I wonder what is meant in the question by talking of philosophy as a self-perpetuating field? In what sense is philosophy supposed to be "self-perpetuating" while biology isn't?

Perhaps the idea is supposed to be that philosophy is self-perpetuating because, unlike biology, it just goes round in circles for ever and never settles anything. If that is the implicit claim, then I think it should be resisted vigorously. It would be just absurd to deny that we now know a vast deal more about issues about language, meaning and reference than we did before the time of (say) Frege; it would absurd to deny that we now know a vast deal more about the nature of the mind than we did before the time of (say) William James. Again, think about the philosophy of space and time: it would crazy to suggest that we are stuck where Newton was. And so it goes, through area after area. Of course, "settling a question" in philosophy isn't exactly like settling a question in biology (though that too, as the philosophers of science remind us, can be a more complex business than we might suspect). Often, what becomes clear are the costs and benefits of accepting this or rejecting that, sometimes questions dissolve on careful enquiry, or other questions shift as our related scientific knowledge advances, and so on. But the fact that progress in serious analytical philosophy is a complex business certainly doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

And I'd perhaps rather resist too Gloria Origgi's talk about the "good old philosophical questions", for that way of talking too readily suggests that the problems don't shift very significantly over time.

Still, even if philosophy isn't "self-perpetuating" in the bad sense of just going fruitlessly round in circles, you might say that it is still "impractical." Well, thinking about the kind of foundational issues in the sciences that continue to feed into the most lively areas of philosophy (the philosophy of biology for one!) may not give immediate "practical" pay-offs. But it would again be absurd to deny that foundational enquiries have often fed back in the end into the growth of knowledge of the most practical kind. Just think, for example, how Turing's work thinking about the very notion of a computation led to modern computer science.

There were times in which philosophy was considered as the highest form of education, a sort of "meta-knowledge" you acquire that enables you to reason about any other corpus of knowledge. In France it is still considered as such, although what French call "philosophy" is a wierd mixture of erudition, rhetoric capacities and "esprit" in conversation. I think that this still holds, and that studying philosophy enables you to acquire a skillful mind: not only a faster one (as in the case of studying very formal disciplines, like mathematics), but also a more reflective one.

And I do not see the "impracticality" associated with it, apart from the fact that it makes it harder to get a job (I remember a cartoon in my department in which you could see the scene of an interview of a candidate for a job and the cadidate saying: "It is true that I have a doctorate in philosophy, but I'm willing to learn"). There's something "practical" in being mindful, and the landscape of knowledge changes so fast that it is not bad to stick to good old philosophical questions, whose survival is assured in any future possible cultural or scientific transformed scenario.

I wonder whether there is no question that tires philosophers more than this one -- if it's not "What's your philosophy?" or "If a tree falls in a forest ...". The assumption made in the question, that "there is an impracticality" to philosophy, is false. It's not the common perception of employers or graduate schools, and it's not the case. A recent article in The New York Times spoke to this. The article was unfortunate, in my view, because a reader might think that the main reason students do, or should, study philosophy is instrumental: it sharpens various skills which will be of value throughout one's life, regardless of its particular shape. That might be true for the occasional student but in general skill-sharpening is not a strong enough motivator to keep curious people studying a subject. The real reason is that issues in philosophy are central to our lives as thinking creatures, and the specific form these issues take in the questions, answers, and arguments of the great philosophers are fascinating, resonant, mind-expanding, and beautiful.

Studying philosophy can indeed encourage the development of synthetical skill as much as analytical skill. Very often philosophers will apply a concept or way of thinking common in one area to another, just to see what will happen. A historical example might be Thomas Aquinas applying Aristotelian metaphysics to Christian theology.

It seems plausible that intellectual creativity and certain aesthetic creativities (visual or tactile, for example) would not be interchangeable; people are generally more comfortable in some media than others. But if one's media is thought, ideas and propositions, it can probably be transferred across disciplines (from philosophy to, say, literature or geology). It also seems plausible that intellectual creativity is a talent that people possess in varying degrees, though it can be cultivated, just like any other.

How do the really good philosophers come up with their ideas? Wish I knew; then maybe I could be a really good philosopher, too :) In most cases, I suspect they come up with them gradually, rather than in a flash of insight, by trial and error with plenty of feedback from other philosophers.

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 advocate for using the original texts whenever possible. I like the reader Voices of Wisdom by Gary Kessler because it is so inclusive – the readings are classic and recent, East and West, Anglo and Continental. The readings are arranged by topic with good editorial prefaces.

