Can i ask a question to some of you philosophy majors?:

that's kind of what i was thinking, but something you'll probably get a lot of flack for saying. i appreciate your post.

i have a really far right father (not that i'm a liberal) and he essentially spouts out that if i were to go to school for anything other than something like finance or electrical engineering then my degree is worthless, so it's good to read someone who has experienced otherwise.

i was particularly interested in being able to think 'better,' as broad as that may sound, and in learning to read deeper as well. additionally, i'm also unsure of what i want to do (except for having a real interest in philosophy and the fruits it would bear from studying it seriously), and would most likely study something different in postgrad.

once again, thanks for the serious comment without the attempt to push any agenda.

I am. Im coupling it with a math major because I go to a cheap school and can take the extra time. Most of my day is watching lectures on youtube, doing math hw, occasionally doing philosophy hw, doing self study philosophy reading, browsing lit, being sad that I dont have time to read fiction even though I do, trying to strategize ways to stop wasting time, watching movies occasionally, thinking about learning how to paint, thinking about things I want to read, and being pissed off at many things. Sometimes writing fiction but mostly thinking about writing fiction.

fuck off gweilo

...

Good post

seems pretty stupid to pay thousands of dollars to have people to discuss philosophy with

I only did general arts (no minor), but one of my concentrations was in philosophy. In my experience, the only real advantage philosophy students have is motivation to actually read the works.

Major-wise, unless you plan to go into academia or you have an exit ramp into something else planned (like law school), you probably shouldn't study philosophy. You can take philosophy classes as a double major or minor with no problems. If you're heading to the job market, you probably want to do something that helps you out there.

Maybe I'm wrong, I dunno. I'm in the perpetual childhood that is grad school, so I've never had to actually think about the viability of my undergrad degree other than as a springboard for grad school. But you don't become a "Philosopher" because you have an undergraduate degree in Philosophy or anything. You're just another fucking guy with a BA. BAs don't publish or do scholarly work, and most are retarded and barely know anything about the thing they supposedly spent 4+ years studying because of the state of academia.

TLDR: Don't glamorize an undergraduate degree in general. But especially don't glamorize "soft" BAs that a lot of people have, like English or History or Philosophy. These days they are becoming high school diplomas for the middle and upper middle classes and not much more. For most rich kids it's just a four-year extended high school vacation where they get to kinda-sorta learn about a very vaguely defined field, and then forget most if it and work in middle management or "consulting."

If you want to study philosophy seriously, like as a lifelong vocation type deal, you mostly want to go to grad school, which is a many-edged sword. For the right person it's basically heaven and a license to get paid to do your hobby forever. But for most people it's probably a bad choice, and even for most people currently in grad school it was probably a bad choice.

A lot of things are great about it, like essentially being paid to study what you love, and (crucially) being forced to study it to the excruciating depth necessary to eventually be able to say something interesting and actually qualify as an original scholar. That's the real benefit of serious study. While you COULD "just read the books," 99.999999% of people who make that commitment will never follow through with it, or they will follow through with it as best they are able, but never go anywhere because they realize that they are still shit and amateurish, because they have no feedback from competitive fellow students and mentors and institutions that say to them "your best effort makes you a Level 3 Philosophy Guy, congratulations! Only 82 levels to go until you're worth a damn!" People who just read the stuff on their own time have no way of gauging how many levels there are or approaching them efficiently.

But it's also bad. It's 95% filled with people who shouldn't be in it. Mediocre people who can talk the talk but who will never make it to the big leagues, clogging up every step of the way. The job market objectively sucks. You have to be brilliant AND insanely dedicated to make it to the finish line and still want to work in academia. There just aren't enough positions, and the situation is getting worse every year because no one is retiring. It has a lot of buyer's remorse and good-money-after-bad, because if you spent 11 years in grad school even though you stopped caring about it in year 3, you tend to stick around and try to do something with it. Whether that be treating it like a shitty dayjob until you're 40, or just clogging up the job market and driving down employer demand even though you're mostly passionless.

Institutionally, it can be a huge mess that tries to choke the joy out of the whole thing. Because it's filled with so many duds, the whole system has gradually been transformed into a daycare center for unambitious intellectual vacationers. Most grad students are dilettantes or frankly incompetent in the majority of their field, but they memorize the lingo and they can convincingly look busy, and they have some little sub-sub-specialty that they force themselves to memorize by rote, so they stick around. The result is that the whole system assumes that the general level of discourse will be dilettantish, that classes shouldn't be intense intellectual battlegrounds but "general interest" chitchat between boring rich kids putting on a show of well-informedness, throwing jargon around, but not much depth.

