The original words are there because translation is an exceptionally tricky business, and it's often important, from a scholarly point of view, to know what the original words were, so that one can judge the correctness of a translation, or note that two words that are cognates in English are also (or are not) cognates in the original. This is more common, I think, in classical philosophy, though you certainly will see it in any sort of historical study of sources originally in another language. But if so, then that is only because classical Greek is an old language. It's not because Greek is particularly difficult.

It's a perhaps unfortunate fact of academic life that credentials (degree, university affiliation) are very important to being taken seriously. Although it's not a hard-and-fast necessary condition (i.e., it's not impossible to be taken seriously without them, as would be if it were hard-and-fast necessary condition), and it sure isn't a sufficient condition, either (i.e., not everyone with credentials is automatically taken seriously).

I'd suggest joining an online community devoted to philosohical discussion, such as the AskPhilosophers Group linked on the left menu bar. I imagine there are also online philosophy courses you can take, or at least follow (MIT has been doing some wonderful work in this area). The internet is a virtually limitless resource; I can't even remember how we did intellectual work without it.

Good luck!

I'll be interested in seeing what other answers you get to this question. Phil grad programs vary widely in reputation, as well as in both entrance and graduation requirements. There's also variation in the quality of work that gets published, as well as the amount and venue of publication that will count, in the eyes of colleagues and potential employers, as a "significant contribution to the field." I consider myself a constructive contributor every time I answer a question on this site or help a previously befuddled undergrad distinguish between a sound argument and a fallacious one...though the American Philosophical Association would probably be inclined to disagree.

For insight into programs and their respective requirements, see University of Texas professor Brian Leiter's Philosophical Gourmet Report, especially the links on Graduate Study. For insight into the process of getting through graduate school and into a philosophy professorship, see A Philosophy Job Market Blog, with particular attention to the comments.

If you and I were having this conversation one-to-one over a cup of coffee, I'd say: I felt I earned my degree when I got it, twelve years after starting graduate study. As for my university position, I gladly acknowledge it was more a matter of luck than earning, though I do feel I earn it with every student paper I grade. (You can find insight into these answers on my own blog, The Philosopher-Mom, although it will require some searching and a sense of humor.)

In the end, I'd say, don't do it unless you love philosophy. Period.

Nearly all the unbearable suffering in this world occurs among the poorer half of humankind which, collectively, accounts for about 2.4 percent of global consumption and 1.1 percent of global wealth. Are doctors lining up to relieve this suffering? Actually, the opposite is the case. Many physicians trained at great expense in poor countries are lured away to rich countries after their training is completed, sometimes by very active recruitment efforts. So, if you became a doctor to relieve this unbearable suffering, you would be one of a tiny number of doctors, each of whom is -- as best as he or she can --replacing hundreds of doctors migrating in the opposite direction. Check out Partners in Health (PIH) for some more information.

If you do not become a doctor, the person taking your place in medical school is very likely to choose what indeed is a replacable job: caring for affluent patients in an affluent country. How many GP's in this country don't even open their practice to Medicaid and Medicare patients?

As for bankers, most money they give to charity goes to affluent domestic religious communities, universities, opera houses, museums, and the like. So there, too, you can make a contribution to relieving unbearable suffering that, but for you, would not be made.

When Kant was asked why he never married, he said that when he had the inclination, he lacked the means, and when he acquired the means, he no longer had the inclination.

You're not the first one to observe a negative correlation between being an eminent philosopher and being married! If there's an explanation for this, I suppose my armchair sociology would lead me to expect it has to do with the fact that philosophy is both fascinating and challenging, and has a way of making its practitioners obsessive. In this way, it's perhaps a bit like mathematics. Both are topics that it's quite hard to just forget when you leave the office or study. As a result, it might not be so much that the idea of a spouse leaves one cold, but that one doesn't have the energy to pay attention to a spouse after wrestling with a philosophical problem for days or months.

On the other hand, Berkeleywas married, Locke never married but was involved with Damaris Cudworth, and Mill was married. More recently, Quine and Rawls were married. At any rate, my point is that there are plenty of exceptions to your rule, and many of us who have savored philosophy also find great of appeal in matrimony as well.

