/lit/ - Literature

>>4205431
what philosophy have you read and do you like teaching

I was like you. Until I took a college philosophy course.

>>4205431
Philosophy is the most oversupplied discipline in the world.

Go be a sociologist or chemist.

>>4205431

If it is your passion and it will truly make you happy in life then go for it. A few things to note, however, is that the education industry is generally flooded with aspiring professors. Even if you know more/are more qualified than other professors, it probably won't make much difference. You will most likely have to start out at a community college to begin with, or, at best, a smaller private college. If you're looking to eventually teach at a larger university networking is key, as well as getting some solid theses and published works to add to your resume.

I don't mean to scare you off, but I personally know five incredibly intelligent and highly qualified professors (two of them philosophy professors) who are now stuck either at community colleges or at a high school. It's sad but it is a reality.

In any case, best of luck to you and your ventures.

>>4205431
>>4205431
whatever you do I life, always follow that where your passions lay.

>>4205431
Watch or read Doctor Zhivago, OP. Yuri was a poet who became a doctor. Gotta pay the bills, man....

>>4205487
I honestly wouldn't mind teaching at a community college, as long as I got paid to study philosophy.

>>4205431
What philosophy have you read?

Hopefully this clears things up for you

>>4205581
where would hastily-made mspaint infographics fall on that chart i wonder

>>4205431
> I know that a lot of people major in it without even knowing what metaphysics is
surely you're joking, right?

>>4205581
But... but... there are practically no philosophical autodidacts...

>>4205596
Believe it or not, there are people who do this, mainly because they don't know what it is and think it will be easy.

>>4205553
>>4205466

I have read the full works of Plato and Aristotle and selected works by Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. I also know about a lot of other philosophers and their works.

>>4205597

le hurr

>>4205611
Nietzsche was a professor of philology and was the chair of his department by age 24

le HURRR

>>4205622
wait what

>>4205610

>selected works

>>4205622
As in, a work or two by each.

>>4205628
what have you read by those guys

>>4205630
City of God, Confessions, Summa Contra Gentiles, Prolegomena, C of PR, C of J, Groundwork, Phenomenology of Spirit, World as Will and Representation, Human All Too Human, Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil.

>>4205617

>professor of philology
>philology

AS IN: NO FORMAL EDUCATION IN PHILOSOPHY WHATSOEVER

le herp

>>4205645
you should get into analytic philosophy if you actually want to be a professor. read wittgenstein, everybody likes him.

>>4205648
But... ok.

>>4205646
I highly doubt he had none whatsoever.

>>4205645

Oh dear.

Tell me, what have you written in the course of reading all these splendid works?

>>4205648
I was actually planning on reading Philosophical Investigations. Are you just joking or is that actually good advice?

>>4205666
Nothing. Why? I'm still a senior in high school.

>>4205668
i'm not joking. that's a great book.

>>4205680

So you've read all those magnificent, stirring works, and have yet to put down a single thought of your own?

Is it perhaps because you have had no thoughts of your own?

>>4205705
Are you being serious? I'd rather cultivate my mind thoroughly with the works of great men before I prematurely ejaculate meaningless, uneducated drivel onto a page. Also, Socrates never wrote a single word in his life. Did he never think? Does one have to write down their thoughts in order to retain them, or for those thoughts to be of value? Either you're a troll or one of those people who has an ignorant disdain for real philosophy.

>>4205733

you have no future in this field

>>4205733
>before I prematurely ejaculate meaningless, uneducated drivel onto a page.
The notion that you simply can't express yourself before having read X number of books is poisoning our society.
Writing helps you develop regardless of how well versed in your medium of choice you are.

>>4205705
lemme see what you've put down, faggot

>>4205733

Forever reading, never to be read.

>>4205742
"Expressing yourself" philosophically without any prior knowledge is the equivalent of writing an essay on Quantum Mechanics without having any prior knowledge. You need to develop an appreciation for the classics you egotistic child.

>>4205747

Nothing but diamonds.

I don't write, I cut gems. You will hear of me.

>>4205736
If the field thinks like you, perhaps I don't even want to be a part of it.

>>4205761
post a "diamond" then

>>4205761

>>4205761
Oh I highly doubt that .

>>4205761
>>4205761
your self-confidence is indirectly proportional to the amount of writing you've ever done, isn't it

you're so convinced you're some special genius that you've built up this aura, you define yourself through your belief that your destined to write great things, and because of it you're too much of a pussy to a) write anything at all or b) post it on the internet

i was 17 too man

>>4205760
Ipse dixit is not appreciation for the classics.

>>4205767
>>4205766
>>4205764

Pardon me, but I feel this request to be less a friendly solicitation for ideas and more a band of hooligans asking me to turn out my pockets.

Sadly I cannot oblige. At this time I can only offer a silly picture of dear Dali. This will have to suffice, and my enthusiasm for indulging buffoons will be judged easily enough from this concession.

I resume my business.

>>4205790
BUT HOW WILL I KNOW YOU WHEN YOU BECOME FAMOUS SO THAT I MIGHT BEG AT YOUR FEET FOR FORGIVENESS

>>4205790
dali seems like a tryhard

>>4205790
You resume your business of what? Browsing 4chan?

The philosopher Michael Huemer answers all your questions about going into grad school for philosophy here: http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/grad.htm

In short, the profession produces more graduates than it has jobs, so getting a job as a philosophy professor (especially one who does research) will be extremely difficult. And once you get a job your prospects of advancement are slim if you don't get a job at a top fifty institution. Here's an excerpt from the last part of the article:

11. How does one advance in philosophy?
There are some people with great jobs who get a lot of attention in the field. How do they do it? Three main factors matter:

a. Cleverness. This is one necessary condition on success in the field. One must be good at devising clever arguments for surprising conclusions, and one must be quick-witted when defending them.

b. Connections. One must meet and make friends with the right people, i.e., the philosophers who are already established in the field.

c. Luck.

