Philosopher majors of Veeky Forums, how is/was it? I'm strongly considering majoring in it in college

Philosopher majors of Veeky Forums, how is/was it? I'm strongly considering majoring in it in college.

>The academic discipline & an undergraduate degree in it
Bad for various reasons

>Philosophy itself
Good if you're cut out for it

>Getting a degree in it and tolerating the state of the discipline
Possibly OK, if you can ride the tiger

Currently philosophy is similar to Nietzsche's characterisation of academia as a harem guarded by eunuchs (scholars), i.e., forever guarding and tending and watching over what you can't really touch, and what would be useless to you even if you could touch it.

North American and ESPECIALLY British philosophy departments are nightmare hellscapes of piss-poor analytic philosophy, laggards to assimilate continental philosophy and join it with a childishly unsophisticated neo-pragmatism, which, even if you happen to like it for some reason, still won't give you enough interaction with continental thought in a holistic manner.

Anglosphere philosophy departments are split 50/50 between, on the one hand, a bunch of hidebound logic-chopping analytics tending their walled gardens, as a volcano erupts in the distance that will soon annihilate them and everything they ever worked for, and on the other hand, the aforementioned neo-pragmatists who have managed to smuggle in some more dynamic continental thinkers by immersing them in the more fluid medium provided by pragmatist considerations for flexibility and kinda-sorta-discursivity.

But it's much better to study the pragmatists and continentals EQUALLY, on equal terms, while learning philosophy historically (still a major stumbling block for analytic departments), and make up your own mind from there - not to try to work backwards to an appreciation of continental thought from Richard Rorty or Robert fucking Brandom and their eclectic, half-understood appropriations of continental thinkers.

If you are analytically minded, then you might do fine. The problem is that you don't get the opportunity to CHOOSE whether or not you are, in an Anglosphere department. You are given the aforementioned 50/50 set of choices, and that's it. Even if you thrive in that environment, who is to say you wouldn't have thrived more with more continental exposure?

All of this has bearing on how stereotyped you will be by the time you apply to grad school. If you do nothing but study Rorty and Sellars, or god forbid some stilted logico-mathematical philosophy of algorithms for 4 years, you will probably be applying to study similar things in grad school, which will then immerse you even more deeply and make it even harder to broaden your horizons. And while that's going on, maybe some parallel universe version of you, who stumbled upon Heidegger or Ricoeur, and forced your way through them without the help of a class, discovered his love of continental hermeneutics and had a much more fulfilling career with totally different prospects.

tldr: A Philosophy major is OK, as long as you understand it's EXTREMELY walled-in and railroaded in English-speaking departments.

DO NOT assume that what they are teaching you is "Philosophy." Look at it more like the equivalent of: You are studying statistics, but the department is just called "Mathematics." For whatever reason, the mathematics department thinks that "mathematics" in a general sense is equal to "statistics." You might learn some non-statistics math there, but it will be in a very limited and general way, and only in order to improve your performance in doing statistical mathematics. If you want a non-stats math education, you're going to have to do it on your own - you're going to have to go explore the Physics department, where all the non-stats math people (pure math, let's say) are hiding out.

Similar situation with Anglosphere Philosophy departments. If you want to study non-analytic/non-neopragmatist philosophy, you're going to have to go find the crypto-continental philosophers in the Comp Lit department, and mostly you're just going to have to figure that shit out on your own and study it on the side.

Wow they've clearly bastardized philosophy. So is rare significant philosophy going to come outside the universities?

Well I have a really biased and subjective opinion about academia in general and analytic philosophy in particular, so take everything I said with a huge grain of salt. Also I had a particularly bad experience with my own department, and others might not be nearly as bad.

It depends on your view of things. Universities right now are mostly finishing schools for rich kids. The downside of this is that you're absolutely drowning in a sea of tepid shit, reformulations of existing ideas, extreme lack of breadth, and endless jargon-memorization tests with no deeper understanding. The upside of it is that if you realise this is the case, and you have self-discipline or the authentic desire to be a smart dude, you can pretty easily exploit this mediocrity by doing the hard work to become a real scholar.

I just feel bad for a lot of my peers who are in grad school and clearly smart dudes, but they have no idea where to go, and they've given up on learning the necessary foundations to go anywhere, because they assume that their having completed undergrad necessarily means they MUST have the foundations - because that's "what undergrad is." The exciting people always seem to be the ones who were innately suspicious that professors and classes were dumbing down the material to make it digestible, and not trying to cultivate genius.

