MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCT 29--INTERESTING DISCUSSION, AND MR FOISY RESPONDS TO SOME OF THE SUGGESTIONS
Reader Matt Foisy writes seeking suggestions:
I am a high school teacher in Calgary, Canada. I am clearly not a professional philosopher, but I do read quite widely in philosophy, and I even think I can understand most of what I read! I primarily teach history and politics, but am lucky enough to teach a philosophy course (extremely rare in high schools in Canada, as I’m sure it is in the US as well). My philosophy course is part of the IB or international Baccalaureate program, which is a quite widely recognized and rigorous academic program--so much so that most major universities will offer first year credits to students who score well enough on their exams. So basically I think I am teaching what might be the equivalent of a first year undergrad philosophy course.
As I am not part of the academy it is not always the easiest thing for me to find applicable resources or works or whatever for some things that my students must do, and this is the question I have for you.
On most topics that I need to discuss there are no issues, but I am hoping for a little guidance on one topic. The students must write a paper that is basically on the purpose or role of philosophy. Or basically what philosophy is and why we need to be doing it. My students are intelligent and can do this with their own thoughts and ideas quite easily, but they must engage with the academy on questions like this. So their answers to this question must consider and evaluate the work of other philosophers in coming to their answers. I of course think that this is a great thing for them to be doing, but I also find that on this topic I am a little short on resources, and it is not always the easiest for me to find the time to do all of the reading required to find these resources. Plato and Aristotle offer some good answers to these questions, as does Thomas Nagel (in an introduction to philosophy book I think), but unfortunately I don’t have too many other resources for this type of a question.
And as you are one of my main routes into the goings-on of academic philosophy I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to pose this question to you, or perhaps your blog readers.
So if you do have the time, what in your opinion are some intelligent discussions of the purpose, practices and goals of philosophy, from those in the profession?
And just for clarity, I am not looking for the type of thing that Russell does in the problems of philosophy, where one is introducing and explaining particular problems, but instead kind of a meta view of what philosophy is.
I hope that this makes sense, and i would really love to hear what you have to say about this.
As with anything I’m sure, it’s not the easiest to crack into high level academic philosophy from the outside, but it is obviously rewarding, and I would imagine that you, like me, might be glad to hear that many young people find it interesting, and of the utmost importance to their lives.
Comments are open. Do try to say something about any readings you suggest--and if they are available online, please include a URL too (you don't need to format them, just copy and paste the URL).
