytic philosophy). You can always turn to classical American philosophy (e.g., Dewey or James) or to Latin American philosophy, neither of which is much like its Western forebears.