When a fellow student at Rutgers University urged Didi Onejeme to try Philosophy 101 two years ago, Ms. Onejeme, who was a pre-med sophomore, dismissed it as “frou-frou.”
“People sitting under trees and talking about stupid stuff ”” I mean, who cares?” Ms. Onejeme recalled thinking at the time.
But Ms. Onejeme, now a senior applying to law school, ended up changing her major to philosophy, which she thinks has armed her with the skills to be successful. “My mother was like, what are you going to do with that?” said Ms. Onejeme, 22. “She wanted me to be a pharmacy major, but I persuaded her with my argumentative skills.”
Once scoffed at as a luxury major, philosophy is being embraced at Rutgers and other universities by a new generation of college students who are drawing modern-day lessons from the age-old discipline as they try to make sense of their world, from the morality of the war in Iraq to the latest political scandal. The economic downturn has done little, if anything, to dampen this enthusiasm among students, who say that what they learn in class can translate into practical skills and careers. On many campuses, debate over modern issues like war and technology is emphasized over the study of classic ancient texts.
Rutgers, which has long had a top-ranked philosophy department, is one of a number of universities where the number of undergraduate philosophy majors is ballooning; there are 100 in this year’s graduating class, up from 50 in 2002, even as overall enrollment on the main campus has declined by 4 percent.
Many of the philosophy majors I knew at the University of Pittsburgh longed for more soul and less analysis. The most perceptive of them kept their feet on the ground by studying religion, history, and physics, subjects that engage the nature of existence far more than does modern American philosophy.
Ratramnus, as a Philosophy prof I can humbly agree with some of what you say; but I think a lot depends on the teachers: what texts we choose to teach and how we teach them. In each of these disciplines you name, we are teaching not just content but method, of course, and not all teachers are equally humble about the limitations of their method. I’ve run no small number of History, Physics, and Religion profs who sound very convinced that inquiry into the “nature of existence” is hooey (especially when one turns the conversation to moral issues and the “nature” or of whatever grounds our ethics). And I’ve met profs in all four fields you name (including my own) who are committed to seeking the truth and to teaching their students to do the same. I hope that these students who turn to philosophy find good teachers and, ultimately, the Good Teacher Himself.
Oops. That should read “I’ve run _into_ no small number…”
I think I would not have bothered with college in my early 20s had I not stumbled into a philosophy class. Luckily I did and a great teacher, Christian Wildberg (now at Princeton) changed both my major and life’s direction. His philosophy of religion class helped move me from being a defensive, unreflective atheist to a slightly more reflective albeit still defensive agnostic. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
I went on to get both an undergraduate and graduate degree in philosophy. The latter doesn’t earn me a dime in my current job, but my background in philosophy and humanities continues to enrich my life to a degree second only to my relationships with God and my family.
Philosophy taught me to think, to write: and it was the problems of free will, consciousness and meta-ethics that led me back to the Christian faith. It reminded me that defining terms, offering examples, is a way to argue and understand.