Academic philosophy is in a very sorry state, but it's always been shitty. If you have a genuine interest in philosophy, join the philosophy club. You'll meet a lot of probably cool folks interested in discussing a wide-variety of topics. Talk to professors about your topics of interest as well, as they may share interests outside of what they teach in class. If you wish to major in philosophy, I recommend double-major in philosophy.

George Santayana's critique along with Michel Foucault's really highlight the fundamental issues with philosophy as it is.

My personal gripes:
1. Philosophy as taught as a set of skills or a history, but never as a whole practice. They're trying to sell you on job opportunities with your newly acquired skill set rather than the prospect of actually learning philosophy as a way of life.
2. Far too much emphasis on the history of the big ideas, which consists of a poorly chained together set of ideas to make a terrible but streamlined narrative (RIP Renaissance Philosophy + Hellenistic Schools)
3. The set of ideas learned are also not put into context enough, snippets of Plato/Aristotle do not make an Ancient Philosophy class.
4. Anglocentric/Eurocentric, you'll never really study anything interesting outside of the typical streamlined narrative. Ancient Chinese/Indian philosophy should not be pushed solely into religions courses.
5. Pursuing academic philosophy seems like a waste as it's a highly competitive field where you'll spend the vast majority of your time teaching routine courses.

I'm first year but getting passing grades. It's all Anglospheric Analyticism, quite boring imo. I was doing intro to cog sci last semester and not didn't do all that great - but it was fun reading Hume and Descartes for it. Now, it's all logic, which isn't really philosophy, mainly maths.

I only studied philosophy for 1½ semesters in a Swedish university and all your points rang true. First semester (introduction to the most popular genres of philosophy) was pretty fun for me since I only had a very general understanding of philosophy before I started studying it. It introduced me to the most popular ideas and arguments, some philosophers I hadn't heard of and some argumentative techniques I was unaware of.

However all of the teachers were "liberalized" with a strong feminist bias because Sweden, politically neutral philosophers were overlooked because they didn't have a positive view on women, and the more right-wing philosophers were always thrown in the dumpster by the professors.

For example I had a brief introduction on Nietzsche and it was basically:
>God is dead (no shit)
>he hated women just because he couldn't get laid (class laughs)
>he argued for people to be more like Supermen but he himself was a weak unhealthy beta (class laughs)

Anyway I quit halfway through the second semester because of how economic and political it all got. Not once did I have a class on the stoics or existentialists, probably because those philosophies are more a way of life than a productive skill that this guy suggests.

Unless you want to become a professor (which seems very restricted and boring anyway) or an academic writer I suggest not studying it.

Philosophy loses its deepest meaning in academics, at least in modern unis. Studying it as a hobby is a lot more fulfilling

I left college before I got my degree, but I finished the major credits.

I must say that I was lucky with the department that I had. My ethics department (which was bullshit) was still quite capable and put forth a serious amount of effort into turning my honors group into better writers. We were consistently torn apart for all of our work and they did not give us a choice but to adapt, in regards to our academic work.

The logical side of my philosophy department was by far the most influential on my life and I do not regret it in the least. My advisor got his phd was johnny hopkins and formerly taught at northwestern, and he used to be a question writer for the LSAT. I wanted to be a lawyer at the time, and I learned a considerable amount about the world in the process. Although, the main thing they wanted to do was teach us how to think. In fact, I had a class with a very eccentric professor from oxford who did not care about anything but our personal philosophical journeys. In fact, as an edgy faglord, I wrote an entire essay in stream of consciousness, colloquialisms, and profanity, and I got an A. That was neat.

Sorry for how bullshit this sounded but it was how it was. I left because my philosophy club was so tied around trying to one up each other with what they read, no one tried to do any actual philosophy. So, I left, joined the military (CG), and have been traveling the world ever since.

I used to think philosophy could answer questions, but now that I've studied it "legitimately" I just think it's masturbation for verbally gifted people - with exception to some political philosophy. I don't find it practical for solving just about any crisis you or society has and I feel wholly disappointed in having taken so long to realize that. Not to mention I went in debt for something useless. What are my options when I graduate this year? Teach abroad or grad school. Out-fucking-standing.

