Trinity Philosophy

Wooly Hat

I was wondering would anyone be able to give me an idea of what the philosophy course in TCD is like? From the website it looks like dozens of topics are covered each year. Is the work load really as huge as it looks - How many books are you expected to read in a year?

kowloon

Don't know anything about the course but i know someone who was through it and she had no problem making time for a job and drinkies.
So i wouldn't stress too much about the workload.

Wooly Hat

ahhhhh, this seems impossible. I look at the website and see a mountain (of work), and you say your friend drank all the way up. Ahhhhh, impossible.

It wasn't me!

It's alright. To be honest, you read what you think will help you. There's a lot to be drawn from a lot of stuff, but you wouldn't read everything, and you certainly wouldn't have to.

Seloth

What are the benfits of actually doing the coure besides a a good talk and a mental excercise.Are there any job opertunies from them,as the only thing I can think from it is teaching the course or writing a book.

Wooly Hat

It's a popular topic among non-philosophers - "what's the use of philosophy?" or worse - what job can it get? Personally I'v never entertained the idea for a second, it dosn't make any sense to me. Firstly philosophy is an end itself, you may not be able to see that. And there are plenty of jobs where a background in philosophy is useful. Not all of them are obvious. For example, if you're interested in aesthetics, philosophy of architecture and space, postmodernism, deconstructivism etc. then you could work as an architectural journalist or theorist.

Wooly Hat

It wasn't me! wrote: »

It's alright. To be honest, you read what you think will help you. There's a lot to be drawn from a lot of stuff, but you wouldn't read everything, and you certainly wouldn't have to.

Thanks for replying. From looking at the website it looks like there are really lots of topics covered each year. I'm thinking that I wouldn't be able to keep up with the workload, so I was trying to get an idea of how well you have to know each topic. What year are you in ?

pid()

Perhaps you should try meeting with a guidance counsellor at TCD, or one of the lecturers of the course to see what it entails, work load, study time, hours per week, etc.

experiMental

You could try work in marketing and business consultancy. They are crying out for people with good communication and analytical skills.

In business development and marketing, you have to know what cultural, aestehtic and behavioral trends exist in society, analyse these trends, consider implications of developers' ideas on society as a whole and consult with managers, etc when it comes to developing a new product or a service.

Some vacancies don't require specific degrees, so if you think you're up to the job then go for it. The key to success is in picking the right job for yourself.

---

if you're interested in aesthetics, philosophy of architecture and space, postmodernism, deconstructivism etc. then you could work as an architectural journalist or theorist.

I'm a product design student. Having read architectural/design journals, I got to know what the practise of design involved, and that has helped me a huge deal. So there might be a point of working as an architectural or a design journalist.

However, I have also read advanced theories on space, postmodernism and deconstructivism. I have to admit that they haven't helped me a bit in my work and I have wasted my time. Their wording is far too complex.

Design is function followed by form. You have to take non-design ideas and put them together into a complete product. Design actually involves interpretation of very basic principles of aesthetics and expanding them to show how you interpret them. So in a way when you are creating a design, you're creating your own theory on space, postmodernism and deconstructivism.

Thus, being a design critic and teacher is very useful, but creating experimental design theories without any practical purpose is risky and pointless. Someone else may be creating an even better theory and worse still, it may be a best selling gadget and making millions of Euros while your theory will be just a very obscure piece of paper that hardly anyone will ever read it.

Wooly Hat

Interesting post, experiMental my man. I was thinking about the many subjects that philosophy touches on, i'm interested in all of them includiing design and philosophical aesthetics. You seem to have a design philosophy, so thats ok. Have you designed anything cool? Actually, my original post was in search more philosophy students. Anyway, happy new year.

experiMental

I have designed a lot of graphics and a couple of very basic products. I don't have the time and the resources to make them so they are still on the drawing board. I also doubt whether they are any cool.

I've talked about the study of philosophy with my friend, who studies this subject as a mandatory module in his Arts course in UCD. He says that philosophy in his course is approached from a more scientific point of view - they do mathematical and computational logic, and also some analytical techniques used in science and many other areas. I don't know about Trinity, but many philosophers were also prominent mathematicians and scientists, so be prepared to dabble in some very high level concepts.

LaVidaLoca

And to be perfectly honest the course was a joke.

Most of the lecturers (except one, alas now retired) were far more interested in their own academic stuff than in teaching students.

Meny people I know got a 2.1 by doing jack-all and studying up two weeks before the exam.

Seriously, dont waste 4 years of your life studying this stuff. Study something that's both interesting and useful: The kind of philosophy taught in Universiy is largely intellectual weightlifting: Good for training your brain , but of no value in teaching you anything you can use.

You will end up, as most of the people I studied with did, working in a bookshop or in the nether regions of IT, call centres, or whatever with a brain that is far too well-developed for it's surroundings.

Now Im not saying you should run off and study business instead: But do study something with a little practical applicatiion. Even Art college is far more useful when it comes to getting a job.

Philosophy courses are a hangover from the days when only 'gentlemen' went to college, and didnt really need to know much about anything in detail, as the class system would just send them directly into upper management/politics after graduation: all they really needed to know was how to be entertaining at dinner parties.

kowloon

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

Most of the lecturers (except one, alas now retired) were far more interested in their own academic stuff than in teaching students.

True in most courses, there are some truly terrible lecturers as a result of teaching skills not being required as part of their employment, the way lecturers are selected is backward along with the whole way the place is managed. Administration and academia need to be separated properly to get rid of the bullshlt politics.

Philosophy courses are a hangover from the days when only 'gentlemen' went to college, and didnt really need to know much about anything in detail, as the class system would just send them directly into upper management/politics after graduation: all they really needed to know was how to be entertaining at dinner parties.

The class system is alive and well in this country

Wooly Hat

kowloon wrote: »

The class system is alive and well in this country

Pipe down peasant.

Wooly Hat

I should point out that I am adamant on studying philosophy. When it comes to the hairy issue of jobs I have the attiude of crossing that bridge when I come to it. I tell myself it's philosophy for the sake of philosophy,
academic rather than vocational. So I need help trying to find out about this course rather than the hairy issue. I was wondering LaVidaLoca would you be able to answer a bunch of questions for me? Even though you don't seem over the moon about the whole lot, you must have enjoyed to some extent? or interesting at least? I do see what you mean that "Philosophy courses are a hangover from the days when only 'gentlemen' went to college". Which is quite funny. It's still called Mental and Moral Science which is a bit 1908. And I also wondered why they have a thing about psychoanalysis.

Anyway, I'm actually worried about getting through the course and writing essays that aren't pure bull****.I take it the lecturers aren't that great.
Did you find it too technical at any stage with analytic philosophy and symbol logic and all that? Do many people drop out, how many people in the class? Did you read much philosophy before you started at university? How many books do you have to get through each year, I get
the impression it's a few hundred? Would it be at all possible to see some of your essays if you have any???????? I'd like to see whay kind of stuff is expected of undergraduates!

LaVidaLoca

You seem like a sensible chap.

Now dont get me wrong, Im not necessarily down on Philosophy. Im far from being one of those people who'd say **** like "Sure whaddya wanna do all that t'inkin' fer?"

However, personally, I found that Philosophy as I studied it was concerned primarily with questions of purely academic interest. We never talked about "What is the meaning of life?" , "What is the best system of government?" or whatever. It was all "When I say 'chair' , do I mean the object in and of itself or in it's synthetic form?" .

To me, if your gonna use your mind to think about things, you should use it to think about things that really matter (to the world at large and to you yourself)

To take an analogy: If I gave you a guitar, would it be better that you (a) Learn to play it (b) Learn to tune, care for and maintain it or (c) Leave it sitting against the wall while you contemplate what a guitar is, what it is for, and what is the isness of it's thusness until you're too old to play the damn thing?