This is the effect of a successful political movement, one that sought to replace the use of "he" and "his", as "gender-neutral" pronouns, with the use of something else. The reason was that people thought that the use of "he" and "his", at least in certain contexts, made readers liable to assume that the pronoun referred to a person of the male persuasion, when it need not. One option is to use something that is truly gender-neutral, such as "he or she", but that is rather verbose. Some people therefore use "s/he", but that is ugly. I've taken to using "s'he", but I'm lonely. And there is a case to be made for "she" and "her", unaltered, as well, namely that it makes one conscious of something of which one might not otherwise have been conscious.

I'd like to add a comment to Allen Stairs' excellent answer: it is worth distinguishing between philosophers who write about 'angst', and the experience of angst. In existentialism, for example, the experience of anxiety is often considered to be philosophically interesting (the fact that anxiety is experienced shows something, or even that anxiety itself is a form of showing) but not yet philosophy. Moreover, the philosopher (like everyone else) must spend most of the time in a state of everydayness, false consciousness or whatever, enjoying a Gauloise and an espresso in a cafe in the sun -- or if gloomy, for perfectly ordinary reasons.

I'll have to admit that most of the Sturm und Drang in my life hasn't got a lot to do with what I think about professionally. Questions like "do quantum states support measurement counteractuals?" or "does indeterminism serve any real function in Professor X's account of libertarian free will?" or "is there an acceptable notion of objective probability that explains how probabilities can be action-guiding?" aren't exactly the stuff from which high monthly psychoanalysts' bills are made. All of those questions are very interesting (No. Really!) but they aren't high on the angstometer. And I have a feeling that if you thumbed through the typical philosophy journal, you'd find much the same for much of what you saw.

This isn't a criticism of my chosen profession and first intellectual love. Many of the questions that philosophers wrestle with are deeply fascinating if you have the taste for them, but they often abstract, often not very closely connected with the things in the world that really worry us and are closer to doing science than to the goings-on in novels by Jean-Paul Sartre.

That's not to say that philosophy never deals with disturbing subject matter. It does. So does medicine. So does psychology. So does political science. Or, for that matter, so does Ordinary Life 101. Philosophers aren't even close to having a special fix on the sources of existential anxiety, and the image of the philosopher as a Gauloise-smoking melancholic staring into the nihilistic abyss doesn't fit most of my professional acquaintances very well. (We do tend to wear black berets, though...)

As for boredom with the non-philosophical, most of the philosophers I know have very broad interests; they're curious about all kinds of things. In fact, my guess is that philosophers have the personality factor that psychologists call "openness to experience" to a higher degree than people in many other academic professions. The world is a fascinating place that's sometimes distresssing and sometimes delightful, but often for reasons that have no special connection with philosophy.

There are of course the usual things anyone ought to consider before applying to graduate school in philosophy -- you need to love philosophy and you need to understand that good jobs (at research universities or top liberal arts programs) are scarce and require that you go to a very strong graduate program and do first-rate work. These and other qualifications and advice are discussed at Brian Leiter's Philosophical Gourmet Report (http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com). But I don't think that being a somewhat older student, of the sort you describe, by itself puts you at any significant disadvantage in getting into a good graduate program or getting a good job. I don't have statistics on thes issues, but I have certainly encountered very talented applicants to graduate school or for tenure-track jobs that took some time out somewhere between high school and graduate school. Someone who took time off between college and graduate school might be at a disadvantage in applying to graduate school, because programs would worry about whether they were prepared for graduate school, but that is not the situation you describe. Also, I can imagine that prospective graduate students in their 30s might be under special pressures in graduate school if they have or were planning to have a family. These pressures confront some in graduate school anyway and confront many others early in their careers, but, all else being equal, they are likely to arise earlier for students that start later. You may not have such plans, and in any case many graduate students and junior faculty members contend with such pressures successfully. I can't think of other issues to discuss. My sense is that the important issues for you are the general ones about your philosophical interests, ambitions, and talents and that age, by itself, should not significantly affect your decision. By all means, discuss this with your advisors in the philosophy department at your undergraduate institution.