Teaching

Teaching

“Is philosophy useful or useless?” This is the final question that my students answer when introducing themselves on the first day of class. As each student replies, I list on the board reasons given in support of their answers, useful or useless. Their replies are revealing: “It’s useless, because there’s no right answer in philosophy.” “It’s useful, because it teaches critical thinking.” “Useless—no one needs philosophy in real life.” “Useful—it will help me ace the LSAT.” One thing is clear from this first-day exercise: philosophy is an unfamiliar subject to most college students. As high schools expand their curricula to include more STEM and social science offerings, philosophy remains among those few university disciplines still new to first-years. For most philosophy is something they have yet to try, whether or not they find it an appealing or useful novelty.

As discussion unfolds, students realize that answering the question “Is philosophy useful or useless?” is itself a philosophical exercise. I emphasize that, although most students have never taken a philosophy course before, all of them have already been doing philosophy. Every time they argue about politics or religion, every time they discuss morality or the upshot of the latest scientific study—in short, every time they have disagreed and debated according to reasons—they have done philosophy. As the course unfolds, they realize that there are indeed right and wrong answers in philosophy; after all, most students can already distinguish between good and bad reasons for a view. Though philosophy may not settle all debates, it can set the boundaries for rational discourse. This is what they are in my class to learn, how to disagree in a rational and civil way. Further, they learn how to learn from those with whom they may initially disagree: well-reasoned debate is important because we stand to gain something from it, whether with fellow classmates or with philosophers who died long ago.

Accordingly, with respect to method, my view is this: we begin with what is obvious to us and progress gradually to what is less obvious and more abstract. I, for my part, often find it unhelpful to introduce and explain Putnam or Plato by giving formalized, abstract arguments. In most cases a philosophical text is difficult precisely because it is already too abstract for students. Making this abstraction explicit does not, in my experience, make the argument itself any more accessible for first-time readers. Even if they should grasp the argument structure that way, they rarely grasp its meaning or importance. To be sure, it is important to learn abstract formal arguments eventually, but students are rarely prepared for this having just wrestled with a difficult text for the first time.

I take a different approach and make liberal use of images and examples, seeking to make the abstract more concrete, at least in early stages of instruction. In this way, discussions in my classroom are continuous with the kind of philosophizing students have already been doing: we consider particular cases, either from our own political or cultural context, or from the world of literature, television, and film. On this note, as a student of ancient philosophy, I find it odd when the Socratic Method is understood exclusively in terms of asking leading questions as a part of an abstract inquiry, often as a means of disproof. Rather, when I read Plato, I find Socrates also making frequent and vivid use of concrete images (e.g. the cave allegory). Although perhaps not entirely representative of the historical Socrates, it is nevertheless that Socrates whose method I use.

My goal is for students to learn to navigate the space of reasons, not as if separated from the real world, but rather so that they can think in abstract and ordered ways about the real world, about precisely those things they encounter in everyday life. Not only are examples helpful in learning philosophy at the beginning, but using examples in class helps students to practice applying philosophical principles and ideas once they have learned them. Only if students can apply what they have learned to concrete instances of ordinary discourse beyond the classroom will my course prove useful to them in years to come.

So, to be sure, philosophy is useful for critical thinking, rational debate, and LSAT prep. And yet there is some truth to the thought that philosophy is useless. Perhaps the main reason philosophy is desirable is not for some further purpose, to be put to some further use, and is rather desired for its own sake. In this way, doing philosophy resembles reading poetry and visiting friends: it an activity which constitutes a fulfilling life, rather than merely making such a life possible. In the final analysis I emphasize to my students that philosophy may, in fact, be useless, but this is perhaps the highest praise we can offer it: so, too, are all the best things in life.