Option (c) is how (Western) Philosophy looks at life as a whole. I dont find that thinking in this way (except for maybe once in a while, not for 4 years in a row) is conducive to being either, a useful individual OR, (and this is most important: A HAPPY one. I have several friends who went on to study philosophy at postgrad level. Most have problems with depression (one even attempted suicide). I dont think it's a coincidence.

The human mind is not designed to do this type of thinking all the time. If you're gonna think this deeply and this abstractly, do it about art or music, or particle physics or psychology or the meaning of life. Dont waste all that thought, all that limited human energy, on arguments, the resolution of which (endlessly deferred as it is) makes not one iota of difference to the betterment of human life, yours or anyone elses.

To me, philosophy of this sort is best studied as an amateur. By all means read philosophical texts while you're studying something else. They will enrich your life and sharpen your brain, and you will understand them all the better for having, as they say, one foot in the 'real world'. But for god's sake dont waste the chance you have been given to go to University by studying this stuff.

LaVidaLoca

You seem like a sensible chap.

Now dont get me wrong, Im not necessarily down on Philosophy. Im far from being one of those people who'd say **** like "Sure whaddya wanna do all that t'inkin' fer?"

However, personally, I found that Philosophy as I studied it was concerned primarily with questions of purely academic interest. We never talked about "What is the meaning of life?" , "What is the best system of government?" or whatever. It was all "When I say 'chair' , do I mean the object in and of itself or in it's synthetic form?" .

To me, if your gonna use your mind to think about things, you should use it to think about things that really matter (to the world at large and to you yourself)

To take an analogy: If I gave you a guitar, would it be better that you (a) Learn to play it (b) Learn to tune, care for and maintain it or (c) Leave it sitting against the wall while you contemplate what a guitar is, what it is for, and what is the isness of it's thusness until you're too old to play the damn thing?

Option (c) is how (Western) Philosophy looks at life as a whole. I dont find that thinking in this way (except for maybe once in a while, not for 4 years in a row) is conducive to being either, a useful individual OR, (and this is most important: A HAPPY one. I have several friends who went on to study philosophy at postgrad level. Most have problems with depression (one even attempted suicide). I dont think it's a coincidence.

The human mind is not designed to do this type of thinking all the time. If you're gonna think this deeply and this abstractly, do it about art or music, or particle physics or psychology or the meaning of life. Dont waste all that thought, all that limited human energy, on arguments, the resolution of which (endlessly deferred as it is) makes not one iota of difference to the betterment of human life, yours or anyone elses.

To me, philosophy of this sort is best studied as an amateur. By all means read philosophical texts while you're studying something else. They will enrich your life and sharpen your brain, and you will understand them all the better for having, as they say, one foot in the 'real world'. But for god's sake dont waste the chance you have been given to go to University by studying this stuff.

kowloon

Wooly Hat wrote: »

Pipe down peasant.

Rabble Rabble Rabble

Joe1919

I think philosophy is best studied along with another subject such as English or Socology or Economics as a joint honours subject and this would increase career possibilities..
Its unfortunate that philosophy is not taught in secondary schools in Ireland and therefore does not rank as a teaching subject for hDip purposes.
Lecturers post large reading lists to guide student to paticular areas (like a road map). No-one reads every book, as no one drives on every road.. Indeed one of my lecturers posted 50 books in one module. I only read one. Reading lists can be useful for targeting special areas in essays.
Do not overread.
I never had any problems with lecturers and I did find that the some people always have problems with something, but never with themselves..
I loved philosophy.
Logic only formed one module out of 16 on my course.

Wooly Hat

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

(c) Leave it sitting against the wall while you contemplate what a guitar is, what it is for, and what is the isness of it's thusness until you're too old to play the damn thing?

I find that hilarious. What I don't find so funny is the philosophy-depression thing, but I understand. You've come out the other side of the process and I must admit you do have things to say that I can't really
ignore. But as I said, I remain, adamant on studying philosophy and still very excited about the subject. I think, to an extent, that it's a case of filtering information that contradicts what I already believe, I do value your advice though. Answer me this: Is it easy to get completely lost because I imagine it is dealing with pretty abstract stuff??

Wooly Hat

kowloon wrote: »

Rabble Rabble Rabble

Kowloon, you seem responsive to talk about classism. I've become interested in socialist ideas myself recently, any particular political dogma you subscribe to?

Wooly Hat

Joe1919 wrote: »

No-one reads every book, as no one drives on every road.

I see.

I am beginning to consider studying philosophy with another subject. I think philosophy departments in Ireland are very limited in comparison to English ones when it comes to choice of subjects, can't really study (natural) science with philosophy here.

Where did you study?

kowloon

Wooly Hat wrote: »

Kowloon, you seem responsive to talk about classism. I've become interested in socialist ideas myself recently, any particular political dogma you subscribe to?

Theres plenty of opportunity in College to get involved in these things.
Lend an ear to everyone.

FionnMatthew

I'm sorry LaVidaLoca, but I need to redress the balance here. Here is a person with a rare thing: a positive inclination to study philosophy, that most rare and undervalued of disciplines, and it seems to me all you can do is try to dissuade him.

Besides this, your message is confused. Your experience in the Trinity College department appears to have been allowed to besmirch the discipline itself, and the entire history of Western Philosophy. I would think your attitude could benefit from a little restraint, and a little more rigour, than to denounce the history of Western thought itself on the basis of a few bad teachers you had.

LaVidaLoca wrote:

And to be perfectly honest the course was a joke.

Most of the lecturers (except one, alas now retired) were far more interested in their own academic stuff than in teaching students.

This may be true. I have heard that the Trinity College department isn't very good at all. I myself am a graduate student at UCD, where I got my BA, and I can vouch for the quality of the department.
While there has been an institutional emphasis on research as opposed to teaching in UCD in the past few years, teaching remains central to the ethos of the school here, and I can strongly recommend most of the 20 strong staff there as excellent teachers, with an admirable commitment to the learning and wellbeing of their students.

The department is cross-disciplinarian too, and there are as many continental philosophers as analytic philosophers there, who have a range of specialties which contribute to strands in the three year course, including: social philosophy, modern philosophy, classical philosophy, ancient eastern philosophy, european critical theory, phenomenological/existential philosophy, poststructuralism and its predecessors, aesthetics and art-theory, and the wide variety of different interests that are common to the anglo-american philosophical community.

The department enjoys strong ties with important parts of the rest of the academic community: certain professors are or were quite close to the biggest names in the field - Jacques Derrida, Hilary Putnam, Noam Chomsky. We had Putnam over for a huge conference in his name only last year.

Further, many of the teachers are eminent in their own right: Dermot Moran is a world authority on phenomenology, Richard Kearney is... well just google his name. Specifically, it sounds as if Brian Elliott might be a really good person to study under if your interests are in philosophical aesthetics and art criticism. I recommend you look at his staff page on http://www.ucd.ie/philosophy/staff/elliott_brian.htm.

In fact, here is the staff page for your perusal. There were one of two bad teachers - but you get them everywhere. It's one of the strongest departments in the Arts faculty.

So if you hear only dubious things about the Trinity department, which I am unqualified to confirm or deny, I can vouchsafe that UCD does not match that description.

Meny people I know got a 2.1 by doing jack-all and studying up two weeks before the exam.

Sadly that will always be the case. Who cares? Firstly, the people who do this are generally quite intelligent, but lazy. This, surely, guarantees that if you apply yourself, you can expect to distinguish yourself with a first. But the most important thing doesn't really have anything to do with watching other people closely to see what they're doing and how they're getting on; it's enjoying the subject yourself. If you do that, you can't fail to excel at it.

