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Philosophy

Valuing Philosophy Education

The Rise of the Philosopher-Manager

“Recent financial upheaval has caused many executives in Switzerland and elsewhere to reconsider how and why they do what they do … Since 2004, the University of Fribourg has been offering a ‘philosophical retreat for executive staff.’ A study…showed that people who had attended it …were more prone to introspection, which helped boost their self-confidence. They also showed an improved capacity to formulate concepts and were more able to question themselves, which made constructive criticism easier and made them more inclined to listen to others.” The result: decision makers who can get beyond their ‘toolbox training’ to think about the meaning of their actions. [Cf. the original article]

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World Philosophy Day

Marking World Philosophy Day, the head the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today appealed to every professional, author and teacher worldwide to unleash the power of critical thinking, and urged the international community to engage in reasoned dialogue to help find common solutions to shared challenges.

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Why Children Should Study Philosophy

“Children are natural philosophers … [and] studies have demonstrated that children who study philosophy are more likely to achieve better academic results. They also enjoy additional social benefits such as better self-esteem and the demonstration of empathy for others. There is also said to be less bullying in the schoolyard and less behaviour-management issues.”

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The Long Reach of Reason

Here’s a TED first: an animated Socratic dialogue! In a time when irrationality seems to rule both politics and culture, has reasoned thinking finally lost its power? Watch as linguist Steven Pinker is gradually, brilliantly persuaded by philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (Plato at the Googleplex) that reason is actually the key driver of human moral progress, even if its effect sometimes takes generations to unfold. This [scripted] dialogue was recorded live at TED, and then animated. [video]

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Why Study Humanities?

When misfortune strikes … people reassess what is most important to them.… Everyone knows this.… It is therefore hardly practical, Socrates would say, to spend a large part of our lives devoting ourselves to things that, were we not blinded or intoxicated by relative good fortune, would appear not worth the sacrifices we make for them.… We should resist the ubiquitous attempts to hijack the very concept of the practical to relatively narrow material ambitions.

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Philosophy’s Popularity Soars

Chair of philosophy John MacFarlane says no one is quite sure why philosophy has become so popular at UC Berkeley, a campus whose namesake is philosopher George Berkeley. However, in a recent review for The Atlantic of the book “Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away,” philosophy professor Clancy Martin wrote: “Philosophy is making the kind of comeback that leaves a Hermann Hesse groupie glad to have headed for graduate school and ended up with tenure.”

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Would You Hire Socrates?

The myth that studying the humanities doesn’t pay was recently exploded by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. So…it turns out that studying the humanities is not such a bad career move. But its real value lies elsewhere. [subscription]

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Philosophy and its History

If you go into a mathematics class of any university, it’s unlikely that you will find students reading Euclid. If you go into any physics class, it’s unlikely you’ll find students reading Newton. If you go into any economics class, you probably won’t find students reading Keynes. But if you go a philosophy class, it is not unusual to find students reading Plato, Kant, or Wittgenstein. Why?

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How Philosophy Makes Progress

In the case of manumission, women’s rights, children’s rights, gay rights, criminals’ rights, animal rights, the abolition of cruel and unusual punishment, the conduct of war—in fact, almost every progressive movement one can name—it was reasoned argument that first laid out the incoherence, demonstrating that the same logic underlying reasons to which we were already committed applied in a wider context. … This kind of progress, unlike scientific progress, tends to erase its own tracks as it is integrated into our manifest image and so becomes subsumed in the framework by which we conceive of ourselves. We no longer see the argumentative work it took for this advance in morality to be achieved.

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Philosophy in the Streets

Philosophers get a bad rap – they’re written off as too academic, too detached from daily life. But we’re seeing a philosophy revival, from philosophy cafes to philosophers as therapists. From the Stoics to Spinoza, an argument for why philosophy still matters. Guests: Mark Rowlands, Rebecca Goldstein, Jules Evans, Steve Nadler, Eric Jarosinski, Nikiko Masumoto. [audio]

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Don’t Dismiss Philosophy

What use could the humanities be in a digital age? Skeptics may see philosophy as the most irrelevant…, but the way I understand the world is shaped by three philosophers in particular…. So let me push back at the idea that the humanities are obscure, arcane and irrelevant. These three [contemporary] philosophers influence the way I think about politics, immigration, inequality; they even affect what I eat…

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Your Moral Education Needs Philosophy

Ethics are increasingly a part of the school curriculum, and practical introductory classes in applied ethics are part of the training that nurses, scientists and soldiers undergo. Ethical education is ubiquitous, even though it may not always involve complicated theoretical debates – but should it include a dose of philosophy? There are powerful reasons for looking to moral philosophy to learn about real-world ethical action – and of course, there are risks too.

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Why We Must Teach Philosophy in High School

Philosopher Simon Blackburn argues that there should be a specific Philosophy GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) in the UK. “The world needs reason as much or more than it has ever done. People need values, and they need to know how to defend them, not with bombs and guns but with discussion and reason. The issue ought not to be just whether there is a philosophy GCSE, but whether it ought to be compulsory that philosophy is woven into the education of every child.”

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Who Studies Philosophy?

Studying philosophy is valuable no matter what career path one pursues, from academia to business to entertainment to politics. The APA offers us a list of a few examples of people in a wide variety of fields who have studied philosophy.

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Philosophy Boosts Math, Literacy and Writing Skills

“More than 3,000 nine and 10-year-olds in 48 UK schools took part in hour-long sessions aimed at raising their ability to question, reason and form arguments. A study for the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) found pupils’ ability in reading and maths scores improved by an average of two months over a year. For disadvantaged children, the study found writing skills were also boosted.”

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