Is majoring in philosophy retarded? Genuine question. I'm going to graduate in philosophy this year...

Studying philosophy mainly helps you understand purely philosophical concepts; i.e. what you described. It's a major that talks purely about itself, but doesn't provide any answers or catharsis at the end. Frankly I think it's pure academic decadence, there's a whole complex world out there to experience, and you'll learn more about yourself from participating in it than philosophy could teach you.

Depends on the country, but in Europe where millenials can't even write a single sentence without a dozen mistakes, people will assume that someone with a philosophy degree is able to read, write, speak, understand people, reply accordingly. That's actually quite a lot of things. All the new shit jobs are wide open. "Human ressources" as you said, but also everything that has to do with "communication", maketing, advertising, management (unless you're socially disabled) etc.

Not OP, but I majored in stem and dropped out
Then I started philosophy.

This won't end well

By the way OP, what did you study ? a little bit of everything ? mainly continental classics ? Greeks, Descartes, Kant-Hegel ? Analytic stuff ? I find it weird that you haven't found something that suits you. What you say about philosophy - it's as if someone said, "holy shit, I've read several books and they sucked, reading is definitely pointless". I'm not criticizing, just find it surprising.

Nigga do what you want, its your life

Read his post again.
It's obvious his problem isn't just that he read the "wrong" material.

I am also majoring in philosophy.
It wasn't what I expected and I feel like many philosophers are living in an ivory tower. I feel like present philosophy (at least here in Germany) isn't trying to reach the people aside from the academic field. There is a huge lack of concrete political input from the philosophers here. I am not from America and I don't know if your philosophers were taking sides for or against Trump or engaging in other political issues.
I was really disappointed how there was no philosophic input in Germany about the refugee crisis. Sloterdijk condemned Merkel for letting them in, but that was it. No categorical imperative, utilitarian values or anything else. The academic philosophers here remain silent in every occasion like nothing outside of the university can bother them.

Studying philosophy had so much more questions than answers but I am glad that I was able to have some insights in philosophical issues and the thoughts about them.
And in addition I think it helped me with my suicidical thoughts. I still think about death often but it has lost its amenity.
I do think it's wasted time if you think your studies have to qualify you for a specific job. But that should be obvious.
If you study it because of your own personal interest it might be retarded depending on your personal situation. But it's not a waste of time to educate yourself about your interests.

That's what I hoped to be the case. Mainly continental classics, some analytical classics too, but very few pragmatists (only Karl-Otto Apel). I've read a lot of existentialists, I know Cioran, Camus, Heidegger and Schopenhauer very well. I loathe idealism. Hegel, Fichte etc., I don't find any interest in their gobbledygook.
Oh and I'm in philosophy of science, which is rather interesting but very limited by the scientists themselves.

Well it seems obvious to me that it is.

>logorrhea from so-called specialists about insignificant garbage, completely unintuitional and with no link to the real world
That doesn't fit much more than 50% of all philosophers.

Ahah, someone in my class did 3 years of engineering before dropping out and coming to philosophy. It's his third year now. He's thinking to quit too, as his ambition doesn't fit well with current continental philosophy.

Don't you get it, my friend?
Philosophers have fallen out of favor. This is not the century for anything but the study of technology and its applications.
Who do you think is out there to listen? Look at the state of journalism if you want to figure how much opinion pieces matter.

Not that user, but management consultancies etc hire humanities grads and don't really care what field the degree is in.

Philosophy is a hobby
You should only major in a hobby if you already are set for life

It helps you in your suicidal thoughts? It's the complete inverse for me. Cioran, why did I began to read you?
I'd love that it'd be true. Please give me contemporary philosophers that fits the bill. Philosophy has become history of philosophy. "Ivory tower" is a perfect fit.

You should've double majored desu, philosophy and a STEM that would get you a job.

I'm the inverse of OP (i.e. deciding whether to major in philosophy). But his post doesn't discourage me; I fully embrace the idea that academic philosophy resorts to teaching you everything because the myopic-moles (professors) lack the instincts of courage and taste to strike out on the truth. This is just one obvious pleasure to be had.

My only fear is to end up spending a good amount of time on 'analytic' treasures like trolley problems and mathematical hocus pocus.

Yes but isn't that just the nature of any double-edged sword? It is pure decadence (if not deadly) if you don't know what you're doing (like OP and the pessimists) but if you do, it's the greatest advantage. It is the most holistic endeavour of all, undertaken by the greatest minds across all the centuries.

>It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and disturbances--in short, slight attacks of stupidity--pass over the spirit of a people that suffers and WANTS to suffer from national nervous fever and political ambition: for instance, among present-day Germans there is alternately the anti-French folly, the anti-Semitic folly, the anti-Polish folly, the Christian-romantic folly, the Wagnerian folly, the Teutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just look at those poor historians, the Sybels and Treitschkes, and their closely bandaged heads), and whatever else these little obscurations of the German spirit and conscience may be called. May it be forgiven me that I, too, when on a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did not remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one else, began to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern me--the first symptom of political infection.