This mentality seeps into every point of contact between you and the administration and academic atmosphere. It's sort of like being the only athletic person to show up on the nature trail, while everyone else is a fat lazy fuck. You thought you were going to be relatively free to hike on your own, see the sights you want to see, do some real exploration, have some alone time with nature, but the tour guides force you onto slow, tedious treadmills with fixed paths for lazy fatasses. It really does feel like a daycare center for the upper class at times.

But if you're passionate, and brilliant or talented, it's still free money (if you get scholarships) to research what interests you for a living. You can basically be an ivory tower dickhead and have a pretty chill life, if you are good at what you do and you know how to get what you want from the system.

Have a BA in English and Philosophy

feel nearly every day that I fucked up my life irreparably

and that's mostly the MDD, but still. Yeah. Probably don't do it.

What do you Do with a B.A. in English?

youtube.com/watch?v=CK6ksA0QyE4

I have yet to meet an autodidact of philosophy who knows anything even approaching someone with just a BA. Philosophy is really, really rigorous and just reading by itself is not going to get you very far. Professors shut down retarded ideas and save you time and help guide you into what you what to do far more efficiently than you could ever do by yourself. But really the most important part of doing it at uni is that a) you are forced to write essays on what you read, thus showing a good, nuanced understanding which is open to criticism by your peers and professor and b) rigorous debate with fellow students. These last two are so important. I have seen many people create grand theories only for someone to poke a hole in one of the first steps in their reasons and everything falls apart. Your mind by itself is an echo chamber. It's one thing to say you understand X, but to have to prove that to someone who is also famlialr with X but understands it differently is something else entirely.

tl/dr maybe only half of philosophy is reading, the rest is engaged with being part of a philosophical community.

i know that feel

nice post.

As a biochemistry and math major from a top ten (US) I feel similar.

>it's perhaps our means of production that give us so little hope.

Make that 1.

I don't usually browse Veeky Forums but this thread makes me want to. Well written and reasoned posts, no automatic harassment and so no one has called anyone a cuck.

I met a philosophy major once. He said it wasn't hard. Also he believed in chemtrails. Also this party was actually an autism social.
No, I'm not meming, this actually happened to me earlier this year.

Could depend on location, but in my country people who don't want to study but want a university degree often choose philosophy as it's "easy". This is how you end up with a lecture hall half full of autists until they drop out. We don't have "gender studies" and "african-american studies" and shit like that, plus sociology requires actual studying, so the spoiled kids with no thirst for knowledge study communication, philosophy or literature. They usually get rekt by the profs and drop the fuck out. Unless they study communication ofc., that's basically a guaranteed degree.

Same with language and lit. studies in better places.

>I outargue every normie that takes issue with it [even though they are right]

>he studied the sophists

>high school diplomas for the middle and upper middle classes and not much more
I don't think people understand this is the vast majority of degrees, the specialization never helps you get jobs except for specific types of degrees in specific job markets.

You carry a diplomat's papers and things around?

they dont do shit.
i went to law school.
thats the only way you dont become useless.
helps with the LSAT
>

OP, don't listen to these 2 nerds ( & ). They clearly are autistic for philosophy and care a lot about academia bullshit.

If you "never thought about going to college," there is a 100% chance that you are an idiot and not like those 2 other guys at all. For you, attending college for philosophy is going to majorly torpedo your finances for 2 decades after you've realized two years into it that reading about some guy's bullshit thoughts just trying to make sense of what he's ~really saying, man~ is not what you want to spend 5+ hours a day doing for the rest of your life.

Immanuel J, is that you?

>in a superficial Debordian image-based spectacle.
Jesus, try to frase it without seeming this desperate to stick a reference in your point. Citing Debord in that contest adds nothing and is completely irrelevant and comes off as amateurish

The problem is that being a poor person in a poor country, I have no choice.

I recommend you turn back now, remember us fondly like a dissolving dream.

This desu

They mostly whine on Reddit about how nobody told them how few Academic jobs their really are.

nah lol just get a stem degree you'll walk into any job

i never thought about going to college because i had no money, now i have scholarships and study 12 hours a day.

fuck that, the academic job market is tight enough as it is