What Do You Do With a Philosophy Degree
[ enjoy this aural backdrop for your reading pleasure. or not. ]
Seriously. What the hell do you DO with a philosophy degree!? I love philosophy. And some days I dream about going back to school and majoring in some random subject that has absolutely no pertinence to my “field” (as if my funemployed ass has a field… but if it did it would be arts/design) like Anthropology! Or Philosophy! Or maybe even Psychology! Something holds me back, though. For one thing, student loans are a big pain in my ass and I don’t want to go through that again. Something’s gotta be REALLY good to sacrifice my time and money (debt) on and there’s this thing in the West called Being Practical that rears its ugly head on my (highly Western) rational mind.
Being Practical
Common Western thought thinks for anything regarding learning to have any value at all, it has to be applicable to your career. Career building! What can you get out of the course, the workshop, the conference? How can this help you as a professional? This is how we get ahead in life, in society, in our social ladder. This is how we build Egos and a sense of self. The whole thing kind of makes me sick because I hate the so-called “rat race” yet here I am, still bound by conventional thinking when I think in “practical” terms and hesitate taking college classes for the sheer notion of being genuinely interested in it, regardless of the fact that it has nothing to do with my “career”.
Despite my resistance to the “status-quo”, I still have constructs built by conventional society! On one hand, being practical is a valid concern when paying for courses which may not pay back, in the long run. The good thing about learning things applicable to your career is that you can consider it an investment in your work/business/etc. that will have practical benefits that should ultimately help you pay back the load. Taking a course or deciding to major in something that may not have monetary value in terms of your career is like having to pay for something recreational, with no guarantee that you’ll be able to pay it back. I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to spend anything over $1,000 for recreation. Just thinking about my Macbook Pro, which technically was supposed to be this career-building Potential(!) but ultimately just an excuse to buy a really good computer, is hard enough.
The practical antidote to this problem is to simply forgo conventional (brick and mortar) education and start hitting the books yourself. Who says classroom lectures, essays and collecting fancy pieces of paper with the seal of approval that you graduated have to be the only way to learn a subject you’re passionate about? As children, we are guided through school and life by teachers, parents, pastors and other authority figures. This is needed in our mental and emotional growth in order to shape us into healthy, contributing citizens, but as adults, we can be our own authority figures. Learning a subject on your own time shows you’re a self-starter, diligent, and passionate about your topic. It’s also a lot easier on your wallet.
What good is a major in philosophy, other than the self-important prestige of knowing you’re technically more educated? College often seems like an Ego’s food for thought; stroking the intellect’s mindgasm. The proverbial pat on the back that no one really cares about except for yourself. That self-centered sense of entitlement to add on your resume. These do nothing compared to life experience.
What the hell do you do with a philosophy major, really? How does that translate into the work field? For something which has no guarantee for job relevancy, you might as well skip academia and do-it-yourself DIY style. Going against convention might mean skipping the university and opting for an alternative.
Existentialism
My alternative came in the form of Eros, or lover. For me, a lot of my philosophy “intro” had to do in large part by a cohabiting relationship. Existentialism was the main course. Through him, I learned all about Sarte and Camus and their friendship and fall. I learned about Sarte’s relationship with Simone de Beauvoir and her groundbreaking book for Feminism, The Second Sex. I learned about Sisyphus and his rock and that life is absurd. I learned that everything is meaningless and that existence comes before essence. Through this modern standpoint, we would offshoot into postmodernism and simulacra. He showed me such films like Waking Life, an animated dream within a dream existentialist trip, and classics that delved into Life and Death like The Seventh Seal. We laughed the loudest in the indie theater while viewing I Heart Huckabees for the first time, and made out to the aural ambiance of Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance. He encouraged me to read Camus’ The Fall, and The Stranger and Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground; some of which have now become my favorite books. I like Existentialism like I like Buddhism. Free-will and master of our own destinies! What a big, but empowering burden to impart. The philosophy works as an “intro”, but for me, that’s as far as it goes.
Hardcore Existentialists, like my boyfriend at the time who believed himself to be Sisyphus, are just too myopic in scale to make me a believer in Existentialism as a proper framework for living my life. For one, the philosophy is modern–a baby in the timeline of human thinking born from a culture of war–that it fails to provide a broader scope of reasoning. To put it in laymen terms, existentialists are annoying, whiny and fucking sticks in the mud! All this talk about Absurdity! Despair! Meaninglessness! Abandonment! It’s enough to make a girl feel incredibly alienated and Alone. Especially when placed with a boyfriend who focused on meaninglessness, detachment and alienation (the desert wanderer). I had had enough and while I am grateful for my philosophical education, shall we say, I’m glad I’ve graduated from that particular school of life. As my friend, and Philo major says regarding Existentialism, “It’s a fun run!”
