Why Philosophy is a genuinely AWESOME degree

Hey you still can! Even philosophy as a hobby can blow people's minds at dinner parties when you break out Zeno's paradoxes - and, as I'm sure you know, mathematicians often make great philosophers.

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Philosophy is at the heart of many great disciplines, like mathematics and economics. If I never studied mathematics I probably would have studied philosophy.

I love this! I just did A-level philosophy and got an A and it was amazing, so challenging at times but worth it! Although I'm not doing it at uni I won't give up studying it on the side


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Yes, I would like to explore for the first time. I'd like some books to just get me a good starting place.

Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil is a good place to start if you want to get into Moral Psychology/Philosophy.

St. Augustine's Confessions is also a good one and I think OP said Plato's Republic too.

Start with those three works!

what are the employment prospects with that degree?

Any general grad job, anything that requires critical thought/analysis skills, anything writing heavy, hell even software engineering if you have the skills/experience (programming is essentially logic).

+ grad entry/conversion stuff like medicine and law

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wow, so many possibilities.

I really thought that philosophy was a dead end degree, or at least, that was drilled into me.

Careers advice sucks ass, and most people on TSR are STEM elitists.

Yes, I would like to explore for the first time. I'd like some books to just get me a good starting place.

When you tell someone you’re taking a Philosophy degree, you often get the impression the person you’re talking to (especially, it must be said, if they’re a STEM Nazi) doesn’t know what the subject actually is, and assumes it’s just sitting (mainly in the reclined position) considering the meaning of stuff in a whimsical way for three years. Oh the ignorance. So I’ve decided to give some reasons why Philosophy should be (and is, by employers and those who know), considered one of the most prestigious, challenging and rewarding degrees out there (yes, right up there with medicine, physics, law and maths):

1) In terms of skill in logical thought and precision, Philosophy matches any science or quantitative degree. Formal Logic notation is notorious for its complexity, and on Oxford’s website, in the description of the Logic unit, it warns that even students who took Further Maths A Level ‘will struggle’.

2) At the same time, it hones writing, argumentative and analytical skills to the same extent as any other humanities course, like History or English Literature. Hence combining the best aspects of the arts with the sciences.

3) It involves the study of, quite simply, the greatest minds to have ever walked the Earth. While Geography students are off learning about rates of coastal erosion on the Norfolk coastline, you’re learning about the intricacies of the work of Aristotle, Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Descartes, Nietzsche, Sartre, Hume, Socrates, Machiavelli, Aquinas, Augustine, Voltaire, Kant, Camus, Russell, Mill, Epicurus, Confucius and so many more. Philosophy's scope means it's near impossible not to find deep interest somewhere.

4) Philosophy is the original and oldest subject. There’s a reason Newton named his work ‘Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy’. Science (formerly Natural Philosophy) is a child of Philosophy, and simply cannot function without it. Every day, budding young scientists carry out their investigations, all the while oblivious to the fact that they rely on the work of philosophers like Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper and Francis Bacon to do so.

5) Employers know that the soft skills many science graduates lack can be found in a Philosophy student. The subject is best done as a verbal process or through structured verbal argument, thus perfecting your communication, debating and verbal reasoning skills. Seriously, spend three years studying syllogisms and analytic philosophy and, I promise, you will be the most ferocious debater for miles around. If you want, training in philosophical reasoning can allow you to dominate your philosophically illiterate opponents (which, sadly, will be most of them).

6) Philosophy has shaped our world more than any other subject. From every war begun in the name of a particular philosophy of religion, to every revolution caused by a philosophy of politics, to every scientific invention born of philosophy of science, Philosophy is there, in the background, always.

Thanks for reading this; I’d be happy to have a discussion below. I leave you with my personal favourite Plato quotation:

“There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands”.

Philosophy has to be regarded as useless as Gender Studies or Art History because you can quite literally make stuff up to answer exam questions and get top marks.

For example students in a Philosophy exam were also asked to use all their philosophical knowledge to prove why a chair, placed at the front of the room, didn’t exist. While many scribbled down different theories one student simply wrote ‘What chair?’

In another Philosophy exam, a student was said to receive top marks when answering the one word question ‘Why?’ with ‘Why not?

In another exam students are reported to have been asked ‘What is courage?’ One is said to have returned a blank page saying ‘This is.’

It is reasons like this that most people don't highly regard Philosophy.

But saying that, if I didn't have to work for a living, i'd likely study Philosophy also.

Lol
Urban legends
Gullible fool

Lol.
Guess I found the philosonazi. Lol
#triggered
Lol.

I'm studying Philosophy at Cambridge starting in October. Really excited

My favourite quotation by a philosopher is in my signature.

By the way, do you like my username?

Haha yeah I love your username!! Wow well done on getting into Cambridge that's amazing I've heard the course there puts special emphasis on analytic philosophy (you have to do Logic for two years?) Good luck!

Yep, logic is compulsory in years 1 & 2. That freaks me out a little as its not my favourite. But, given half the entrance test were logic questions, fingers crossed I'll be ok.

And thanks do you do philosophy at uni? Or is it a hobby?

If the emphasis at Cambridge is in an area that is not your favourite - 2 whole years. I wonder, why did you apply there?

You have to do logic in a philosophy degree any uni. There is no more logic in the Cambridge course than in any other. And logic is only one module. Plus, I love the rest of the course.