What did you study in college?

[BookTenTiger]

Philosophy. I did four years of undergrad in it, then grad school to the PhD, then professorship right up until this past year.

Do you have a personal favorite philosophy / philosopher?

 

[Guest 7034872]

Do you have a personal favorite philosophy / philosopher?

Sort of, yeah. It's mostly between Bertrand Russell and Edmund Husserl for me.

You?

 

[Parmandur]

Sort of, yeah. It's mostly between Bertrand Russell and Edmund Husserl for me.

You?

Husserl is probably the most important philosopher since Heigl. Way more interesting and practical than Heigl, too.

Kind of an odd duck pairing, in a lot of ways, Russell and Husserl.

I'm not a Thomist by a long shot, but Aquinas is probably still one of my favorite philosphers to read to get a full interesting of an issue. Better to read in Latin, and requires some grounding in the Scholastic method of dialectic, but very fruitful even when he's wrong (which is not infrequently).

 

[payn]

The teachers liked my vocabulary. In grade 5 I tested at a grade 9 level. Big words meant big grades

I think the prof just liked me. I was pretty engaged, particularly in class discussion. I can only imagine what reading some of those other papers was like lol.

 

[payn]

Sort of, yeah. It's mostly between Bertrand Russell and Edmund Husserl for me.

You?

Russell is brilliant.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Majored in English and physics, minored in anthropology and mathematics. Got my MA in English (focused on Old and Middle English), and I have some grad-level coursework in medical physics (but no degree beyond the BS).

 

[Guest 7034872]

Husserl is probably the most important philosopher since Heigl. Way more interesting and practical than Heigl, too.

He changed my whole philosophy of math and, with it, my understanding of the metaphysics of logic.

Kind of an odd duck pairing, in a lot of ways, Russell and Husserl.

I suppose so, but think of it this way a moment: Russell borrowed greatly from Frege, right? And Frege and Husserl were not nearly so far from each other. Never mind the hardcore empiricism Russell is (rightly) famous for; just think of the method of philosophical analysis he used. That has Frege written all over it.

I'm not a Thomist by a long shot, but Aquinas is probably still one of my favorite philosphers to read to get a full interesting of an issue. Better to read in Latin, and requires some grounding in the Scholastic method of dialectic, but very fruitful even when he's wrong (which is not infrequently).

Aquinas is one of the great minds of all human history, and I say this as a man who also is not a Thomist. He truly was one of the all-time geniuses in human history. Even where I disagree with him, I cannot help but admire him and love the clarity and comprehensiveness of his mind.

 

[Mad_Jack]

The teachers liked my vocabulary. In grade 5 I tested at a grade 9 level. Big words meant big grades

In grade school, when we got in trouble we had to stay in from recess after lunch and copy pages out of the dictionary.

Between third grade and sixth grade, I'd read and copied Webster's 3rd Ed. Collegiate Dictionary cover-to-cover.

 

[Ryujin]

In grade school, when we got in trouble we had to stay in from recess after lunch and copy pages out of the dictionary.

Between third grade and sixth grade, I'd read and copied Webster's 3rd Ed. Collegiate Dictionary cover-to-cover.

My 6th grade teacher would send me off to one of the library resource rooms with page numbers from the dictionary from which I was to define words, using my own terms. It wasn't as punishment; he was allowing me to work beyond the rest of the class. The results made him remark that I was the "most succinct" student he had ever taught which, rather ironically, I had to look up in the dictionary

 

[reelo]

Sort of, yeah. It's mostly between Bertrand Russell and Edmund Husserl for me.

You?

How relevant is Sartre these days? Ever since reading "La Nausée" in French class, I've subscribed to his brand of Existentialism.