[Bups-dis] A handful to things

[Amanda Montgomery]

Hello,

Just thought I’d post a quick reply to the ‘Cogs in the Machine’ part of this. Firstly on the idea of teaching: I think the idea of enabling and being enabled is something many people considering any kind of re-entry into the education system has thought about at one time and for them it’s important to see that enabling and being enabled are not mutually exclusive. If philosophy is a subject you want to expand and work on, then to contribute to academic research while teaching is probably the area of this career that you find enabling, and teaching is a means to this, however the teaching process in itself shouldn’t be looked upon as some kind of stagnant area where engaging with students incurs no development in itself, after all you don’t end all self-progress simply because you also educate others. This also brings in issues of what you consider achievement and success. When I was younger I had a kind of blind ambition to be a lawyer or a politician (by which I mean a high judge or the Prime Minister), probably because I saw these things as high achievements, but as I’ve gotten older I no longer hold these things in as high esteem as I once did because my attitude has changed and I value education and learning more than money and power (although I still like these things). Hence I hold lecturers in pretty high esteem and don’t see remaining in education as a stagnant thing that one should necessarily aim to break away from. It should be said that there is also a whole host of people who don’t consider their career as the main enabling thing in their life at all and to whom this won’t apply.

I was thinking the idea of philosophy as an end in itself might be seen more as philosophy having intrinsic value, in that it’s objective of developing thought, knowledge, truth, value etc (both for oneself and within the subject as a whole) are activities that are pleasurable and seen to have value, regardless of any lack of practical application to other areas. This is not to say, however, that philosophy is demeaned when these things are also allowed to influence other areas of life. For example while painting in my studio or painting because I’m doing a course of art therapy both have objectives, in the former the development of artistic practice is allowed to exist in isolation, while in the latter the development of artistic practice is also allowed to expand into more obviously external areas. With regards to philosophy in schools I think there is simply a need to justify any new subject being introduced and so the argument of its effects on other areas is important. This is not a direct aim to reduce philosophy to merely the tool towards the stated ends; most of the people promoting it appreciate the intrinsic value of philosophy and simply want to enable a wider group of people to be able to participate in it.

Anyway this is all off the top off my head but I enjoyed the post,

Amanda