The course is over. It's been an exhausting five and a half weeks. I won't post any more on this since there seems to be no interest in discussing how to teach basic intro. This disappoints me since I think it is in some ways the most important course any of us teach.
I think that my efforts to tie the core areas of epistemology and metaphysics to ethics was a success. My students, at least the better ones, saw the connection and it made epistemology seem meaningful and not farfetched. The key was building the whole course around Glaucon's question to Socrates in the Republic: "how then, shall we live?" Only the most unthinking person fails to understand and appreciate the force of this question. It is the question that fired my interest over forty years ago when I first stumbled upon philosophy and I find that returning to it and making it the center of my intro course is the most honest and direct way of making the case for why students should devote at least a little serious thought to abstract and difficult ideas.
What's wrong with professional philosophy in general and analytic philosophy in particular is that most professional philosophers now look down their noses at such a "juvenile" and "unprofessional" way of looking at philosophy. I cannot disagree more with this kind of elitism. Philosophy that strays too far from this root is merely self-indulgent sophistry.
4 comments:
I agree. I too think that the question of how we are to live is crucial and is at the core of philosophy. I also agree that intro is the most important course we teach -- for many students, it is the only philosophy course they ever take. It is important to realize this and make it meaningful for them. It sounds like your course was great! You are exhausted, you say, but I hope you feel it was worthwhile! I'm sure your students got a lot out of it!
If you are interested I'd like to discuss how philosophy has tended to fragment into different subdisciplines that have grown increasingly isolated from each other and how this is damaging to philosophy as a whole. Intro to philosophy is a microcosm of our discipline and the problems we have with teaching it are a reflection of the problems faced by the discipline as a whole.
I was exhausted after the course but I also felt an unusual spark of inspiration over having felt that I had attained a genuine insight into the connection of the various major parts of philosophy.
In our small department (four faculty members), we do try to cover a wide range of philosophy -- not only analytic and continental, but also a global perspective (Asian and African). Since we have just an undergraduate program, and only a few of our majors go on to graduate school in philosophy, we feel it is important to be sure that our curriculum helps prepare students not just for advanced study if that is what they do, but for life.
Because of this ethos in our department, I am constantly learning from my colleagues' diverse approaches to philosophy, and I find that this enriches my own work. Also, the smallness of our department means that each of us teaches a wide range of courses. This provides opportunities for cross-fertilization as well.
I agree that the entire discipline is damaged when the subdisciplines become too isolated from each other, and I find myself shocked when I am in situations where I am reminded that many philosophers are really highly specialized and sometimes even defend their particular perspective as the one right and true way to do philosophy! Sometimes I forget that that view is still out there.
Analytic, continental and Asian philosophers don't talk to each other except in unusual departments. I'm glad to hear you are able to profit from multiple perspectives.
The issue that I'm facing is that Analytic philosophers don't talk to each other very much. Work goes on in epistemology, metaphysics and ethics without any meaningful crossfertilization. Epistemologists write for other epistemologists etc. So not only do philosophers not write for the general public, they write for the 100 specialists in their field. If philosophy was chemistry or medicine, I could see the value of a tiny group of specialists writing for each other. But in philosophy this is just a waste of everyone's time.
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