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December 2007 
What is Philosophy for? You Have to Hear This One.
Posted on Sep 20th, 2007
by 
Vanessa
Vanessa
So I'm officially in the greatest slog of my academic career, my last year.
I'm in my senior year and I seem to have contracted what one of my profs calls "senioritis": the student in their last year who was once so eager to do all the readings and show up for every class, is suddenly skimming through the very bare bones of the reading text and planning out how much she can skip each week and still do well.
But I attribute my struggle this year to more than merely "senioritis". I ended up landing in 5 coarses with little interest in any of them, which is a new experience for me. The worst part is that the classes I was most excited about: The philosophy of art and the philosophy of mind, ended up being the most disappointing.
I love philosophy, as most of you can probably tell(-: But academic philosophy is soooo far out from the kind of philosophy that interests me that I feel a rush of anger and disgust nearly every class ( a great place to practice my meditation and acceptance and loving kindness(-:). I think my experience can be easily summed up in the one comment my professor made today that simply solidified my entire struggle with academia in a capsize quote.
Someone in my philosophy of art class ( largely a study in logic applied to art theory) asked the teacher what the philosophy we were learning about actually had to do with people's lives , and how it actually effected their perceptions when viewing art. This was my teachers response:
"Oh, absolutely nothing. Philosophy isn't about practical application. This stuff doesn't effect anyone when they actually view art, it is just a theoretical exercise. Philosophy isn't meant to actually mean anything, that is the beauty of it. If I actually thought my research and writing in philosophy had meaning and implications for people's lives I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Don't ask for practical applications, that is not the purpose of philosophy."
Wow... I couldn't believe he actually said it so bluntly.... what a waste in so many ways. To even think we can detach ourselves as philosophers from the everyday lives of people is to truly disservice the planet. No wonder people in other disciplines think we are all a bunch of pompous intellectual assholes.
Access: Public
Vanessa, I am sorry to hear about this negative experience… I took that same course (phil of art and actually loved it mostly because I could argue with the prof through this “impracticality” of philosophy)… but it was a different prof and theoretical approach than you had.
Like you, I find philosophy extremely important to practical stuff. We all hold implicit philosophical ideas which inform our daily assumptions and approaches to events, people, situations, etc. I agree in part with the teacher that the mechanisms in philosophy are really useless outside of philosphy because logic can “rationalize” anything, in my opinion. It often lacks gut instinct. That aspect I find really frustrating, as it sounds like you found it also.
Myself, I found practical value in the philosophy and writings and assimilated them as such. Other philosophers can spin their wheels forever…that’s their perogative.
And you probably didn’t waste anything if you got something out of it that fed your soul. :-)
Good luck with this 5th year…I hear you!
Hi Joanna, I appreciate your comments here. I definitely agree that much of philosophy is not meant to be “practical” and that we truly can spin our wheels to infinity when it comes to philosophical speculation. At times, it seems, I can appreciate and accept that more, and other times it drives me insane(-:
I am starting to warm up slightly to the philosophy of art course, although I ended up dropping the philosophy of mind course. This may sound weird, but I felt like that class was literally unhealthy for my mind… because I've been working so much with embodiment and embodied philosophy I just find the really dissociated heady stuff to quite literally be unhealthy for my development at this point. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE heady stuff, but there is a line that can easily be crossed in academic philosophy where the mind really spins out into a dissociated orbit, making it harder and harder to have intimate connections with ground, the body and other human beings. At least, that has been my experience.
Ah, well. It is all part of figuring out my own path I suppose. Thanks for your comments.
This sounds like what happened to me when I was in my last year of fine arts training. I was in a heavily theory based program – by the end of it all, I couldn’t make art any more – the head game around making sure every angle and idea was addressed, and further thought through the media, setting, presentation, etc. wore me down. It all had to make a statement that was informed by centuries of art history – which is fine, but it had not room for expansion. I also love theory and head stuff, but like you found that there comes a point when its dissociative from real work stuff. For example, the work I do now with art therapy is very real – very grounded, earthy use of creativity and art— and would be completely dismissed/ignored by the high theory. A few years later, I made peace with it by taking what was relevant to my world, kept me grounded (because I like it there), allowed me to play with abstract theory and philosophy (because I like it there too), and allowed me to enter art again. Maybe this is also, in part, the struggle I wrote about in my blog today; and why my own journey was about bringing these together (love of abstract, philosophical musing with love of real, practical, applicable ideas).
You will find your own path and synthesis. :-)
I totally resonate with your path Joanna. I too feel drawn to the more intuitive and expressive world of the arts and at the same time also deeply appreciate the philosophical and “heady” stuff(: I'm curious about your work in art therapy as well as I've been more and more drawn to enter into counselling psyc for my masters work.
I decided this past month that I was going to take at least a year off before going into an MA program and just do art, art, art(-: I'm planning on transforming my basement into a studio of some sorts where I can learn to paint, take up guitar and singing, and continue with my poetry and writing. I'm really looking forward to just letting everything go and just creating beauty. Then, when ready, I'll come back and do the theraputic focus with a real grounding in my own creativity and aliveness. I think that can be such a gift to be able to share with clients.
Sorry V. I can't help but laugh after reading your prof's comments. It is kind of sad and amusing in the same breath. “Why” is very the most difficult question to answer and at best we are always pointing at the moon.
I'm going to share a recent read that i found to be disturbing….
How does one qualify to be near God…? was the question…
and the answer was:
One who keeps his/her findings to himself or herself… and let the world find out its own way….
This was so disturbing to me because the next line read something like:
“Ones who talk of detachment, and renonciation and altruism, are the ones who cannot practice it them selves… that's why they talk about it…”
I was actually in a state of depression once i read this; coz that meant that all the findings i had found, all the truths that i know of; had no meaning when told to the other…. the world needs to find out its own way… and i must accept it as such…
For the world is so big; and everyone sees it with thier angle only; (assuming that a human sees half a mile ahead; multiply that with 360 degrees now multiply that with the number of miles there are on earth times 2; that's allot of degrees)
So your thought to turn to something like art is a good idea; i turned to listening more, after my experiance….
PLease do know this, we are i a world of the opposite equal; everthing has an opposite; North - South, Head Tails, Honor - Insult, etc etc… just be detached dear sis.
Oops i did it again - talk of my findings.. instead of letting you find out for yourself….
Ommmm Shanti
Listening mode - set to On