This guy is correct in saying that there is a sort of inflexible harem of scholars for whom touching anything that upsets their moral intuitions in tantamount to burning everything down, but in my case they were obfuscatory, curmudgeonly, hardline continental folk

>discusses the problems with academic philosophy
>cites foucault

study math instead

Oh i love sellars. Not OP but originally wanted to go to college for math. Still will, but also wanted to dabble with philosophy since I have time and family has money. If it's true what you say then I'll consider it. Having read through some continentals in high school, I found them not quite as rigorous and exciting as the analytic or anglophone traditions. Just me though, u apparently disagree.

do stem and read books in your free time

why do you dislike analytic philosophy so much? there are some people doing some great work in it

Veeky Forums is chock full of muh no one is smart enough to understand my derrida waifu and "lol reason is literally a false supposition"

>If you have a genuine interest in philosophy, join the philosophy club. You'll meet a lot of probably cool folks interested in discussing a wide-variety of topics.

Maybe where you studied, in my Uni the philosophy club was full of more try hard faggot fedora tippers than my actual philosophy classes

>only studied philosophy for 1½ semesters in a Swedish university

First year Philosophy is babby shit designed to ease in Normie's who have no clue what the subject even is. Your experience in that short time means absolutely nothing.
Try take a 30x class if you could even manage it and then come back to me

I have studied philosophy for the past ten years and am a super senior stage six in undergrad at the moment (had to take some breaks from school due to nervous breakdowns) and I quite enjoy it. It really isn't nearly as bad as people here say...

I do attend school in America (Texas) so I have encountered quite a few analytics. That said, most of my professors, however, are best characterized as historians. Usually either Greek, German, or Latin specialists.

I was required to take classes on formal logic but there was a great deal of flexibility in the courses I could choose from that allowed me to study continentals and easterners as well.

The degree has a reputation as a blow-off degree and one certainly can breeze their way through. Even my upper division Ancient Philosophy class barely scratched the surface of Plato and Aristotle but it did provide an excellent launching point for my own studies. I would recommend treating it the same way yourself.

Essentially, you get out of the degree what you put into it. Join a philosophy club. Talk to professors. Once you start taking upper division courses, you can also take more advanced classes (even grad level with permission) or cross-listed courses which can be much more interesting than the basic core requirements.

I did not take out loans to attend so perhaps I am biased but I do not regret my decision one bit.

>had to take some breaks from school due to nervous breakdowns

Haha stupid faggot

I have schizophrenia. It wasn't just wahh I'm depressed.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe..."

Not a philosophy major, but I've read much and am convinced philosophy today is a set of masturbatory language games. Analytics and the French are especially guilty of this. Philosophy in antiquity was a practical search for truth. Philosophers lived their ideas as a preparation for death, and passed their example onto their students. The praxis and austerity of this searching was adopted by monastics, but is forgotten by today's black jumper sophists. Living your ideas is absolutely critical, and it had better not be some faggoty nihilism.

OP I would recommend you try it out, but don't expect your average college instructor to know very much or to even benefit your learning at all. You must read the primary sources and commentaries yourself and push through the soil up to the sun all by yourself.

>I have schizophrenia

study classics if you want to actually learn something but don't care about getting a "job"

What school you at my man? I'm looking for a school in Texas right now. Your philosophy school sounds like shit if Plato is an upper level class.

>Not a philosophy major
It shows
>but I've read much
It doesn't

How could Nietzsche get syphilis if he couldn't get laid?

Chicken and the egg strikes again?

>Your philosophy school sounds like shit if Plato is an upper level class.

It really does, at upper level we were studying Husserl and Quine and we were far from Ivy League. Sounds like user just has a shit tier department

Haters jealous.
University of Texas. You can take Ancient Philosophy as a lower division if you want, I wanted to delve deeper. Plato was, of course, also covered briefly in my Intro to Humanities and Intro to Philosophy lower divisions. But really, you could study Plato for years. Get a PHD in Platonic studies.

This is silly. I also studied Husserl and Quine. And many, many more. It's not as if there's some sort of power level and Plato is weaker than either of them.

>UT
Dang, I'm dying to go to UT Austin. Mostly because every other humanities school in Texas is garbage.

And I've BEEN studying Plato for years, and his students, and the Church fathers, and some 20th century fatheads. Mostly I'm concerned with theology, notions and sense systems and how they are related to intelligence. Maybe one day if I learn enough about programming I can describe a machine intelligence.

>It's not as if there's some sort of power level and Plato is weaker than either of them.