Seriously, dont waste 4 years of your life studying this stuff. Study something that's both interesting and useful: The kind of philosophy taught in Universiy is largely intellectual weightlifting: Good for training your brain , but of no value in teaching you anything you can use.

This is astonishingly conceited. Firstly, I urge you to satisfy your original inclination, and spend 4 years of your youth studying philosophy. Further, I enjoin you thereafter to spend the rest of your life studying it, because that is the particular gift imparted by philosophy.

The kind of philosophy taught in university, quite obviously, is far more diverse and far more important than anything taught in Trinity College, since the kind of philosophy I studied in UCD is vital and immediate to the intellectual life of someone who thinks in the present day. Philosophy is patently not "training for the brain." For me, philosophy has laid open the otherwise impenetrable discourses of contemporary life. Aesthetic discourses are no longer a mystery to me. Political spin is instantly transparent. New ideas are no longer felt to be some invisible thing to be wrestled with, but some quarry which I know how to catch. The history and sum total of human intellectual endeavour (that endeavour which seperates us from slime) has become my element.

Furthermore, I am in a position to take a perspective on the more specialised disciplines. In the tradition of Sellars - the philosopher must be a generalist, and it remains important that there be people who are in a position to point out the damning intellectual blindsides to Richard Dawkins' inane philosophy (which purports to be merely science), or to recognize that economics is just the latest, fashionable metaphysics.

If there are any professions for which philosophy is training, then they are legion. Often cited are practical jobs like the legal profession, etc. for which more training must be taken - and I concur here. But consider also the vigorous intellectual public life of Ireland - towards which any number of professions contribute. While it is becoming increasingly bottlenecked these days (requiring the sort of vacuously trained graduate that journalism degrees produce) the written media is in sore need of people with some intellect, with some writerly skill and the intellectual tools with which to tackle public life. Many public intellectuals in Ireland write for newspapers, or broadcast for RTE, as well as pursuing literary or scholarly interests in publication. Further, the most respectable politicians are those who underwent an initiation into the arts and into the intellectual history of our race. If you wish to pursue a career in the arts, philosophy is the key - not because it's training (and let's face it, if you're looking for "training" you shouldn't be in University - training is for the skilled work sector) but because it is 100% impossible to work as a creative artist without some feeling for the history of the human being in the life of the mind. (Case in point: the diverting, but ultimately meaningless, inconsequential whinings of self-appointed guitar band prophets, who aren't even in a position to know that actually having something to say necessitates actually knowing something - just sounding meaningful doesn't bequeath meaning on meaningless junk.)

From my vantage point, I consider myself infinitely more capable to do any job than I was when, having finished a three year course in actor training, I found myself without the confidence of my convictions, cast adrift in a world which I knew I wasn't ready for, even though my diploma announced I was. The final point is, yes, philosophy isn't training for anything at all - but it qualifies you for life in a way that is superior to the piecemeal, obfuscated jargon that most people receive during their training - the muted, fractured, systematized truths that the other professions universalize in order to justify their assumptions, and their mandate. Contrary to what LVL says here:

The human mind is not designed to do this type of thinking all the time.

... a philosopher is what the human being should be first, before he is anything else. Most citizens in democratic states do not understand the philosophy on which that state is founded, do not understand their status or their position on it. Intellectual life is the highest aspiration and fullest investment of the abilities which distinguish us from mere gene-vehicles, and philosophy is the surest path to intellectual autonomy. If a person has any potential at all, it is to be a philosopher, and he can thereafter spend his days performing the menial tasks of the business sector, or of the IT profession without ever diminishing that potential.

You will end up, as most of the people I studied with did, working in a bookshop or in the nether regions of IT, call centres, or whatever with a brain that is far too well-developed for it's surroundings.

You'd probably have found your brain too well developed in that environment even if you hadn't studied philosophy. It was exactly that feeling, that the world was not fine enough for me, that drove me to academic philosophy, an environment where I found I had to sink or swim. The knowledge that you have a mind which transcends its surroundings ought to make you transcend those surroundings yourself. Ultimately, your lot is not the fault of philosophy, but of your own lack of imagination. Do you have a language? How good is your degree? Apply for the civil service. Join the police force. By the sounds of it, your own particular mental acuity (for which you have to thank philosophy) would bequeath you a fast promotion record in either of those jobs. You could be a detective (where do you think they come from?)

Philosophy courses are a hangover from the days when only 'gentlemen' went to college, and didnt really need to know much about anything in detail, as the class system would just send them directly into upper management/politics after graduation: all they really needed to know was how to be entertaining at dinner parties.

I find it frankly baffling that someone who was in an academic environment for 4 years (granted with bad teachers, but you can only be taught so much - did you really spend so long in that environment without intuiting that you inherit some responsibility for educating yourself too?) could be this much of a philistine with respect to the benefits of a university education.

There is a reason that previously people who went into those disciplines studied philosophy - a reason that while there may have been Bertie Woosters, there was a particular ideal behind that sort of education - because the people who have undergone a proper education, such as you can still only get in a university, are equipped for public life in a way that most of the twenty to fifty somethings of Ireland are simply not. It is a sad reflection on our age that even someone who had the benefit of that education in our time was historically enjoined to intuit so little of the reason it is good for human beings to know about the very stuff that makes us special - who is willing to reject the rich and invaluable landscape of the educated, aware mind as "not useful."

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

You seem like a sensible chap.

Now dont get me wrong, Im not necessarily down on Philosophy. Im far from being one of those people who'd say **** like "Sure whaddya wanna do all that t'inkin' fer?"

I would think you ought to be an awful lot less "down" on philosophy - duly recognizing that your experience of it must have been limited in the extreme.

We never talked about "What is the meaning of life?"

That question isn't really one you can tackle head on, nor is it one that can be answered in a few words. However, if you ever studied european existential philosophy, you will know that that is precisely one of the questions you must tackle: by abrogating any pre-given meaning within life, philosophers like Sartre lay open the field for people to make meaning within their own lives, for choosing their meaning. If Sartre is a little lacking in consistency for you, you could trace his ideas back to Heidegger, where emerges a compelling and enthralling picture of meaning in life, and therein, the meaning of life. Equally, Bergson, Husserl, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Fichte, Dilthey, Spinoza, Gadamer etc., all the way back to Plato, offer something up to this monumental question. How could you have missed that?

"What is the best system of government?"

I know you didn't have a social philosophy course, but didn't you have to read The Republic at some point?
If that sort of philosophy is your thing, a strand in the UCD undergrad course will take you through Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Mill, right down to contemporary academic/analytic social philosophers like Popper, Russell, Berlin, Rawls, Nozick Chomsky and Dworkin, and 20th century european thinkers like Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Habermas, Foucault, Lyotard, Arendt, Voegelin and Strauss.

It was all "When I say 'chair' , do I mean the object in and of itself or in it's synthetic form?" .

Sounds to me like neo-Kantian conundrums. Which is really the smallest part of contemporary analytic philosophy. The same issues are reinvigorated in the more current debates of the anglo-american tradition: the philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, contemporary metaphysics, and contemporary epistemology. Post-Kantian scholarship continues, but its not really where it's at right now. It's just that: scholarship rather than philosophy, and a good philosophical education will get you to do both, because you need the one for the other.

To me, if your gonna use your mind to think about things, you should use it to think about things that really matter (to the world at large and to you yourself)

All things about which you are likely to think fall manifestly within the magisterium of philosophy. The study of philosophy can bequeath you with an adeptness at thinking systematically about anything about which you are likely to think. Hence, if you are inclined to think about the things that matter to you, or that you take to matter to the world at large, the task of thinking in any way significantly about those things will be greatly eased by the study of philosophy. I speak from experience here. I went to philosophy to come back to dramatic theory, acting theory and the criticism of copyright law with conceptual abilities I had not previously, the which rendered all the less opaque those complicated subjects.