12. Why the hell would I want to become a philosopher??
You probably wouldn’t. Philosophy graduate school is only suitable for a minuscule fraction of the population. If either (a) you would enjoy teaching basic philosophical ideas to undergraduate students for most of your life, or (b) you are extremely intelligent and intellectually innovative and you eat and drink philosophy, and in either case (c) you would be satisfied with a much lower income than other people of your level of education and intelligence, then philosophy graduate school may be for you.

The tiny number of people who will be able to land—and keep—jobs as researchers in philosophy will have what may be, for them, the world’s best job:

a. You can work, for the most part, on your own schedule. Teaching two classes at a time, one typically has to come into work either two or three days a week, and the times of the classes are mostly up to the professor. Most of your work—the research—can be done at home or at the library, on your own schedule. This doesn’t mean it’s easy or that you don’t need to work much; just that the schedule is flexible.

b. You can spend the summers how and where you like.

c. You get paid, in large part, for talking about philosophy.

Point (c) is the key point. If that sounds like an amazing deal to you, then philosophy might be for you; if not, then it isn’t.

>>4205431

Revive Berkeleyan Idealism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCPozI1vGHw

>>4205597
Almost every great philosopher of the Enlightenment was an autodidact.

>>4205755
Who cares?

>>4205431
Well, you're going to need to be extremely precise and coherent when writing your statement of purpose. Your writing sample would need to be laser-sharp and, frankly, excellent. And you had better be coming from a well-known top-tier college.

Why?

Because most of the top departments--Pittsburgh, UChicago, Yale, Berkeley, whatever--admit on the orders of 2-8 from around 200-400 applications. So yes, they have the luxury of choice, and yes many well-deserving applicants are turned down.

You *need* to earn your PhD at a top department if you hope to become a tenured professor. It's a simple case of numbers.

I suggest you read this: http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/prospective/admissions.html

>>4207074
>Moreover, fellowship offers that are declined are not re-offered to another applicant; so there is never a "waiting list."

That. Sucks. At least with MD/PhD admissions if you don't get accepted right away you can hope that you'll take the place of someone who declines the offer. I didn't know philosophy graduate admissions was this brutal.

>>>/adv/

tough to get a job, OP, even with a PhD. The whole university system is a pretty fine racket, but you have got to be dead certain that you can fuck with people's heads and make them shut the fuck up whenever you need to, actually instruct fratboys for the first ten years until you've proven you're "worthy" of the seminars, and keep cranking out articles and heaven help you books or at least successful grant applications. If you can look at that list realistically (and don't forget the intra and inter departmental politics game you'll be playing for the rest of your working career), then... go for it, bud.

>>4207085
Note that this is specific to Chicago, which can afford to not having a waitlist (I'm pretty sure they don't have a waitlist for anything in the humanities at least). Other places can and do have waitlists.

HOWEVER, I also think most of the general public vastly underestimates how competitive serious academia is. Most people applying to these programs aren't doing it for the hell of it. They have a determined vision and they're most likely gunning for future academic careers. They're serious and they're good. That's why these departments tend to admit in such low numbers. Chicago's recent placement (and Yale's for that matter) in philosophy has been stupidly good.

Also, if you think that's brutal consider that admissions numbers are mostly the same for English, where applications number over 700 (according to Columbia and I don't doubt that comparable departments could cite similar numbers).

>>4207074

top university: not true. You just have to work your ass off while you are in the tenure process. Some of my best (tenured) profs came from little known campuses all the way across the country or around the world. Only one from Yale (and that was not in Phil, but in Literature, ironically)

>>4207160
This is categorically untrue today. As is glaringly evident, tenure-track hiring is down across the board. Exceptions are places like Chicago that are specifically making an effort to recruit star hires. But in general, tenure-track hiring is down. That means graduates from the very top departments are no longer looking at peer departments alone. They're expanding to apply seriously to places that they would not have in the past (i.e. tier-2 departments, SLACs, etc.). That means graduates from tier-2 departments are, bluntly, shit out of luck. It's a trickle-down effect.

You're certainly welcome to go to a middling department and then try your luck on the job market. However I would *strongly* recommend any prospective academic to try and get into the very highest-ranked department they can (obviously, balancing for your own interests and the department's strengths). Also, I am saying top department, not university. University ranking is often at odds with the specific department's reputation.

>>4207183
Dumb question: what does SLAC stand for? I tried Googling it and got nothing.

>>4207185
Small Liberal Arts College. Blanket term for everything from Williams/Swarthmore/Amherst (top of the heap) to unknown colleges ranking around 100-110 in the US News and World Report. Not that these rankings are gospel, but they tend to reflect general perceptions both within academia and outside of it.

>>4207192
Ah okay, thanks.

>Prolegomena, C of PR, C of J, Groundwork, Phenomenology of Spirit, World as Will and Representation
Good foundational readings.

You should, though, immerse yourself into Analytic Philosophy as quickly as possible. But before you do that, make sure you have covered the basics of elementary Classical Logic; thereafter look into Non-Classical Logic; read about the surprising results of Metatheory, if you're not willing to do Mathematical Logic; get some concepts of set theory in there as well; formal semantics -- of course, and last but not least, Philosophical Logic

Regarding the major works of 20th century Analytic Philosophy -- get an anthology!