Nietzsche's books sold poorly, swine.

>I'd love that it'd be true. Please give me contemporary philosophers that fits the bill.
orgyofthewill.net/
>Philosophy has become history of philosophy. "Ivory tower" is a perfect fit.
As it should be. Do you have any idea how much of a tragedy it would be if they let their own instincts (or lack thereof) and zeitgeist trample over the discipline, instead of bowing down to the canon? Just look at any other field's relationship to the canon, and what 'suggestions' they give as alternatives, if they care for it at all.

>contemporary philosophers that fits the bill
Well I'm more into history of philosophy and I find it exciting to just develop and update old systems and see if they match.
However several philosophy comrades, even among teachers, feel the same as you do regarding tradition and classics. They keep reading Harry Frankfurt (seems cool), David Chalmers (doesn't), Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Philippa Foot, Philip Pettit etc. I don't know these ones well but there seems to be interesting stuff among the contemporary thinkers, especially in the field of meta-ethics.

Well, I do think that it won't matter if I end my live. But even someone like Schopenhauer, who was so cureless pessimistic didn't advocate suicide per se.
Someone who says that living means suffering that living and striving is the hell on earth still thinks that suicide isn't the answer.
Same with Camus. Everything is absurd. It doesn't really matter if you are alive or death but if you end your life instead making it less absurd (setting its meaning by yourself) you are just giving in to the absurdy.
Those aren't strong arguments and I didn`t even read Camus by myself yet.
But it feels like a consolation.
I wasn't the only one who feels like nothing has value or nothing really matters. But they didn't end their live, they set meaning into it so they could keep go on. So why shouldn't I?
And the misanthrop Schopenhauer make me feel more empathic for other humans. It sounds paradoxal, but they all are suffering or have been suffering or will suffer, just like me. He said you should call other people "Leidensgefährten", "companions in suffering". This thought makes me hate other people and my life (because I am not the only one suffering) a bit less.

Excuse my typos and bad grammar, etc.

Antony is that you ?

>Ciorans Nihilism
You mean Cioran's indulgent apologetics? Why do so many people--Nietzsche, Camus, Cioran, Lacan, even Homer to some extent--walk right up to the edge and then UH WAIT I FIGURED IT OUT
>Sisyphus is happy you guys
>Poetry is where meaning comes from lol
>Lyricism is the answer
>Real men just decide what meaning is, haha

Rhetoric, everywhere. All the time. I get that rationalists are absurd as well but acting like you've resolved nihilism with poetry and metaphor is laughable. And it's ALWAYS like this

You have to have a great CV, very good GPA and some relevant practice to even be considered in most agencies. Source: am in one of big 3.

True, of course. But there are also a lot of less exalted office jobs out there. The 'no jobs for humanities' thing is a meme.

Well, the reason you're not killing yourself has more to do with will to survive than a rational decision. If my death did not bring sadness to my relatives, I would have ended it all long ago.
Problem being, they have no impact on global public, politics, etc., and they're far from representing 50% of the contemporary philosophers. More like, 1 or 2%. History of philosophy is cancer to me, it has way too big of an influence in the academic fields, especially in europe. They never apply anything to the real world, else they twist it enough so that fits.
I'd love to be nietzschean. The surhuman is yet another delusion, alas.
I love you. Exactly what I think of solutions to nihilism. They just didn't bear the thought and fled in afterworlds instead of killing themselves or falling into complete despair. All those had grave periods of depressions, after all.

I am not sure if someone can go on living just by a rational decision. I could at least not and therefore I am glad that I found the will to survive.

Well, in your case there's no issue. If you rationally decide that life is worth living, it goes along your will to life, survival instinct or whatever we call it. However, in the case your reason says that you'd better kill yourself as life makes you suffer more that it brings you joy, and it's all meaningless in the end anyway, you begin to have serious issues.
If we had a will to die instead of a will to live, it'd be the contrary. We'd have problems if we rationally thought that life is worth it, but our instincts always told us to kill ourselves.

if its what you enjoy, major in it

No.

Don't lump Nietzsche into your scarecrow swamp, nihilist. As for your 'problem', you could have tried reading the man before judging him on this topic:
>One fails to see, although it could hardly be more obvious, that pessimism is not a problem but a symptom, that the name should be replaced by 'nihilism', that the question whether not-to-be is better than to be is itself a disease, a sign of decline, an idiosyncrasy. The nihilistic movement is merely the expression of physiological decadence.

Basically the solution to your problem.. is the -final- one.