To take an analogy: If I gave you a guitar, would it be better that you (a) Learn to play it (b) Learn to tune, care for and maintain it or (c) Leave it sitting against the wall while you contemplate what a guitar is, what it is for, and what is the isness of it's thusness until you're too old to play the damn thing?

Alternatively, you could do all three at once, or, to leave the analogy behind, you could enjoy the study of philosophy, while also maintaining a healthy social and family life, pursue concrete interests in the arts or sciences, exercise your prerogative and duty as a citizen towards critical and informed public life, and realize that the slow pursuit of all levels of adeptness at life contributes in time to the endemic, holistic betterment of all of the constituent parts.

Option (c) is how (Western) Philosophy looks at life as a whole

It's not. That's simply, utterly wrong. Western Philosophy is the sum total of all the conceptual tools that contemporary man is likely to employ. When you're researching in a scientific discipline, you're adhering to a particular philosophy. When you're voting, that's a philosophy you are endorsing, whether you know it or not. When you get on a plane, the knowledge and design which keeps it in the air is ultimately indebted to an entire outlook on how the world works and how particularly knowledge about it should be pursued which dates back to the dawn of Western Philosophy.

You can choose to continue oblivious to this, ignorant that it is the air you breathe, or you can make yourself aware of it.

I dont find that thinking in this way (except for maybe once in a while, not for 4 years in a row) is conducive to being either, a useful individual

I should think that your particular philosophy on the matter would have deprived us of just about all of the best things about human civilization, and left us with only the worst. Without Borges, Aristotle and Shakespeare, my existence would certainly have been thinner. I would think that Newton's particular musings have been useful in the long run, as have been Solon's, and Marx's.

OR, (and this is most important: A HAPPY one.

Reality disagrees with you. Most academic philosophers I know are happy, well adjusted people with families, friends, children and fulfilling productive lives. Indeed, I have found the study of philosophy (encompassing as it does so vast an index of disciplines) to be the one thing capable of allowing me to balance the myriad worries which used to assail me. So often, intelligent people who have not been educated properly find anxiety swiping at them from behind the invisible screen of things they don't understand. They intuit problems that remain hidden to them. The only path for such people is to enlighten themselves. One of the worst experiences of my youth in Ireland was not knowing how to think about things I needed to think about. Not quite understanding things, or having a perspective on them, from which to start comprehending them. I speak here of why specifically advertising seemed to annoy me so much, or why the idea of working in an office all week and then drinking every Friday night seemed such a despicable type of existence, when everyone else seemed to enjoy it so much. The perspective, knowledge and systematic approach which the study of philosophy provided me with has allowed me to figure out these puzzles, to tie down my anxieties and worries to the particular problems. I can identify and work on the things that used to have me confused and depressed these days.

I have several friends who went on to study philosophy at postgrad level. Most have problems with depression (one even attempted suicide). I dont think it's a coincidence.

Well, perhaps it has something to do with where they went on to study.

This story is, in my experience isolated and particular. The postgraduate community in UCD is really vital and exciting, and has a good ethos. I've rarely felt less depressed.

You're always going to have your Wittgensteins and your Turings, but guess what? You have them outside of academic philosophy too.

If you're gonna think this deeply and this abstractly, do it about art or music, or particle physics or psychology or the meaning of life. Dont waste all that thought, all that limited human energy, on arguments, the resolution of which (endlessly deferred as it is) makes not one iota of difference to the betterment of human life, yours or anyone elses.

IE. Don't study philosophy at Trinity College. On LVL's advice, (with perspective) it's not a very good department. Go to a good philosophy department.

To me, philosophy of this sort is best studied as an amateur. By all means read philosophical texts while you're studying something else. They will enrich your life and sharpen your brain, and you will understand them all the better for having, as they say, one foot in the 'real world'. But for god's sake dont waste the chance you have been given to go to University by studying this stuff.

I plead with you not to take this impoverished advice. LVL's experience is isolated and marginal. You sound like a person who could stand to benefit immeasurably from the study of philosophy. In the course of this, you will find out that philosophers too live in the real world, and that neither of their feet ever leave it. The university of life is something everyone gets a degree in, automatically. Make sure you also have a degree from an accredited university, in a subject that will make you a superior person, and not just some grain for the industry mill.

experiMental

Fionn Matthew: PM'd you

Wooly Hat

Thank you so much for providing the (badly needed) encouraging advice, really, I'm so glad you were browsing boards. I actually would have reconsidered studying philosophy altogether if you hadn't straightened the issue out. More inspiring than anything. What can I say, big thanks!

experiMental

Don't be put off by graduation prospects, etc - you might have to work a little bit harder when it comes to finding work than professional course grads, but it will all be worth it.

Explore your subject in-depth, try to write a blog on your views, maybe later on try to write a paper - there must be a way to make yourserlf successful in Philosophy, otherwise the degree would be scrapped.

DadaKopf

That's a long post, FionnMatthew. Is your first name David by any chance?

Anyway, I'm all for studying philosophy. I think it's the exact opposite of a waste of time. I went to UCD, and found the staff there (1998-2002) excellent, for the most part. Most importantly, it grounded me in the belief that we live in a world of multiple perspectives and infinite possibilities. I now work in a political and social research organisation, and my philosophical background has only added value to my practical work.

I'm mad into aesthetics - for its own sake, and art's - and especially aesthetically grounded political philosophy (post-/neo-Marxian and post-structuralist thought). So I understand the attraction.

By comparison, I find that people who entered working life through a narrow discipline also live narrow lives, and while not bad in itself, makes me feel bad that they're not opening themselves up. I'm not a utopian, but the world could be a better place if people valued and studied philosophy.

LaVidaLoca

I respect of course your erudite and in depth reply, though I will have to agree to disagree on the issue of studying philosophy.

At the same time as I was studying philosophy in Trinity, my friend was studying Philosophy in UCD, during a time when one of the heads of the department (now deceased) was actually behind a sticker campaign warning against the use of condoms - based on the completely scientifically spurious notion that they were full of holes large enough for a sperm to pass through.

That a man of such medieval mindset was allowed to head a department of philosophy at UCD back in the 90's does not fill me with confidence in their academic rigour either. And this is the key point: As Im sure you're well aware, philosophy as an academic subject has disgraced itself terribly in the past 40 or so years: Having clutched to it's bosom some of the most transparent charlatanry seen this side of Homeopathy: That people like Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and other Po-Mo pundits were actually taken seriously as thinkers is as deep a scar on the face of Western thought as any I can think of. Give me the lucid, solid progression of logic of a Dawkins any day. Which is why philosophy has had to concede so much ground to science in recent years. If you want ruthless commitment to logic and truth, you're more likely to find it in Dawkin's department than in Derrida's.


Studying philosophy for 4 whole years is to me the equivalent of doing a 4 year course on how to be better in bed. Sure, it's a skill we all need to have, but many of us will develop it whether we study it in university or not (by reading books and living our lives). I consider it profoundly conceited to assume that only those who study philosophy in university can see beyond the 'shadows on the cave wall', to use a philosophical metaphor. Anybody can train himself to think profoundly by reading books, and discussing them with other people who read books. There is absolutely no reason why one should need to do this under the roof of a university.

My advice to the OP was not to ignore philosophy and bury his head in the sand with regards to matters intellectual. My advice was to study something both interesting and useful, and read whatever books of philosophy take his fancy on the side. That's what I do, and I find it much more fulfulling than studying it in university, because I have real world experience to measure it against.