He really is, as is expected of a bronze-age thinker without any access to the entire philosophic tradition. If your education has not made this clear to you then I seriously question its credentials

It's a good school. You should apply for Plan II. It's a liberal arts honors program.
>seriously believes in power levels
Lol. Ok, Mr. Weeaboo.

Don't feel too bad. I just graduated with a bachelor's in English, which is approximately a hundred times more useless (both as a qualification and a functional life skill) than even the worst philosophy degree.

In fact, the one philosophy module I did turned out to be the one that felt by far the most substantive. And it was on aesthetics for heaven's sake.

Some thinkers are more sophisticated than others. Maybe you've been spending too much time around Liberals who tell you we're all special in our own way and not to compare but I find this notion to be clearly evident.
There is no ancient thinker who can hold a candle to Kant, and any even mediocre thinkers who have access to Kant can explore thoughts and ideas that fly over the heads of the incoherent musings of the classical era

argumentum ad novitatem

I see you also weren't thought proper use of logic either

I see you also weren't taught spelling.

I mean, honestly, I'm a Deleuze guy but I gotta respect Plato. What is lacked in depth or clarity is made up for with broadness and imagination. He's the philosopher's philosopher for a reason.

To answer your earlier question, does Aristotle hold a candle to Kant? Without Aristotle how can there be Kant?

>He's the philosopher's philosopher for a reason

I've never, ever heard to him referred to as this and its ridiculous as a statement
Did you just literally make this up?
> Without Aristotle how can there be Kant?
So what, there was no Einstein without the first nigger that found out how to make fire
Christ you are a fucking waste of space you schizo chickenshit coward

Lol. Butthurt much? Really proving how wise you are...

not the user you are speaking to but

W E W

You haven't even read Aristotle, have you. He poured the foundation upon which all inquiry is built. If Kant is Einstein by your analogy, then Aristotle is most definitely my #1 nigga Prometheus.

>Christ you are a fucking waste of space you schizo chickenshit coward
Pic.

The logical arguments are a good prep for law school

the ancient philo class at my community college started with the presocratics and only for up to the big aristotle near the end

he was a beta who bought a whore

>He poured the foundation upon which all inquiry is built

Yeah which is pretty easy to do when most thinkers before you were rarely ever literate. Try becoming a major name in philosophy centuries after the invention of the fucking printing press

Umm Sun Tzu was a better thinker hundreds of years before A you eurocentric nazi

>pepperoni nipples

>actually proving you haven't read Aristotle

>weebs
>on MY Veeky Forums

I've taken multiple modules wholly or partly focusing on Aristotle, all they thought me was how rudimentary he is in the canon. I can respect how its important for someone to occupy that space but its hardly interesting or worthy of study outside trivial knowledge

>chink writer
>weeb

short answer: because it had its transcendental turn 150 years late, right as germany was finally inheriting the benefits of labouring under that turn: the phenomenological turn, which analytic philosophy is presumably going to get around to in another 100 years

wittgenstein gave them a cheat code to doing it and they squandered even that

philosophy and mathematics double major reporting in

Pls share. I also hate them but would like to give them a chance.

t. lacanian

My friends made fun of me because I didn't insist on studying abroad (I'm mexican and we have decent oportunities to go abroad in the UNAM) but I was well aware of this situation. I really appreciate you wrote that because it makes me feel less regretful about not taking that chance to btfo my country for 6 months.

>rudimentary
Getting the little things wrong causes big things to be wrong. GIGO. E.g. ignoring the "rudiemntary" Categories. Half of the 20th century was spent arguing in circles because philosophers could not adequately define their terms or confused qualities for substance or state of being. Hegel and Kant only encouraged this by trying to see past senses into what has not yet occured (or, for all intents and purposes yet been experienced).

What's Mexico like for a young huwhite American male in current year? I want to teach English there for a year because I find Mexico fascinating culturally and for myriad other reasons but I also don't feel like getting mugged/robbed/threatened for a year.

As far as I can tell I'll be fine in most cities as long as I'm not being incredibly naive, like travelling alone at night or leaving my doors unlocked during the day.

Any insight? What cities do you recommend? Give me those quick tips so I don't end up getting my ass torn apart in a Mexican prison.

Not him, but in Sweden we do full semesters in a given topic which should equal 40 hours of work weekly for a full semester (about 4-5 months depending). Not sure if they do like 8 seperate subjects in your country where babby philosophy would only be one (again not him, nor have I studied philosophy).

By the way, Södertörns? I've heard that place is an SJW dump

If you go to The New School you will do continental philosophy while within the anglo-sphere

Don't be a retard; major in math and read philosophy in your spare time.