>I'd love to be nietzschean. The surhuman is yet another delusion, alas.
WTF are you on about? The 'subhuman' doesn't feature in Nietzsche.

I hope the garbage about nihilism can be dropped now and the thread can die or move onto something better.

cut off some slack, hes German, hes native tounge is not English you dumbo

Meant to say overman, surhumain is in my native tongue. I'd love to walk the path of the overman, but I just think it's yet another delusion, it's just not materialistically possible to do.
You're only citing Nietzsche, decadence etc etc., but in the end it's words, rhetorics, not argumentation. You cannot convince others. Deciding what meaning is is just as absurd as not giving any meaning.
Nietzsche himself woudn't speak about garbage nihilism, however, as he suffered from it himself.

"Nice metaphor, senpai," user grumbled. But to which was he referring?

I love you too, user, for whatever that's worth.

Donc c'est des études de philo en France qui t'ont dégoûté ? Par curiosité, je peux savoir dans quelle fac/ville ?

You fucked up enormously. I'm telling you this as a philosopher.

I can't believe that you read Schopenhauer. He more than anyone tried to warn young minds against polluting themselves with university claptrap.

Independent study is the only way to approach philosophy in the modern era if you want to be serious. You've made the single greatest mistake and it will never be undone.

Start pursuing a career in something worthwhile. It's over for you in philosophy. Don't throw away the rest of your life digging a deeper hole. The one you're in right now is already filling with water.

'Political philosophy' is a contradiction in terms. Stop pushing this malarkey.

Sounds like scholastic philosophy in the 16th-17th century.
If you're an actual genius you may save the entire field all by yourself. If you're not... well, just specialize in something and do only that for the rest of your life.

l was in your shoes a few years ago. Now I look back at my prior self as comparatively happy. Here's how to go even lower-

>work a wagecuck job
>start reading Marx
>tfw no gf

En Belgique, pas en France. Mais c'est pareil, à vrai dire. Il y a juste peut-être le système d'agrégation et d'appartenance à une école de pensée (Badiou, hégélianisme ...) qui est pire là bas.
Well, I don't know any serious philosopher that never had anything to do with uni, at least in the last 100 years. It's the way to go if you want some visibility. And I met incredible people as students here, so I don't really regret my choice, philosophy is a way of living, and living with other philosophers really makes you a better one.
As I said, I lost the taste of everything but knowledge and creation now, so there's no worthwhile career in sight.
Exactly what I'm afraid of. Well more certain than afraid, as it's unevitable.

>surhumain
I'm not good with French but isn't this an outdated translation the same way 'superman'/'superhuman' is for English? Since, I think Kaufmann, 'over' has been preferred over 'super', giving us Overman.

>You're only citing Nietzsche, decadence etc etc., but in the end it's words, rhetorics, not argumentation. You cannot convince others. Deciding what meaning is is just as absurd as not giving any meaning. Nietzsche himself woudn't speak about garbage nihilism, however, as he suffered from it himself.
I think he's clear on this topic. Prior to Human, All Too Human he suffered from it but in Ecce Homo he makes it seem that the only reason he did so was because he lacked mature life experience and fully developed intellect (in terms of age).

I don't think Schopenhauer warned against an university education, just against pursuing your own philosophy academically. The distinction should be quite obvious.

You aren't even putting 'political' in quotes. I'd agree if you meant flavour of the year democratic non-issues. But how do you factor Plato or Machiavelli into your definitions?

A lesson to us all: avoid pessimistic and ressentiment-filled thinkers.

Oh ok. Don't know much about the belgian system or belgian Unis. But Louvain has quite a good reputation.
The funny thing is that, historically speaking, most of the great french philosophers were not part of the academic system. Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau, Sartre or even Alain stayed away from it or were rejected by it. I remember a guy who was into Deleuze, Foucault etc., and who had published several books : he told me it wasn't useful at all to get a position in University, unless you're speaking of Université de Vincennes. There's only some rare and specific universities that will welcome you if you're this or that kind of "philosopher", for most of them value history of philosophy, as you said.

On a side note, I don't really know Schopenhauer, but I read somewhere that he went mad because all the students wanted to attend Hegel's lectures and he didn't get enough interest from them. Had he been French, he wouldn't even had expected to get a position in Uni.

You obviously didn't ask enough questions and cucked out to certain lecturers who gas-lighted you with their incoherent, irrelevant academic drivel.

What is philosophy? It's about wisdom. For certain people, wisdom can be the most dangerous tool you could arm someone with.

If philosophy lead you towards dead-end nihilism, you were likely asking the wrong question.

Also, modern "philosophy" is all bullshit (Except perhaps Nick Land). Real wisdom existed thousands of years ago.