DadaKopf

Interesting, because that man you mention who (allegedly) spread lies about condoms is a bit of an authority on Wittgenstein. And it was Wittgenstein who said, before he radically changed his mind, that he could dissolve the problems of philosophy so that human beings could start doing something useful. Later, he realised philosophy is essential in exploring the limits of human activity.

That activity you name - science - is fine in as far as it goes, but even Dawkins would say he's a scientist, not a philosopher. As Wittgenstein said of language, Dawkins is well aware of the boundaries and limitations of the scientific method.

And, like it or not, science does impose strict limitations. It examines only the observable measurable world. But the human condition is not science, nor are the kinds of questions it throws up - what is right or wrong?, for example.

But for a concrete example to demonstrate the real-world value of those 'charlatans' you mention, the ideas of Derrida, Adorno, Foucault, Deleuze, Bordieu, etc. have given rise to liberatory discourses that have empowered the oppressed across the world - in the developed and developing worlds - to question the domination of science and pseudo-science (particularly economics) and to empower themselves to improve their conditions and challenge injustice.

So don't tell me philosophy is useless.

LaVidaLoca

"So don't tell me philosophy is useless."

I didnt. I merely suggested that the OP would be better off spending his university years studying something else and reading philosophy in his spare time. It's just an opinion. And Im not suggesting he should go off and study something 'sensible' like business or accountancy either.


"But for a concrete example to demonstrate the real-world value of those 'charlatans' you mention, the ideas of Derrida, Adorno, Foucault, Deleuze, Bordieu, etc. have given rise to liberatory discourses that have empowered the oppressed across the world - in the developed and developing worlds - to question the domination of science and pseudo-science (particularly economics) and to empower themselves to improve their conditions and challenge injustice."

The 'ideas' of those men did no such thing. The charlatans I mentioned did quite the opposite: While conservative capitalism was busy swallowing the planet whole from the 1970's onwards, those very men went into a huge philosophical sulk, refused to talk about anything using 'mainstream discourse' (i.e. sense) any more. The whole Po-Mo establishment was quite literally fiddling while Rome burnt. The serious left-wing ideals of the Sixties (The So called Old Left) were discarded as being just another 'historical meta-narrative" and the Third World was left to sink in to the far worse state that it's in now. (Read Baudrillard on the 'unreality' of the Gulf War for a particularly egregious example)

And how the Right-Wing did laugh at the lefties, who had ceased to talk about justice, equality and the rights of man, and were now arguing about signs and signifiers and the interplay of metafictions of discourse. (or whatever, Im a little rusty on the terminology now)

Read "Intellectual Impostures" by Alan Sokal for details.

Spectator#1

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

I have real world experience to measure it against.

Who doesn't? If you're the only one with experience of it, it's probably not the real world.

Remember, the unexamined life is not worth living, even if it's lavidaloca.

FionnMatthew

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

At the same time as I was studying philosophy in Trinity, my friend was studying Philosophy in UCD, during a time when one of the heads of the department (now deceased) was actually behind a sticker campaign warning against the use of condoms - based on the completely scientifically spurious notion that they were full of holes large enough for a sperm to pass through.

I can't comment on that story, but I can lay testament to the fact that certain staff in our department hold personal, elite religious beliefs which might be considered similar to the motivational beliefs behind that sort of activity.

But that information came to me indirectly. So professional and detached have those members of staff been in their teachings and dealings with the students that it came as a surprise to me. I had always imagined that the kind of detachment and balance they exhibited when talking about issues close to the religious nerve could only belong to people who cultivated in themselves a studied philosophical agnosticism. Not a hint of those staff members' religious beliefs have ever come through their lectures, or their professional actions.

It is something which I respect and applaud, and which has contributed postively to my idea of how a philosopher should conduct himself, irrespective of his own beliefs.

That a man of such medieval mindset was allowed to head a department of philosophy at UCD back in the 90's does not fill me with confidence in their academic rigour either.

Unfortunately for you, then, you are in disagreement with an accredited consensus of Western Philosophy departments. UCD School of Philosophy has had several placings in the Philosophical Gourmet list over the last few years.

And this is the key point: As Im sure you're well aware, philosophy as an academic subject has disgraced itself terribly in the past 40 or so years:

In fact, I was not aware of that, the issue of it shying so far from consensus, so far as to be a marginal falsity. What I find interesting is that you continue on, in that paragraph, to indict academic philosophy on the basis of a bunch of thinkers whose work is only ever controversially considered mainstream philosophy at all - ie. Derrida, Baudrillard. (Baudrillard considered himself a sociologist.)

But those people never could be correctly construed to represent "academic philosophy", The premise is sloppy thinking to begin with, insofar as any such loosely aggregated discipline (nevermind the most loosely aggregated of them all) could ever be comprehensively ennumerated under that one heading or represented by any one homogenous group of thinkers.

Representative of how conceited you are being is this little sentence:

If you want ruthless commitment to logic and truth, you're more likely to find it in Dawkin's department than in Derrida's.

Or you could consult a philosopher who doesn't, at the outset, abrogate the need for logic and the sovereignity of truth. You're more likely to find a "ruthless commitment" to logic and truth in Winnie the Pooh than Derrida, since Derrida "commits" himself "ruthlessly" to neither of these things.

If you want "ruthless commitment" to logic, you couldn't do better than to consult Russell, Frege, Husserl, Carnap, Godel, Quine or Tarski, against whose work it becomes evident that Dawkins' little (popular science) curiosities are more akin to Ciceronian rhetoric than Aristotelian argumentation.

If you want commitment to truth, for God's sake, pick a philosopher (and one who believes in truth commonly conceived - ie. not Derrida), and not some piddling popular science author who sells books to sneering know-it-alls by writing nasty invectives against stereotypes. Pick Sellars, Husserl, Churchland, Habermas or Voegelin.

Finally, if you want to enlighten yourself at all, you could stop taking the text on the reverse of Waterstones' top-ten paperbacks as gospel.

Having clutched to it's bosom some of the most transparent charlatanry seen this side of Homeopathy That people like Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and other Po-Mo pundits were actually taken seriously as thinkers is as deep a scar on the face of Western thought as any I can think of.

1) It is an issue of argument, and not of assertion, that the poststructuralist/postmodernist trend could be considered as worthless, or "transparent" as you have asserted that it is. In certain fields... ie. literary criticism, cultural analysis, these thinkers have been influential, and for good reasons.
2) Derrida makes an awful lot more sense the moment you realise he doesn't really fit the mold of postmodernist, since Derrida's work can really be seen to continue the work of phenomenology within the French philosophical atmostphere of post-structuralist linguistics.
3) Indeed, while none of these thinkers are especially clear writers, and the issue is rendered all the more problematic by the problem of translation, none of these thinkers is a "postmodernist" per se, and the source of most misinterpretation of their work, and the reason for most straw man attacks on their worth, is that they are never approached as individual philosophers in their own right, but as proponents of a movement, much demonized in the West, which all of them at one time or another denied being a part of.
4) As you should know, these thinkers weren't taken seriously, and still aren't, by most of the English speaking academic philosophical establishment. It was the literature departments that adopted Derrida (and misinterpreted him). The philosophers who even spoke about reading Derrida in the West were in danger of losing their reputations - (Rorty, for eg.). For the greater part of the late 20th century, Derrida has been the name against which most Western philosophy is set. In fact, it is only recently that those philosophers previously shrouded under the erroneous tag of postmodernism have been even approached by academic Anglo-American philosophy - that is, "analytic philosophy" so-called.

Which is why philosophy has had to concede so much ground to science in recent years.