The quality of your experience is going to depend on primarily two major factors: the quality of the faculty and the quality of your fellow students.

If you are attending a major university that has a graduate program in Philosophy then the quality of instruction given at the undergraduate level will suffer. You will be considered a low priority if you are competing against graduate students for time and resources.

The emphasis on pedagogy needs to be looked at, what is the teaching load of full professors? Who are teaching the low level general courses? If you have grad students running classes in the usual; "Critical thinking" and "Introduction to Philosophy" general courses and full Professors with reduced class loads because they also supervises terminal degree work, you are probably not going to get the your tuition worth in actual instruction.

If your school is smaller or even a Liberal Arts school where there is a Philosophy department but only offering bachelor degrees, where tenured faculty teach general intro courses and advanced undergrad seminars, you are probably gonna be working with people better skilled at the actual art of teaching and who will be with you from your first essay assignment to final thesis writing, which means you can actually get mentored.

Who you are studying with will also matter, because as you get into higher courses the more important classroom discussion becomes. Being in a program where the vast majority of your peers annoy the ever living shit out of you can totally ruin your experience.

Also don't be afraid to experiment with Literature and History courses either and I strongly encourage you to study another language.

Also look at the reading lists for courses. For example, if you look at a course on the early modern history of philosophy what are you reading? Are you reading the actual work of people like Descartes/Spinoza/Soandso from a proper translator? Or are you reading books about Descartes/Spinoza/Soandso? Does the person teaching Ancient Philosophy have any relevant background? Do they have any skill in Ancient Greek listed on their CV?

People here are racist enough to treat you right. You will have enough privileges to have a good time. Also, you're right about being naive. Big cities are not so dangerous and can provide good oportunities.
Just avoid violent states like Guerrero, Chihuahua, Morelos, Michoacán or frontier cities.. Anyway, you can have fun and learn a lot about our culture in those places, but being careful and staying in so-called turistic places. Knowing people from those palces would help a lot. Big cities and places with natural or historical wonders should be a very good start.
I'm sure you will learn a lot and have a good time if you come. Not remotely as risky as some people make it seem.
t. Philosophy student from Mexico City

another good route is to go english lit and read be the "theory" guy.

This is basically what Leo Strauss dedicated his entire career trying to correct. Buy a copy of Leo Strauss's 'What is Political Philosophy' I think you will enjoy it.

Out of curiosity, how would someone be treated if they were a nonwhite foreigner?

>People here are racist enough to treat you right. You will have enough privileges to have a good time.

What does this mean? Are they gonna kill me for being evil huwhitey or what

also what cities should i go to? what are the wimmin like? i was thinking of starting off in mexico city and just kind of improvising from there

People will like you for being white. You will be treated much better than most Mexicans. Look for 'Pueblos Mágicos'. There's a list of pretty cities where tourism is encouraged. Mexico City is also great. You can visit Zacatecas, Guanajuato, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Puebla, etc. Also look for places with archeological sites.

Once some afro-mexicans went to USA. When they were deported and sent to Mexican authorities they were sent to Central America, no questions asked. Mexican migration officers, policemen and diverse authorities thought black people do not exist in Mexico.
Also, we are a big ass territory South and Central Americans have to cross in order to get to USA. Here the narcos kill, exploit, rape, kidnap or dissapear them. They can also sell women to 'muricans so they can do whatever they want to them, from cuddling to skin them alive.

The issue here are vulnerable groups, not tourists.

Get your bachelors in philosophy, then do post-grad work in the field you want to work in. Every single post-grad program loves to suck philosophy major cock. Just look at admission statistics into law and medicine.

Enjoy your undergrad studying something like classics, lit, or philosophy. Become a truly learned and educated man rather than just a technically proficient one. Focus on proficiency during post-grad.

Things take a little longer this way, but it's worth it.

Anyone who says there is little difference between a philosophy autodidact and a philosophy major is full of shit, assuming the philosophy major is from a decent university.

Do it, OP.

glad i picked econ when looking at these graphs

Patrician major my dude

Stockholm's

This seems pretty accurate. it can be an enjoyable experience if you're into that kind of thing. I for one enjoy Analytic Philosophy, but do take issue with a lot of it. I'm a linguistics/philosophy double major at a decent university with particularly strong departments (amongst the top) in linguistics and computer science (and other departments as well, but these are the most relevant to philosophy).

