11 ix 07: Patriot Day

Well, we are a week into "Overview of Philosophy", and so far I am pleased with the progress of the course. Unusually for me, I have chosen not to require any texts for this course. Instead, the students are asked to contemplate and research on their own, with minimal reference to existing schools of thought (unless individual students happen to be participants in some school or other).

What I find excellent about these classes is that most of the students are engaged. I am striving mightily -- I don't know how much the students grasp the strain I am experiencing -- NOT to give answers, although surely we are at a point in the process where I could give answers, and perfectly good ones, too. Rather, I hope to be a light guide to the students' own discovery and organization.

I must resign myself in this to the notion that we will not "cover" much. But in respect of gaining technical skills and experience in thinking clearly, so far this course is promising.

Our first class sessions have been spent in the business of defining philosophy as a subject field. "What is philosophy?" I asked. "What will we be studying in this course?" The basic answer we reached for that is that philosophy is the business of asking questions -- but the questions philosophy raises are of a special sort. Questions may be "philosophical", that is, those raised in a philosophical context, or "non-philosophical".

I asked students to prepare lists of philosophical questions. We then examined these questions, first, to determine whether we agreed generally as to the sort of questions which are "philosophical", and second, to determine what commonalities those questions demonstrate. We considered both philosophical questions and "non-philosophical questions".

Non-philosophical questions, we concluded, are those which admit to answers, even if we do not know the answers ourselves. Furthermore, the answers of non-philosophical questions are fact.

Philosophical questions point to further questions, because the answers one gains to philosophical questions are "debatable", founded in values and principles, not always in observed phenomena...

So, we find that philosophy is "about" philosophical questioning, and philosophical questioning is questioning which leads to further questioning. But what is the "point" of this? Why engage in philosophy? Where does philosophy lead?

These are the questions we must engage next.