If there is anything worth laying as a foundation for academic study, it is the labor and love of thinking — philosophy. And as the NYT notes, the subject is experiencing a revival of interest as an academic concentration for today’s college students.
“Once scoffed at as a luxury major, philosophy is being embraced at Rutgers and other universities by a new generation of college students who are drawing modern-day lessons from the age-old discipline as they try to make sense of their world, from the morality of the war in Iraq to the latest political scandal.” - NYT
I’m glad to read about this since I went into college having the same skewed perception of philosophy as some of the subjects of the NYT article — namely that it was pompous fluff-speak spewed by unhinged old men from exhausted leather armchairs. Fortunately I took three fantastic courses in my undergraduate career that shaped my mind otherwise: Ancient Philosophy, Applied Ethics, and a contemplation on morbidity, Death.
The most interesting of these were the latter two which challenged our human understanding of the condition of existence: life. This meant hours of back-and-forth and fast-paced reading about the violin scenario and arguments toward abortion, the ethics of human euthanasia, and the continuance of human life in alternate forms such as souls and knowledge. Essentially these were high level discussions of life’s basest and most catastrophic events (death! abortion! rape! murder!) , so you can imagine that we were actually excited to get to class and rage about these issues. Philosophy, as it was taught in these courses, was absurdly interesting!
But while those topics served as the intentionally racy and dramatic ways of seducing us into philosophical discourse, my classmates and I exited these courses with some real skills: setting up argument frameworks, recognizing logical patterns, and just being critically thoughtful. Porting these skills over to other disciplines like mathematics, technology, and sociology has proved to be extremely valuable. Consequently, I agree that philosophy is well worth considering as an essential component of a well-rounded academic career (if not necessarily a major).
Anyway, after graduating, I experienced a heavy share of “what if?” sorts of thoughts about my academic major and collection of courses. I came away mostly thinking that I had chosen a strange path but had supplemented it with enough purposeful things like philosophy and art to make the whole of my education sensical again. If I were doing it over, philosophy might be one of the things I would consider (though it is secondary to eschewing a major declaration and just drawing together a varied menu of truly engaging courses, regardless of theme…or majoring in “the Internet”…neither of which Yale wanted me to do!).
[Pictured is Shelly Kagan, Yale philosophy professor and more specifically, teacher of the famed Death course. His lectures were recently made available as an open course on Yale’s website, so have a listen.)