Indeed.
I’m a thinker by nature, so philosophy is right up my alley. I love critical and creative thinking* and feel that these tools give you the basic life arsenal to live a meaningful life and carve out your own path. As Plato said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
*This was a course I actually did take in college, which was philosophy, particularly Kant (if you want to know Stick in the Mud then fucking go read Kant and then go fuck a cunt; you’ll feel better) and Nietzsche, in disguise. I got an A.
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12 Responses to “What Do You Do With a Philosophy Degree”
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My brother majored in philosophy, and he got good at defending his choice when people asked him about what he was going to do with it (he wasn’t helped by the fact that I was majoring in engineering, a seemingly more useful area). But philosophy teaches you how to think, how to criticize, and how to express arguments clearly, which are obviously useful skills in many areas. My brother would cite the fact that at our school, the philosophy department ranked third highest of all the school’s departments in average salary for recently graduated students (or something like that). So they must have found something to do to start to regain their “investment” in their education.
There are different areas of philosophy to study. It’s certainly possible to learn a lot from simply reading, but while that can give you a lot of knowledge of other people’s ideas, and allow you to form your own ideas, it won’t challenge you in the way that formal education is supposed to challenge you. Like I can come up with an argument about something (metaphysics and epistemology were my favored topics), but I need other minds (whether my professor or TA or classmates) to challenge my arguments in order to really learn and understand the topic.
College degrees aren’t for everyone, but there is something beneficial in interacting with lots of other people–students and professors–during your education. And most colleges require you to take some classes outside your area of specialization, which can be good because it challenges you and makes your education a little more well rounded. I’m certainly glad I had this, because otherwise I never would have learned about metaphysics or epistemology. And getting a college degree is not something that only you yourself care about. Whether it is right or not, there are a LOT of people who don’t care WHAT you majored in, they just care whether or not you graduated from college. It is true that experience will help you more in whatever career you pursue in the real world, but still, there are those people who may dismiss you however unfairly if you never got a college degree.
It is a complicated topic, and you make some interesting points here. A good topic for debate–that is a part of how learning gets done, after all.
Thanks for your well thought out comment! I certainly encourage critical and creative thinking/debate particularly on a blog about philosophy!
You definitely bring up good points about formal education. I’m not against formal education, and I even graduated with a degree as well, but the idea of going back to school for another degree “for fun” just doesn’t seem worth it to me, particularly on one of those degrees like philosophy, which can be so metaphorical and beyond any tangible profession, unless you intend to teach it! Pointing out that real life experience can be more valuable was further emphasized by my example of “Eros”, which in my opinion, was a really fun way of learning. ;D While I probably wouldn’t have learned as much as if I had taken college courses and really delved deep into philosophical text, the concepts and popular culture he exposed me with provided a great backdrop and introduction to existentialism. I loved Dostoevsky and Camus and the movies too!
I probably might find it hard to keep up with you on metaphysics and epistemology without that focus in my educational background. My opinion on philosophy is that its great for critical and creative thinking and absolutely pertinent to the ways we can delve deeper into our meaning or personal purpose in life, but after awhile, the pedantic debate and intellectual talk really turns me off. You can get into loops when discussing philosophy that eventually start to become meaningless and then funny. With my preference over Eastern philosophy and intuition/supra-knowledge vs. knowledge, I prefer to get out of debate and into the metaphysical realm where words just can’t even comprehend; the real wisdom that doesn’t equate with knowledge, but that is an experience indescribable with words.
That being said, there’s always so much more for me to learn and read!
Dear Solitary …
at Canterbury University.
I got a post-graduate Philosophy degree, work at Goldman-Sachs for veeery good money and lecture (Ethics) for less good money
Best regards
Robert
Hi Robert-
Thanks for proving it can be beneficial! It’s probably because I don’t see or want a life of academia that philosophy doesn’t interest me as a degree.. but I LOVE the subject.. as a layperson
Seems you really like Kant.
The part about being “technically more educated” made me laugh. Too true. I love that a diploma says, “Well, you know, I’m technically smarter than I was…”
Classic.
Great post, Flo!
