Why Philosophy is a genuinely AWESOME degree

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”.

Out of interest, when working with, say, the works of different philosophers, what is expected from you as a student from any assessments that you do? Are you by any means required to come up with a profound response of your own or some kind of original analysis to be doing well?

Not a very useful one though is it

It's to hard

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”.

This article is set in America where the job market etc is different to the UK

My partner is going on to do philosophy at Uni, at first I laughed thinking it was a soft option but then as soon as we began to talk about it I saw that it seriously wasn't. The amount of stuff I didn't understand was immense and standing back from it all made me realize that it's a massively detailed and interesting subject which gave me a new view on it :3

The US job market will be similar to our own in many respects, but try these too:

http://www.davidbain.org/teaching/employability-of-philosophy-students

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2007/nov/20/choosingadegree.highereducation

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I agree that Philosophy is interesting and I love to discuss it myself with friends, but it will never be as useful as a good Maths or Engineering degree. It teaches you to write and analyse well, but so do many other degrees that actually teach job-specific knowledge as well.

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.