I have 17 years I am really into philosophy . I would give everything to go and study it . But there is one problem. My parents doesn't know where can philosophy take me(job , career ) . I never thought about it so if you could help me PLS

Dear Friend - I have a couple of ideas about careers, but we can get to that in a minute. Since you are already a fan of philosophy, I won't bother telling you its virtues. But you might want to try telling your parents what you love about it and show your passion for it so that they have a sense that your interest is sincere and lasting. Some ideas about careers: First of all, studies show that (at least in the US) a young person starting out today will have an average of 6 different careers in her lifetime. That is not 6 different jobs -- I mean 6 entirely different careers (first a soldier, then student, then nurse, then nursing administrator, then medical salesperson...you get the idea). So a degree today should be flexible in that it will help you in the many different paths you will follow. A degree in today's accounting practices, for example, won't help you if accounting practices change tomorrow. So a philosophy degree is a good fit for someone starting out because philosophers know...

dear sir/ madam i have studied aesthetic at university, but i would like to work on aesthetics for kids at elementary school and students of high school. i would really appreciate it if you could help me with this case and introduce me some books and resources, and also i would like to know if there is a specific philosopher who had worked on this case. best regards, H.

Dear H. - Let me start by pointing you towards the American Society for Aesthetics. They have a really good teaching resource page here: http://www.aesthetics-online.org/teaching/. I also can recommend the book Puzzles about Aesthetics: A Casebook , edited by Battin, Fischer, Moore, and Silvers, widely available online. I'm not sure all of the book's commentary will be suitable for high school students, let alone younger ones, because it is a sophisticated introduction to the topic. But many of the cases there would work very well in those classroom settings. Finally, I think the best way to start a lesson on aesthetics is with the students' own aesthetics experiences, perhaps by asking them to share or write about the music, tv shows, books, outdoors experiences, etc. that move them most. Good luck!

Some time ago, a question was asked: "How do you think technology will affect the teaching and practice of philosophy." The responses, while interesting, were a little too pragmatic. So, I would like to reformulate and ask a parallel question: How do you think technology will affect teaching and learning in the 21st century? Is the technological classroom the next great revolution? Or is it all hype, rhetoric, and advertising spin? Can philosophy help guide us in sorting the useful from the useless, the time wasting, and cost incurring technologies? Plato/Socrates was uncertain about print, Heidegger warned that in asking "the question about technology" that we are on the wrong track ... So, what advice would philosophers give to teachers trying to negotiate the validity of the technological revolution for teaching. George

Dear George, I don't have too much of my own to add (but see below). Really, I wanted to recommend to you the work of philosopher Neil Postman. He was the go-to philosopher on the issue of technology and citizenry. You might want to start by looking up his lecture called "Five Things We Need to Know about Technological Change." Currently there is a link to it here: http://www.mat.upm.es/~jcm/neil-postman--five-things.html - not sure how stable that link is. You can also find out more about Postman and his books at http://neilpostman.org/ -- but I am not sure who owns that website. Good luck, I think you will enjoy Postman. P.S. I agree that philosophy generally has been cautious about technology. But perhaps contemporary philosophers have special reason to be cautious: philosophical enterprises that make use of technology quickly break out to become their own (better funded) fields - as in the case of psychology, physics, cognitive science, etcetera. P.P.S As to the issue of...

I recently found out that a cousin of mine, about 15, is being brainwashed by his parents into accepting all sorts of religious dogma and nonsense. Now, personally I don't have anything against religion in principle, and I even think the Intelligent Design argument is, well, intelligent (or at least clever). But for a 15 year old to be indoctrinated like that bothers me. Is there anything I can say (or books I can recommend to him) to him that would not be insensitive to him or his family but would at least get him thinking about things in a slightly more independent manner? Thanks!

I believe you when you say you don't give a fig what educational agenda is being pushed on the cousin. I think your objection speaks to a long standing debate in the philosophy of education: just where is that line between indoctrination and education? The purpose of an education is to help you to lead an autonomous life. Autonomy, simply put, is the ability to govern your own life: to make decisions about the kind of life you would like to have, and then implement the necessary steps to get there. (Note: autonomy is not about being a lone wolf!) Good religious or spiritual education will produce people who make spiritual decisions genuinely and autonomously. We stray into indoctrination (or cultishness, or brain-washing) when we pervert the process of education to deliberately reduce autonomy. Cults, for example, reduce their members' autonomy by making them afraid of leaving (as in "If you leave us, you will have nothing!"). Good spiritual education, on the other hand, says, "If you leave us, we...