To understand "the philosophers and their theories" you have to understand what philosophical questions were bugging them -- and understand the arguments they give for their theories (since the theories are worth no more than the arguments that support them).

So it's not a really an issue of where to start, philosophers vs. questions. It's more an issue of whose list of questions to start with. An agenda set by some of the great dead philosophers? Or an agenda set by a class of students? Or perhaps somewhere in between -- an agenda set by the author of a good introductory book (like Simon Blackburn's Think) which raises questions that look likely to have immediate "relevance" to the students, but which relates some of the responses and arguments to those of the great dead philosophers?

In general I'd go for the third option. I certainly wouldn't go for the first.

I don't know anything about Anglophone philosophy programs in Vietnam, but I would guess that if the websites don't have English translations, the program isn't an Anglophone program. If you are interested in translations, one way to find a translator is to advertise on Craig's List. There are Craig's Lists in many major US cities.
http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites.html

Well, Jake, it is flattering that you put the philosophers on this site on the same level as the famous philosophers of the past! But I don't think we quite deserve that. And maybe, indeed, what separates us from those all-time greats is some quality of mind that we're never going to acquire, however hard we work -- something innate, if you like.

But let's not worry about trying to emulate the great: let's take your question to be one about how to get modestly competent at philosophy (like your average philosophy professor here). The short answer is: by reading, and thinking, and discussing. A lot. It is no good reading without thinking hard about what you are reading, trying your best to understand and critically evaluate the arguments as you go. It is no good just thinking without reading, or you will almost inevitably just re-invent various tempting views that are now well known to be horribly problematic: you need all the help you can get to avoid the pitfalls. And even if you read and think and read and think, it won't be much fun if you never get round to discussing the problems that bug you with others (either face-to-face or over the internet), and you'll learn a great deal that way too.

And what to read, to start you off? Well that depends what you are interested in. But my advice would be to steer very well away from the great philosophers of the past for a few years (most of whom are very difficult to get your head round, in part because the passage of time -- thousands of years in the case of the Greeks -- makes it very difficult to see "where they are coming from"). There are nowadays lots of wonderful introductory books which are accessible without distorting the subject -- for example, Simon Blackburn's Think. Start with books like that. Follow up their suggestions. Look around at university philosophy department websites too, which often have lists of other books suggested for beginners. See what excites you. Here's a list I put together a few years ago that needs updating but might still be useful.

Good luck!

There are indeed philosophers making strong arguments in favor of introducing philosophy to young children. See Michael Pritchard's article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for some examples. Gareth Matthews has been working for a long time in an area he calls "the philosophy of childhood." As a philosopher and mother of nine, I can think of many, many instances in which a philosophical precept has helped my children understand a difficult idea or make a tough decision. (Of course, I can think of many more in which their eyes glazed over as they mumbled some remark about their friends' "normal" moms...)

Your experience may be more reflective of philosophy in Germany than of philosophy more generally. There are at least three relevant factors. German students specialize early while students in the US, say, take a broad range of courses in diverse fields during their undergraduate studies. In particular, they take broad (often mandatory) Western civilization courses that focus on philosophical materials that (i) integrate well with non-philosophical materials produced at or around the same time and (ii) are attractive and helpful to students through their relevance to present society. This relates to the second point, that universities in the US tend to reward (often quite directly) teachers and departments for attracting students; and it's rather easier to attract undergraduates to feminist themes than to, say, the philosophy of language. All this in turn reinforces the third point that German academic philosophy tends to be a bit narrow and conservative.

While feminism certainly has a presence in US universities, it tends to be segregated. We have women's studies departments, for instance, and the occasional philosophy course on feminism. Yet gender issues are still not well integrated into courses on moral and political philosophy, professional ethics, and the like. And likewise for philosophical publications. There are some very good feminist writings, but virtually all the major books on moral and political philosophy, professional ethics, and the like ignore the very interesting issues raised by the systematically differential life chances women and men have in virtually all existing societies.

For an accessible discussion of who else has written on this topic, I would recommend Susan Okin's books Women in Western Political Thought and Justice, Gender, and the Family. The former deals with some older, the latter with some more recent treatments of the subject (both feminist and anti-feminist). You can probably also find out a great deal through the internet. One easy way to start is with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-topics/ with various subentries). But I also found a lot of interesting stuff through a google search for (jointly) feminism and philosophy.