What are you talking about? In the places where philosophy strays closest to science - ie. in the American departments, philosophy is in a stronger position than it has been for years. Many optimistic projects in the infinitely fractured mind-sciences have hit a blank wall, and have had to graduate back to the meta-thinking in order to get their bearing. There are massively popular collaborative research projects all over the English speaking world that include the philosophy of mind as the basis and guidebook to their practical endeavours. The philosophy of science continues to be essential to the refinement and orientation of the scientific project.

Sure, it's a skill we all need to have, but many of us will develop it whether we study it in university or not (by reading books and living our lives). I consider it profoundly conceited to assume that only those who study philosophy in university can see beyond the 'shadows on the cave wall', to use a philosophical metaphor. Anybody can train himself to think profoundly by reading books, and discussing them with other people who read books. There is absolutely no reason why one should need to do this under the roof of a university.

It is true that... I, for instance, could have educated myself to the level I am at, without attending university. But that project would have been restrictively harder. It is one thing to casually, or even concertedly, read philosophy around your daily life. It is another thing to be a full time student, and to be otherwise free to spend the best part of every day, not just reading , but actively studying and writing, philosophy. The reason why one should do this under the roof of a university is that a university is a place designed to provide the maximally productive conditions for that pursuit.

That's what a university is for. If there was no reason to do this sort of thing in a university, there would be no reason to have universities. They are centralized communities of intellectual learning. It is at universities that you can find people to guide your learning, rather than being left out on your own. It is in a university that you can find a discourse to learn to swim in. It is in university that you can embrace the educational benefits that doing philosophy in an educated, intellectually-refined community offers you.

The lonely path to philosophical erudition is a very hard one, and is a much slower one. Further, the lone philosopher is in far more danger of ivory tower syndrome than the academic philosopher, since he is in far less of a position to subject his philosophy to erudite and valuable criticism, and so is less likely to be able to refine his work. Further, he doesn't have as much of an incentive to produce any philosophy, since it isn't his occupation but his pastime.

My advice to the OP was not to ignore philosophy and bury his head in the sand with regards to matters intellectual. My advice was to study something both interesting and useful, and read whatever books of philosophy take his fancy on the side. That's what I do, and I find it much more fulfulling than studying it in university, because I have real world experience to measure it against.

The invocation of "real world experience" is the favourite rhetorical turn of anti-intellectualism. As it happens, the move is inneffectual, for the simple reason that "real world experience" is so cheap that everyone has plenty of it to spare, and is accumulating more of it all the time.

If I wanted to be conceited, I should think that, to borrow a page from economic theory, this ought to entail that 'real world experience' is relatively worthless, and is getting all the more so all the time. But some things really are priceless, so I shan't wish to assert that.

I shall only observe that, given the widespread availability of "real world experience", someone considering the prospect of accruing a whole lifetime of it might want to consider investing in some other currency: one that will gain interest over time. That, I should think, would be a wise path.

FionnMatthew

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

The 'ideas' of those men did no such thing.

This really is a matter of where you choose to look. You could indict, for instance, feminist theorists on the basis that female genital mutilation still occurs in the world.

That would be to ignore that such issues are actually currency for mainstream intellectual discourse these days. For instance...

The charlatans I mentioned did quite the opposite: While conservative capitalism was busy swallowing the planet whole from the 1970's onwards, those very men went into a huge philosophical sulk

The only reason you have any narrative at all about conservative capitalism "swallowing the world" is because of the recursive commentary and intellectual climate that came into being directly at the consentual hands of, among others, the intellectuals you are denouncing.

refused to talk about anything using 'mainstream discourse' (i.e. sense) any more.

Your dispute here reveals prejudices concerning the approach philosophy should take to its subject matter. But the avoidance of mainstream discourse is the only reason there remain conceptual tools with which to take a critical perspective on an otherwise interpollated capitalist ideology. The late 20th century realization that resistance must be done at the level of language use as well as at the level of action is a lesson you seem to be in need of learning again.

The whole Po-Mo establishment was quite literally fiddling while Rome burnt. The serious left-wing ideals of the Sixties (The So called Old Left) were discarded as being just another 'historical meta-narrative" and the Third World was left to sink in to the far worse state that it's in now.

Look... that's just a really simplistic characterisation of the development of French philosophy. You're ignoring the adumbrations in avant-garde philosophy, in art-theory and linguistics, the incremental developments and the social contexts for the changes in the character of philosophy. You're ignoring that the late 20th century climate in French philosophy grew out a far larger set of problems and issues than just the resistance to advanced capitalism.

You're also endorsing a rather questionable narrative in world history, one that could stand to endure much revision.

(Read Baudrillard on the 'unreality' of the Gulf War for a particularly egregious example)

You've misunderstood Baudrillard if you ask me. Because as I read him, he made a vital and topical point about the way in which a remote military incursion, which happened on questionable incentives, had been made, by the simple virtue of the way news is consumed, and presented, into an entertainment spectacle, such that, as far as most people were concerned, the reportage was the main event. The thesis was only made more tenable by the recent opportunity we had to test it out all over again.

Read "Intellectual Impostures" by Alan Sokal for details.

I've read that. He makes a good argument. His hoax paper was a damning criticism... of Social Text. To imagine that this justifies a prejudice against all French philosophy is rather foolhardy, and departs rather more than is appreciated from the practice of right reasoning.

FionnMatthew

DadaKopf wrote: »

That's a long post, FionnMatthew. Is your first name David by any chance?

Hi Dadakopf. Actually, my first name is Fionn.

I wonder if I know your David, though...

4Xcut

I'm currently studying philosophy at TCD.

First, the first year course is quite good as you cover a lot of different topics briefly, thus putting you in a better position to choose things in forth year.

Second, the reading lists are huge for a reason. Different people will find different authors better for studying a given topic. Best advice I was ever given(by a lecturer in philosophy) was that if you're reading something and not getting anything from it, pick something else from the reading list of a similar vein. Its large to give you choice.

Third, i would advise strongly contacting the department and looking into the course more as there's only so much that they can put in a prospectus.

I would also advise studying it with something else. It gives you a break from it once in a while and allows you to focus on something else acedemicaly. But more importantly, it tends to tie in nicely with a good few subjects and this i feel is the true benifit of the subject. It will give you a much different way of looking at certain things that others are studying.

Over all, if you are really interested in philosophy then its not a bad course, once you can get through second year which is just boring compared to some of the areas studied in other years. That is not just my opinion, but a rather general consensus.

Workload isn't too bad at all. Very manageable indeed.

The department is quite honestly rubbish. It's true of a lot of courses that lecturers are more concerned with their own acedemia but none so bad as pholosophy. But then again it sort of comes with the territiry as many lecturers have to teach rather than wanting to and just sort of fall into it(though this is a problem in most of education, not all but a large portion).

Joe1919

I would also advise studying it with something else."

I personally agree with this statement. I studied philosophy and history. I think (and this is just my own personal opinion) that philosophy can, at times be a little too inward looking and an enormous benefit can be obtained by complementing philosophy with another subject. (joint honours)

I also studied some great philosophy, such as Erasmus, Voltaire, Hobbs, Locke, Weber, Foucault, Machiavelli, Hegel and DesCarte from history course and this added a sense of balance, in terms of how their philosophy affects the external world and peoples opinions. For example, DesCartes dualism, although controversial today, did affect society by distinguishing the physical world as something distinct from the spiritual world and hence, led people to a more enlightened opinion that (e.g.) witches and the devil were not behind natural disasters.

Indeed in this respect, there is quite an overlap between philosophy and history as well as other subjects. It's important to note that philosophers are often multi-disciplined. To take an example, Bertram Russell has contributed to Maths (set theory) , History (Hume was also a great historian) and Politics.
I do have the deepest respect for philosophy and philosophy does not exist in isolation and in trying to answer the difficult questions ( that there may be no answer to) is part of every subject to some extent.