If you're interested in the typical topics of Analytic philosophy, it can be a good experience. For example, I myself am mainly interested in mathematics and formal approaches to linguistics (e.g. categorial grammar, Montague semantics, etc.), and to a lesser degree, more general cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Thankfully studying these subjects is literally my biggest hobby, and a philosophy department like my own is well suited to exploring these issues. However, in addition to this, I also like to study Existentialist and Christian writing like Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Kafka, St. Augustine, Sartre, Heidegger, and similar figures (Thomas Merton and Maximus the Confessor are the next reads in this area). However, none of these figure will receive much attention at my department and there hasn't even been a course on Existentialist, Christian, or Medieval philosophy in at least two years and probably even longer (although related course do appear on the philosophy course list, so they must offer them once in awhile). That being said, you probably wouldn't be able to get approval for a thesis or even independent study on these writers at my school.

To share one of my worst experiences (I've had many great ones as well) , while I myself am an atheist I like to LARP as a Catholic and have fideistic tendencies. I took a upper-level undergraduate course on "Mechanistic Explanations in Science", which was taught by one of the leading philosophers of science in the world (although I didn't know it when signing up for the course) and the "author of the most cited paper in the philosophy of science". The course was mostly dedicated to studying her and her collaborators work, although we did begin the semester with some historical background on Descartes. When discussing Descartes' work the professor suggested that his discussion of Christian theology and the role of God in his overall metaphysics, and the Meditations in particular was simply an attempt to appease the Church and that her own belief was that he may even have been an atheist (toplel). Her own biases and beliefs were clearly being projected on the work of some she admired. The funniest part was that we had to write a final paper arguing against the position of one of her critics.

So if you're interested in ethics, religious philosophy, or Existentialism you'll probably be deeply disappointed with a contemporary philosophy department. However, if you're interested in political philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of language, or philosophy of mind, it might suit you well.

Sorry for reiterating the first paragraph, I started writing, then left my computer and came back without reading what I had already wrote.

Don't. Unless you have an exceptionally brilliant professor, you will gain a much greater understanding by just reading the publications of major universities. Depending on where you live, the philosophical tradition that you will be force-fed may be totally uninteresting to you.
First of all, spend some time reading contemporary analytic philosophy for yourself. If you well and truly love the field and are fine with its vast division of labor and focus on journals, only then consider majoring in it. If you are not into analytic philosophy, abandon academia and read major books for yourself.

To add to that, you tend to have two different types of academics in a contemporary philosophy department. Those who are interested in tradition philosophical topics related to language, politics, and economics and want to engage these topics uses a more formalized and rigorous methodology. These people often have a background in mathematics, computer science, or linguistics and became interested in applying mathematical and computational modeling to topics in the social science and the humanities.

Then you have people whose background is often based purely in contemporary Analytic philosophy and perhaps a smattering of empirical science like psychology or physics. These people tend to work on shit like philosophy of science, metaphysics, or epistemology, and to to do so in a more traditional (analytic-)philosophical. That being said, these are the one who seem worse and more autistic than the former.

You see the former are just people who may or may not be interested in traditional philosophy, but whose professional work mainly consists of attempts to formalize specific issues in philosophy and bring them into the world of precise, axiomatic, mathematical sciences (in much the same way that Newton did for physics or Kenneth Arrow and von Neumann did for social choice theory). They aren't committed one way or the other to how we address traditional topics in ethics, metaphysics, or epistemology, since this isn't really the area of their research. On the other hand, the latter, pose a serious existential threat to the existence of traditional philosophy in that they wish to totally redefine it's methodology on the basis of the empirical sciences, and view philosophy almost entirely as a method for defining or clarifying our concepts and as something that can make linear, definitive, progress over the course of time, from a simpler to a more sophisticated state.

How is it going? Where are you studying it?

analytic epistemology is garbage

felt a bit of hate for Rorty here but oh well. I wrote my bachelor's thesis on his brand of pragmatism and misunderstood portions of it.

user, philosophy is what you make it. The classroom is only such. Go in and do what's assigned but philosophy doesn't end there. My school we had roughly 4 majors my year graduating and we all knew each other. My advisor still emails me today asking how law school is. If there is a club or niche of philo-so-friends you can join, do it. That is where introductions to unheard of areas of philosophy happen. I was the Rorty and American pragmatism guy, there was sadly a Ayn Rynd guy, but also many more. Do it if you love it. Make the circumstances fit your goal.