>Is majoring in philosophy retarded?
yeah

>I loathe idealism.
>Oh and I'm in philosophy of science

There's you're problem.

Don't assume the authors you read are 100% correct. Question them and formulate your own philosophy. Do what agrees with such said philosophy.

No, "surhomme" is the outdated translation. "Surhumain" means "after humanity".
I sure hope my intellect will develop as it did with Nietzsche, what can I say. You can't understand his philosophy, you need to live it.
Good to know. As for Schopenhauer, well, something like that. But he hated Hegel way before that incident, as you can see in his "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason".
How exactly?
Well, obviously, woudn't say what I say if it was not the case.

/babby with no life experience or passion.

Philosophy is a good undergrad degree, especially if you actually learned something while you were getting it, but it's basically a waste after that.

As for the nihilism, read the first chapter of Nietzsche's Will to Power and pay close attention when he describes Active and Passive Nihilism. Also realize that you're a bible thumping Christian who threw his bible away. Then fuck off.

Pro tip: treat classes like a job, study philosophy that will actually enrich your life (Greeks, Romans, existentialists) outside of class. Other than some Witty Analytic philosophy didn't interest me at all, and I thought Continental was similarly uninteresting after Derrida, though even there there's a huge drop off after Heidegger.

Camus is baby's first Kierkegaard. Even Camus' use of the word "absurd" comes from Kierkegaard. Try finding a passion and grinding through Fear and Trembling instead of wading through Camus' philosophy-lite. The Rebel is the only thing he made of any value.

I'm currently double majoring in Math and Phil, and I agree with you that most logical philosophy is shit, but I'm doing research in a department for Mathematical Philosophy, and yeah a decent amount of the stuff is ridiculous symbol-shifting crap but I think the majority of the people here try to see through that.
The idea is that using the mathematical methodology the problems can be made more precise and thereby the actual orientation of the questioning can be derived.
I'm a phenomenologist at heart tho so I mostly care about phil of language.
If you think philosophy is useless, definitely not studying it properly. This statement on its own is useless so I'll try to explain. It's about interacting with these systems of thought on all levels of analysis that you can possibly conceive of, seeing the historical progression of these ideas, and from that getting these intuitions about systems of knowledge that are really valuable for interacting and formulating our own ideas about our relation to the world.
As far as the discussion about nihilism goes, I truly doubt that you believe in nothing, because you seem to be pretty convinced of your own misery, which is definitely a conviction, so it seems to me to be a case of "I am miserable and don't want to look to myself for the cause of this misery" (which I'm not saying is something to admonish yourself for, but it is something to be aware of insofar as it makes possible an extrication from that dogma).

What kind of career could I pursue if I choose to major in philosophy? No meme answers please.

>loathe idealism
>philosophy of science

pretty homo of you 2bh

'no serious questions left'
lmao

no wonder you're so despondent--you didn't understand a damn thing!

bump

i have the old school outlook. philosophy majors should, on graduation, head out into the wilderness and just THINK

put on a toga go out there and THINK THINK THINK motherfucker

once you're down, show it to as many people as possible and then debate them until you can't anymore. then go back out into wilderness and repeat.

as for money, if you cared about that you should have majored in something not made up. but you did and so your duty is to now make more shit up.

addendum: if you can't do this, then you're not a philosopher after all and should just use what you learned to succeed in something else. that's what 99.9% of philosophy majors do anyway

Now study existential psychology.

>spent four years studying philosophy and only got up to schopenhauer

lol, pleb

there's only one philosopher worth reading after Schopenhauer you incurable philistine. 20th century philosophy belongs in the garbage heap

>Also, modern "philosophy" is all bullshit (Except perhaps Nick Land).
AHAGAHAHAHAHA

why the wilderness?

Boom, there's one of those thoughts I was talking about. Now take it and run with it.

>head out into the wilderness and just THINK
I believe they tend to call this 'postgraduate research' these days.

I do not agree with you. And you did not get what I was saying. First, I never spoke about philosophy being useless in itself. What's useless is what's currently done in the academia, which is study of abstract systems made up by bright people. It's not at all about intuitions you're getting from them, it's you listen to what they say and that's it. Those systems are just hermetic. It's way more about knowing if a system is coherent than testing the system with a reality-test. That's how I think philosophy should be done, it's Schopenhauer's way.
Second, my misery isn't a conviction. I'd like to not be in this state. I try to get away from it, but I just come with the same conclusion with different reasonings again and again. You're just playing with words and simplifying the situation.
I think I've already said that I do understand my courses. And what I'm saying is based on the state of the field: just look the titles of the philosophy thesis. It's cutting the hairs in four, let's be honest here. We need to think about what's currently happening too, not only make up systems about unanswerable questions.
Seems really interesting, never heard of that. Will check.

Big talk for a brainlet!