But remember, this is only my personal experience and I dont claim to profess any universal knowledge.

LaVidaLoca

This message board just isnt big enough to respond to all these points in detail.

However I like the phrase "piddling popular science author who sells books to sneering know-it-alls by writing nasty invectives against stereotypes." - I didnt say Dawkins was a philosopher. Probably all the better for him that he isnt - when was the last time a philosopher ignited widespread debate ourside of the academic world?

But I like what it reveals about your prejudices that a guy like Dawkins is *shock* popular. I, like many others, applaud Dawkins for having the courage to publicly stand up to religious idiocy, that for all too long it has been taboo to criticise for fear of offending people's beleifs. I see him as continuing the tradition exemplified by that other sneering know it all, the Bertrand Russell of "Why I am Not a Christian."

Secondly I like your ringfencing of the UCD philosopher's religious beleifs as "elite religious ideas", by which you of course mean "ideas so loony and backward that the only way a public man could hold them is by not telling anybody about it." Of course they didn't bring these ideas in to the lecture hall, to do so would have been equivalent to a chemistry teacher doing a class on Homeopathic Potions. Do you apply the same rigourous criteria to that sort of medievalism that you apply to Professor Dawkins?

While I recognise of course that the lunatic fringe of French Philosophy that I spoke against, does not repesent the mainstream of academic philosophy: It does however speak ill of the integrity of many philosophy (and literature and sociology) departments, that these people were taken seriously for so long. When I was studying in the 1990's, one literally HAD to accept ideas that even at 18 one knew were bull****, as the professors correcting your essays had dedicated their lives to them. You couldnt just stand up and rightly say (as is my honestly held belief) this person (Derrida, Baudrillard, Lacan, Kristeva et.al) is talking opaque obscurantist gibberish more intended to confuse than enlighten. And if that makes me sound like Roger Scruton, so be it. But I am in no way a conservative in thought or action. I merely know rubbish when I see it. And I dont think it neccessary to get involved in debates any more about the details of what these people said. It is enough for me to dismiss theoligcal debates about angels on the head of a pin by simply saying. "Yes ,but I dont beleive in god or angels."


You must understand to get back to the original point of all this: I did not advise the OP to not study philosophy. I advised him to not make philosophy his only subject of study. I do this for many reasons, some of which are practical and to do with jobs, and others of which are a matter of personal taste.

To take an analogy: If a young person came to me with a love of music, and a desire to express himself through music, Would I suggest that he therefore study luthiery? No, I would suggest that he study music (with possibly a minor or a small module in luthiery in that it mightn't do his playing any harm to know how a violin works) But it would in my opinion be a diversion of his musical talents to study luthiery only. Especially if to continue the analogy he lived in a world in which there were very few people willing to pay a luthier to make a violin for him. I know, 'the job market' shouldn't matter when one chooses a subject of study, but unless one is from a wealthy family, it does matter. There's loads of subjects one can study that are both interesting and can help you get a job.

I agree with whichever poster it was that said "the unexamined life is not worth living." I simply take issue with the idea that this examining is best undertaken within a university philosophy department.

experiMental

DadaKopf wrote: »

That's a long post, FionnMatthew. Is your first name David by any chance?

I'm mad into aesthetics - for its own sake, and art's - and especially aesthetically grounded political philosophy (post-/neo-Marxian and post-structuralist thought). So I understand the attraction.

By comparison, I find that people who entered working life through a narrow discipline also live narrow lives, and while not bad in itself, makes me feel bad that they're not opening themselves up. I'm not a utopian, but the world could be a better place if people valued and studied philosophy.

Just out of curiosity, don't you think that many modern artists should put a lot more thought into making sure that their work will be understood by the audience ?

That was ott, but it's something that I'm dying to know.

DadaKopf

experiMental wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, don't you think that many modern artists should put a lot more thought into making sure that their work will be understood by the audience ?

That was ott, but it's something that I'm dying to know.

I dunno. Maybe, maybe not. Every age finds its artform, as Jackson Pollock said.

FionnMatthew

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

However I like the phrase "piddling popular science author who sells books to sneering know-it-alls by writing nasty invectives against stereotypes." - I didnt say Dawkins was a philosopher. Probably all the better for him that he isnt - when was the last time a philosopher ignited widespread debate ourside of the academic world?

But I like what it reveals about your prejudices that a guy like Dawkins is *shock* popular. I, like many others, applaud Dawkins for having the courage to publicly stand up to religious idiocy, that for all too long it has been taboo to criticise for fear of offending people's beleifs. I see him as continuing the tradition exemplified by that other sneering know it all, the Bertrand Russell of "Why I am Not a Christian."

1) If only Dawkins' letters were anything like Russell's. Russell's atheistic work was a) philosophically literate (although innately biased), b) epistemologically coherent (as opposed to Dawkins' ludicrous burden of proof hypothesis) and c) uninclined to inspire an army of ideologues who hung on his every word.

2) Dawkins hasn't inspired "widespread debate", as far as I'm concerned. Dawkins has popularized the use of rhetoric to quash actual debate about religious matters, and has simply inculcated counterreligious prejudices in a bitter athiestic minority. He has oversimplified the field, and downgraded the possibility of proper understanding on this most volatile of issues. We could do very well without the kind of polarized, volatile "debates" that Dawkins "inspires".

3) I'm not just talking about The God Delusion. Before that book came out, his needless, childish sneering against respectable scientific positions that he doesn't agree with proved that he isn't really interested in truth at all, but being right.

4) If you must read paperback money-spinning works on the subject, rather than addressing the issue proper, you'd do a good deal better with Dennett's work. It's a lot more sophisticated, if only a little less polemical. (Dennett is a dogged polemicist too.) At least his work, Breaking the Spell, inspires a little more further thought on the issue, and actually addresses the philosophical core of the problem. It's a little bit closer to inspiring actual debate on the issue.

5) The reason Dawkins is popular is that his works aim to be such. Dawkins isn't actually a proper writer at all, but an industry. His target audience is intelligent people who underacheived, and who want to take the quick route to condescension. He wants to make atheism, which is actually just an epistemological position on a rather silly religious fiction, into a mass movement which parallels the gay pride movement. His books are really just concerted and yet hollow polemics against stereotypical religious figures, which congratulate the reader on not having fallen into the (rather obvious) pitfalls of religious fervour. This ultimately sycophantic ploy manages not to spur the reader on to actual, continual enlightenment, but encourages him to spend his marginal erudition in intellectual one-up-manship, thereby lessening the chances of his ever seeking knowledge for its own sake. The kind of "debate" that emerges post-Dawkins is the appearance of intellectualism, each side (in an increasingly polarized back-and-forth) slinging big words they don't fully comprehend, in imitation of their patron genius. Such a climate can only ever rarely produce any philosophy of worth.

Perhaps though, if you want to continue the Dawkins related exchange, we ought to do it in another thread. If you wish, start one, and I'll follow you there.

Secondly I like your ringfencing of the UCD philosopher's religious beleifs as "elite religious ideas", by which you of course mean "ideas so loony and backward that the only way a public man could hold them is by not telling anybody about it." Of course they didn't bring these ideas in to the lecture hall, to do so would have been equivalent to a chemistry teacher doing a class on Homeopathic Potions. Do you apply the same rigourous criteria to that sort of medievalism that you apply to Professor Dawkins?

Perhaps I should make myself clearer. By elite religious ideas, I had intended to evoke the same kind of negative connotations as the words 'Opus Dei' inspire in me, for that is the particular religious alignment of the people in question.
I had not intended to even remotely defend such religious beliefs. Such impression can only be a coincidence of my wording.

