The Top 40

Dear, if you want to devote your life to poverty and service, you could just convert to Catholicism and become a nun....

...oh, there is that chastity thing....give it another ten years and as a philosophy major you'll still be in the same place - with no STD's or memories of restraining orders to haunt you.

Difference between math and philosophy: the math department needs paper and wastebaskets; the philosophy department needs only paper.

Screw Philosophy. Ancient Etruscan Women's Studies is where the money is at.

I started college back in 1964, was gonna become a doctor. It was not what I wanted, I didn't know what I wanted. My parents having gone through the Depression, my father who worked his way up to mid-management at Electro-Motive div of General Motors with only an eighth grade education, they wanted me to become a doctor. I didn't have the discipline to follow this path. High I.Q. but low emotional development, I dropped out. Took a job at EMD, got married, got drafted. After my military service was over I returned to EMD and got into an electricians' apprenticeship. Never regretted that, had a good career, money, accomplishment, so forth.

I'm not drifting here, haven't lost sight of shore. I tell you this about my working life to illustrate a point: kids just out of high school should work out in the world for a few years. Perhaps in the military; I was drafted, millions were; a few years working at a job like piling boxes in a warehouse, running a jack hammer on a roads gang, waitressing, any job menial and physically demanding. After a few years of that the kids will appreciate the value of higher education. They will learn how to manage time and money.

Graduate high school (for what that's worth) working world for six years, back to school or wherever the work experience leads them.

That seems kinda naïve, eh?

Oh, that hurts! My BA is in philosophy. I was immediately employed to blow things up by the US Army. Had a great time. Made a career of it.

Believe it or not, when I was stationed in the Pentagon, the philosophy degree came in very useful for two reasons:

1. You cannot get good grades in school in the discipline without knowing how to organize your thoughts, link them to a cogent, rational argument, and write it all out clearly.

The ability to do this well is in short supply in the general business world and in the military, too.

2. A philosophy degree trains you to have a finely tuned BS detector, and when working in any level of government that puts you well ahead.

A philosophy degree trains you to have a finely tuned BS detector.

And BS factories are opening everywhere. They are the wave of the future.

Sorry Don, but the Gummint runs on BS. Detecting it, thwarting it just labels you as a non-team player. Shortly you will find yourself at some post like Fort Sill doing fragment recovery from the impact area. If you're very lucky, not while it is not in use.

However as a team player, the attainment of purity through organic veganism whilst practicing Rastafarian Onanism will get you a gardening position at the White house.

Donald, I'm sure what you say was (emphasis: past tense) true when you and I were educated.

Today, however, a degree in philosophy - like anything else in most "higher" academia as presently run by the "progressive" education cult - teaches one to become a BS generator, not a BS detector.

To paraphrase someone, modern philosophy is a land of many roads leading from nothing to nowhere.

gagdad: "... modern philosophy is a land of many roads leading from nothing to nowhere."

Well, Decartes is generally acknowledged to be the first modern philosopher, and he died in 1650. Modern philosophy also includes luminaries such as Leibniz, Locke, Hume and Kant.

I suspect that what you really mean is "present day" rather than "modern." And in that I would not argue with you.

Vermont Woodchuck, my daughter is completing her intro phil. class this semester. Since she is majoring in chemical engineering, it will likely be the only one she takes.

I would day that the lower-number philosophy classes are still pretty much on the up and up. But the higher-level classes have probably been infected by Leftism as much as any other humanities department.

One class that came in handy for me was logic. It's part of the foundation of both math and philosophy. Maybe one of the best formal courses I ever took.