Philosophers eat their young

Philosophy as a discipline peaked in ancient Greece. Then Aristotle messed it up.

See, Socrates took questions to the people in power. With Socrates, philosophy and Socratic questioning was enough to scare the church, noblemen and politicians. Socrates was so fantastic, in fact, that Plato spent the entire rest of his life writing little plays in which Socrates was still alive and still asking tough questions. Psychologists would consider Plato traumatized now. I think it was PTSD.

Plato had a school and in that school he taught Aristotle who had some ideas of his own. Aristotle thought, rightly or wrongly, that women were inferior, that slavery was justified and that some people (coincidentally, the lower class) were just weak-willed and could not be taught anything.

That was about 2,500 years ago and you would think that philosophy had outgrown its initial prejudices, but apparently old habits die hard.

I’ve been combing through the philosophical gourmet for the past few weeks. I’m thinking of going abroad for a master’s degree in ethical philosophy. For those of you unwilling to click on random links, the philosophical gourmet is the ranking of various universities by philosophers based entirely on the philosophers on staff at said universities.

According to the Web site, a realistic perspective on graduate study is: you’re not going to get a job. Something like 5 percent of philosophers end up getting a job that uses their degree.

For the past few weeks, I’ve also been hanging around a bunch of freshmen who are taking philosophy classes for the first time and finding them exceedingly difficult.

The reason they find these classes difficult is because they’ve never had to think critically before. The closest most of them have ever come to an original thought about a subject was in high school English classes while discussing “Where the Red Fern Grows” by Wilson Rawls.

Though I may seem like it at the moment, I’m not a philosophic snob. If people don’t wish to think in that manner, that is their personal choice. I find it hard to justify why I should care about anything, let alone why someone else should care about the deeper mysteries in life. What I do think, however, is that people should have the chance to think rationally.

I’ve long-since believed that people should take philosophy classes in high school, if only to save the rest of the world from the same stupid arguments again and again.

The solution to both problems (philosophers being out of work and students having difficulty in intro to philosophy classes) is the same one: teach philosophy in high school.

I’ve been told that this is impractical as high school students are stupid and there is no immediate reason any of them would need philosophy that early on. I disagree. I think kids would be far smarter if they were pushed in the right way and there is never a point in life when one doesn’t need reasons and arguments supporting their beliefs. Heck, the teenage years are when you need to think critically the most.

p.s. Anson, I’m going to apply to ANU for grad school. I’m trying to go back, but if I can’t afford it, I don’t know if I’ll be able to. . . .

Philosophy as a discipline peaked in ancient Greece. Then Aristotle messed it up. See, Socrates took questions to the people in power. With Socrates, philosophy and Socratic questioning was enough to scare the church, noblemen and politicians. Socrates was so fantastic, in fact, that Plato spent the entire rest of his life writing little plays…