I have a question on how to study philosophy; that is, should I start from the text or from the lectures? Is it better to listen to lectures and look at summaries/webpages before going on to the text, or to struggle with the text in the beginning and start from the concepts that arise from it? Thanks - from a Junior; student of philosophy

I am glad you got in touch. It is always nice to (virtually) meet serious students like yourself. Your question seems to acknowledge two strategies, each with its own pitfalls. (1) Fight every inch to understand the original texts on your own and then go to the videos and lectures or (2) use the supplements first, even though they may unduly influence your own interpretations of the texts once you get to them. Surely either way you will make some headway in terms of understanding philosophy. I bet the purists would say only (1) will do. But these purists may be biased, being already trained in philosophy. I think whether strategy 1 or 2 is better may depend your own personal learning style. Some people love to tinker; they love to take things apart to see how it all fits together. More than once I have begun a knitting project, for example, just to see how all those knots are supposed to come together. (Memo to the brown wool sweater: I will figure you out yet!) If this metaphor describes how...

I am looking for books on ethics written in a popular style; understandable for people reading on a high school level. Can you advise?

I have a couple of suggestions for you. The first is to look into books that pair philosophical analysis with contemporary culture. Both Open Court Press and Wiley-Blackwell have book series of this nature (called "Popular Culture and Philosophy" and "Philosophy for Everyone," respectively) . For example, there are books on comic book characters, television shows, sports, and many other topics that will appeal to high school students. The articles in such books are designed for a general audience. The entire book will not be about just ethics, but I can promise each book of this type will have several articles about ethics. It might be worth getting your school or local library to stock a selection. (Disclosure: I myself have published an article in one.) Another idea is to look to literary classics that have ethical themes. If you would like an ethics anthology you might try Peter and Renata Singer's The Moral of the Story (Blackwell 2005). This book is nice because it features short...

I am a teacher. I find myself liking smart and well-behaved kids more than the others, and praising their efforts more. Being attentive, concentrating, imagining and thinking vigorously are all morally good traits, right? But when it comes down to it, those things pretty much just amount to being smart. And it bothers me that I'm just praising kids for being smart, rather than praising kids who can't concentrate and feel bad about it, or kids who aren't smart but would like to be. What should I do? I can't understand the difference between trying to be smart and being smart.

First, I think you should cut yourself some slack. You won’t have the same chemistry with every child or with every class. Sometimes we just do like some people more than others. Your concern seems to be that the children you enjoy are the ones who are “smart.” Presumably, their academic brightness and good behavior are not praiseworthy any more than the slowness and poor behavior of their fellows are blameworthy: they are, after all, are just children. First, I would separate being smart from being well behaved. There is a case to be made for praising good behavior in that it positively reinforces and sets examples for others. Are the poorly behaved children, who perhaps are driven by uncontrollable, chemical compulsions to act out, being treated unfairly when you praise the attentive, calm listeners? I don’t think so. The trick for you will be to ‘catch’ the usually squirming, boisterous children doing something - anything - right and praise them lavishly. (“Johnny, you’ve sat at your desk for...

I would like to know if any panelists can tell me about good programs of study for Continental philosophy in the United States - particularly taught from a Continental perspective. It has been written by Brian Leiter that "all the Ivy League universities, all the leading state research universities, all the University of California campuses, most of the top liberal arts colleges, most of the flagship campuses of the second-tier state research universities boast philosophy departments that overwhelmingly self-identify as 'analytic'" and John Searle commented "without exception, the best philosophy departments in the United States are dominated by analytic philosophy, and among the leading philosophers in the United States, all but a tiny handful would be classified as analytic philosophers." The more respondents, the merrier.

Since you have checked out the Leiter page you must have seen the Continental rankings there. My understanding is that his report has been expanded in the past few years to include Continental philosophy, feminist theory, applied ethics and other approaches that are not 'analytic,' so that is a step in the right direction. I do disagree with the assessment that there are few good departments doing Continental philosophy, however. I would recommend SUNY Stony Brook - I think it is the best, no matter what the rankings say, because most of the graduate students I have met from there have jobs and seemed to enjoy their grad school experiences. I believe that program has an active exchange with a German university. DePaul University also has a very good program, though I happen to know less about it. You might want to check out this list on the web, it's a couple of years old but should still be helpful: http://www.earlham.edu/~phil/gradsch.htm Good luck!

If you were to build an introductory philosophy course for community college kids, would you choose to focus more on the philosophers and their theories or would you focus more on philosophical questions (what is being, is there a god, is there a soul). Which do you think would be more effective for struggling or non-traditional learners?

In my experience, a good way to start an introductory course in philosophy is by topics - beginning with ethics, politics, or social philosophy. Most students will not be jazzed about epistemology, for example, from the get-go because the questions asked in that discipline will be unfamiliar. But most everyone will have some background knowledge and life-experience of ethics, say. If it is a class of returning/older students, you can use this life-experience to your benefit in the classroom by asking students to write about an ethical dilemma they personally had to resolve. As the course unfolds, have the students rewrite the papers to incorporate 'What Plato would have said' or 'What Martin Luther King would have done,' and so on. Having gained some confidence that they, too, can be philosophers students will be ready to move on to related topics. (To keep with the above examples, how we should treat others is integrally related to what we know.) I also would...