It came to my attention last term that some 6th Form colleges were
getting into trouble concerning the contents of their Philosophy
courses. The issue was that they were offering AS, A-Level
“Philosophy” yet the content was either that of Religious Studies, or
Religious Studies and Ethics, and Possibly Philosophy of Religion and
Ethics... in none of these cases is it correct to call the course
/Philosophy /straight. It seems that from the article, apart from the
one mention of metaphysics, the contents seem to be ethical/religious.
Which is fine, (I’m neutral on that) but NOT if its called ‘Philosophy’.
I'm not denouncing Philosophy of Religion, or Ethics from Philosophy
as subjects WITHIN philosophy, I would certainly denounce Religious
Studies, that's surely for theology etc...
So, the issue is that 'Rise of Philosophy' and reports on the
popularity of Philosophy at A Level are potentially very misleading,
if they are supposed to represent an inclination towards philosophy of
young students. It might just be that the inclination is more towards
Religion/Ethics/Politics. I am one who would ask what of metaphysics,
philosophy of language, maths, science, mind, psychology, history of
philosophy, epistemology, logic and the rest of it?
I'm sorry that my information comes from informal talks with tutors at
my university, and I can't give you names of institutions guilty of
mislabelling, or of the enquiries by academic board’s authorities
etc... However, do a search on the net and something I'm sure will pop
up, and pay close attention to the prospectus/syllabus of individual
institutions, and judge for yourself whether the course is rightly
called philosophy, or should be named 'Ethics' or 'Religion' etc. An
ironic twist, is that GCSE Advance RE seems to be more philosophical
(in syllabus content) than some A Level "PHILOSOPHY" courses!
The last point is that this issue could clearly be properly addressed
if the research methods are sorted. For instance, re-do the statistics
only including properly labelled courses, I mean, proper philosophy
courses at GCSE/A Level etc, then see how big the rise in philosophy
really is. The news paper is not responsible for this, obviously, it
is their source. Not that it’d help with public perception, I doubt
that the newspapers would be inclined to make important distinctions
in content, ethics/politics, philosophy of religion/religious studies
– philosophy/all of the above… Of course, the stats might have been
produced with the proper data I recommend, but I doubt it considering
that intuitions have actually been GETTING AWAY with the mislabelling…
Even if anywhere were interested in getting proper stats for the ‘Rise
of Philosophy’ I doubt it would be an easy thing, u’d get an awful lot
of relativism about how to define the subject, and I guess you’d even
get those arguing that courses that are merely ethical or religious in
content are /rightly/ labelled philosophy… oh well… I’m not going to
opine on the issue of ‘What is Philosophy’… I could offer nothing more
than intuitive reflection.
Best,
Craig French
Heythrop College, University of London
www.philweb.org <http://www.philweb.org/>
www.heythrop.ac.uk <http://www.heythrop.ac.uk/>
www.lon.ac.uk <http://www.lon.ac.uk/>