Haha which Kant are you talking about
I don’t need another diploma to know that I’m smart
I don’t like the intellectual types anyway. Too much pretentiousness. I prefer Wisdom, which is beyond just knowledge. (I suppose that could be pretentious too. Shoot.)
On the contrary I after slugging through education in an engineering field felt like I was living a linear life and reducing my options to live daily.
I don’t know about the states but in the UK we finish compulsory education at 16, and get free college age 16-18. After that pay to go to uni for a degree.
I think a lot of this is to get 16 year olds (highly energetic yet not achieved anything in life (including financial savings) and actually have little prospects of getting a decent job) hope for the future, and thus keeps them out of trouble.
I also always ‘felt’ I should be going down a route that only paying out for things that will pay me back was the sensible option. Whether that was a degree, computer, savings/investment, or whatever. The problem is I got to a point where I turned around and asked what the hell am I doing, and by then I’ve lost the energy of a 16 year old, the option to study for free and already picked my career path which is always difficult to break out of into something new. And doing so would render all my choices as a teenager (pick your subject choices and career for life now) pointless. Which is not nearly a big of a realisation that I just spent my first years as a free man working myself into a linear existence difficult to break from. (You know… graduate, job, partner, kids, mortgage, retire, die).
Whilst there is nothing technically wrong with this, and it does work for the mass. I pretty much lost my chance to take advantage of my youth (although money constraints do that as well). I think this is a reason why a lot of people also travel.
We’re also mature enough to know attempting a revolution against the system is pointless so need to think outside the box in what to do with life; as when you look at it, you can blame the system for some things (such as putting reliance on a degree proving a person to be useful at something) but ultimately where we are and go are our own choices – no-one is forcing people to sit in cubicles, it’s just what they think they should be doing, like a sheep being herded.
Which maybe makes a philosophy degree the most useful one at this stage of life
wow, I had no idea about that in the UK.. i like! In the states highschool ends ate 17/18.. then we’re on our own to go to/pay for college, get a job, be a bum, take a gap year… whatever. I sometimes wish I had taken my “gap year” earlier, before, during or right after college.. instead i’m doing it now, i guess, 5 years later and almost into my 30s. It’s ok though. I’m enjoying my life!!
I absolute hate the ‘linear existence’ as if you can’t tell.
I agree with you that a lot of travelers are similar..
You have a good point about the philosophy degree being very useful at this/our stage of life. I’m always questioning, trying to give my life meaning. Revolutions won’t work, it’s just those minor adjustments with yourself to live a better life that gives you the kind of world YOU want to live in. That’s another reason why I decided to go vegetarian. It’s a kind of quiet revolution.
Great thoughts – thanks for your input!!
Unfortunately, you can say “what do you do with (insert any degree here)” these days, though I can see how philosophy would be a tough one.
We’re always told to major in something we love, something we truly enjoy and will be happy with. So we do. Then we dive into the real world and realize that those pieces of paper mean nothing toward a financially stable future.
I’m struggling with so much of this myself right now.
First: You are made of pure awesome because you are one of less than 10 people I know who know what Kooyanisquatsi even is. Kudos!
Next: I’ve taken philosophy courses with an open mind, and I think what it did was destroy my sense of opinion and conviction. I don’t think this is a bad thing — it’s now extremely easy for me to bend my sense of reason and logic to empathize with others’ points of view and it makes discussions more interesting because as it turns out, being able to think in the same lines as other people lets you really explore the world through a different set of eyes — and it makes playing the devil’s advocate to their arguments all the more purposeful.
But in the end, it’s personally fulfilling rather than focused on Westernized “success” (whatever that is). So I suppose the answer to “What do you do with a philosophy degree” would be… er, whatever you want, I suppose.
awesome! YES! and I’ve seen the other 2 of the series as well. I loved the films!
I guess philosophy courses could be likened to musicians taking music theory class and ‘ruining’ music for them, in regards to your ocmment. I like that about philosophy and religious studies.. Being able to understand other people and the ways they perceive things. I think it’s an important skill to have when trying to make connections!
I don’t care for westernized “success”, so philosophy suits me just fine.
I had a degree in Philosophy, so the title was a click trigger. (The title, by the way, reminded me of a song from Avenue Q.)
When I was in college, I had the belief that education should be seen as an end in itself. I still have that belief.
True, I had some difficulty finding a job that needed my degree, but that didn’t take away the value of my education. And from where I am at, looking for (and consequently, finding) a job patterned after your degree is unlikely.
I believe it’s not really about what you took in college, but what you do with it that matters.
I thoroughly enjoyed this post. Thanks for writing it.