I frown on Opus Dei. I frown on any devout, hardline, proseletyzing religious activism. (which is why I frown on Dawkins)

I had intended the anecdote to lay testament to the professionalism of said lecturers, that even so extreme a religious alignment as Opus Dei was not allowed to transgress the professional detachment, and seep into their pedagogical practises. Those teachers, in their teaching, gave if anything the appearance of atheistic detachment whenever they touched on any religious matters.

As privately-held beliefs, these beliefs neither demand nor deserve rigorous scrutiny. "Professor" Dawkins, as you so deferentially call him, is in the position of having written very public tracts, which present themselves to the scrutiny and criticism of all. By no means could I be expected to treat the two cases as equal, and a less tolerant audience might resent your having equivocated the two.

As a philosopher, I am prepared to respect and appreciate the work and professionalism of these people, even if they hold "medieval" views privately, views that I couldn't even begin to address, so distant are they from my own. Should they perform public actions that I disagree with, so long as they have no place in the classroom, I don't see why it should be at all relevant. The same mindset would have us ignore the (massive, apolitical) philosophical value of Heidegger's work, just because he was a Nazi.

While I recognise of course that the lunatic fringe of French Philosophy that I spoke against, does not repesent the mainstream of academic philosophy: It does however speak ill of the integrity of many philosophy (and literature and sociology) departments, that these people were taken seriously for so long. When I was studying in the 1990's, one literally HAD to accept ideas that even at 18 one knew were bull****, as the professors correcting your essays had dedicated their lives to them. You couldnt just stand up and rightly say (as is my honestly held belief) this person (Derrida, Baudrillard, Lacan, Kristeva et.al) is talking opaque obscurantist gibberish more intended to confuse than enlighten. And if that makes me sound like Roger Scruton, so be it. But I am in no way a conservative in thought or action. I merely know rubbish when I see it. And I dont think it neccessary to get involved in debates any more about the details of what these people said. It is enough for me to dismiss theoligcal debates about angels on the head of a pin by simply saying. "Yes ,but I dont beleive in god or angels."

There is a reason you might have been expected to actually address those thinkers. Because they are not straight up bull****, and do contain a lot of philosophy of value.

That highly intelligent people endorse their work ought to be testament to the fact that there is something there, if you look properly. Particular to many latter day French intellectuals is the intellectual climate of France. In order to go along with them, you need to do a lot of contextualizing. If you didn't do this, and indeed, if you weren't helped along in this by your teachers (there is a dual responsibility there) then you might be forgiven for believing there isn't much to it.

If you still think it's rubbish, then you ought to attribute that to a failure of understanding on your part.

Not all theology, by the way, is about angels on pins. Some of it strays closer to metaphysics. There are no definite boundaries, and the sort of intellectual territorialism that you practice by aping Dawkins in this matter (his utter, unswerving refusal to do theology in TGD) could very well lead you into error. In this I speak as a proper atheist, and not the "does it offend you?" kind that we are getting more and more of these days.

You must understand to get back to the original point of all this: I did not advise the OP to not study philosophy. I advised him to not make philosophy his only subject of study.

True. But you have also denigrated philosophy unfairly, repeatedly, and by the means of crooked reasoning, overgeneralization and blatant falsehood. While you never actually advised against the study of philosophy, the substantive message of your contribution here has been unequivocally that.Since this began, I've had two PMs from people who had intended to study philosophy, and were now unsure. The reason I'm responding to you is:

1~) You are actually wrong. You are speaking falsehoods when you say things like "Western philosophy is all about chairs".
2~) Those falsehoods are deterring people from studying the subject you are misrepresenting.

I should hope the general impression of this thread is a little more balanced now, and someone reading it might be a little more fully informed about the dynamics of the choice they must make.

LaVidaLoca

Though it doesnt sound to me like you've read him if you seem to think him capable of inspiring 'armies of ideologues'. What he is espousing is simply a rational look at unreason. I have always found him commendably balanced when talking to nut-cases like Ted Haggard and so on. I think most of the people here would find it difficult to talk to some of the people he debates with (Look at the Liberty University lecture Q and A on youtube) without losing the rag altogether, which he never does. The guy is hardly advocating banning religion, as an idealgue would do. He is simply continuing a tradition of humanism which asks merely that we judge religious claims by the same criteria that we judge non-religious ones.

I hate to mention again the book "Intellectual Impostures", but if you look at some of the astonishing dishonesty that the aforementioned French philosophes were peddling as pointed out in that book, (a good resource for collecting all the worst bits under the one cover) it really is frightening that anybody took them seriously.

In any other discipline, blatant intellectual dishonesty like that would have lead to them losing their jobs and being booted out of university once it was exposed. Of course this didnt happen: Because they used the same con trick that religious hucksters do: Create a set of ideas that appear to transcend all the ideas that we normally hold dear, and you can then accuse people of simply not understanding them when they point out what a load of crap they are.

You seem to think that just because some intelligent people take them seriously, means they must have some worth. I cant answer this any better than Noam Chomsky did:

"There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out.
"

You argue that the fact that intelligent people took them seriously is in itself proof that they had some substance to them. I don't think that proves anything at all. There are many very highly intelligent people who beleive in ridiculous Bronze Age texts purported to have been written by God himself, yet their intelligence doesnt make that belief any less risible. Their intelligent logic manages to 'bend' around their beleif. Or as you mentioned above Heidegger was seduced by Nazism.

It is precisely because stuff like that was taken seriously in my philosophy department (and my literature one) that I am sceptical, not of philosophical thinking per se, but in the academic climate in which it grows. Hucksterism of the sort mentioned above finds fertile ground in places where men and women are trying hard to make careers out of thinking about things.

DadaKopf

I hate to mention again the book "Intellectual Impostures", but if you look at some of the astonishing dishonesty that the aforementioned French philosophes were peddling as pointed out in that book, (a good resource for collecting all the worst bits under the one cover) it really is frightening that anybody took them seriously.

The Sokal Hoax was an important event, I think. But not for the reason you claim. You say it's because it proved that continental philosophy is total bullsh!t. The point he was actually making, as a scientist and philosopher, was to point out the misuse of scientific concepts (particularly theoretical physics) by a particular set of philosophers who published articles in Social Text journal.

LaVidaLoca

proved that Social Text was a rag. However it was a watershed moment for many of us, who were being taught to read texts all the time that were not far off from Sokal's parody.

Howeverm (Intelectual Impostures is not just about the Sokal Affair) it examines in detail the collossal audacity of some of these thinkers in talking completey unforgivable rubbish.

It also however, caught a lot of French thinkers with their pants down: Quite literally posing with scientific concepts they did not understand. This is not a minor "oh well they made a mistake", it is the Academic equivalent of the Enron collapse. That important portions of their work were either full-on pre-meditated cynical deception, or breaktakingly ignorant, and were taken seriously by many, shows that even supposedly rational philosophy and literature departments, were not immune to religious-type hysteria.

DadaKopf

However it was a watershed moment for many of us, who were being taught to read texts all the time that were not far off from Sokal's parody.

What texts?

oweverm (Intelectual Impostures is not just about the Sokal Affair) it examines in detail the collossal audacity of some of these thinkers in talking completey unforgivable rubbish.

Some, not all. You seem to be damning all continental philosophy by use of extreme examples of where it probably wasn't very good at all. The audacity, really, is to make an extreme generalisation based on a few specific cases.

Quite literally posing with scientific concepts they did not understand.

You haven't added anything to what I said above.

However it was a watershed moment for many of us, who were being taught to read texts all the time that were not far off from Sokal's parody.

I mean, did you even bother reading the stuff, or awere you too conservatively set in your ways even then, whenever that was, whoever you are?