VCE Stuff > VCE Philosophy
Picking up unit 3/4 Philosophy
Aurelian:
--- Quote from: Mech on December 04, 2012, 06:19:12 pm ---I would read them all because I feel that it contextualises the ideas you are going to hone in upon. But, then again, I do philosophy for the sake of philosophy and not really just for the academic side of things. If you are deeply passionate about getting a strong foundation in philosophy, give the texts a read in their entirety
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To be frank, even from the perspective of philosophy for the sake of philosophy, I still wouldn't necessarily advise reading whole texts. Proper philosophers should ultimately deal with ideas and their own thinking, not with other philosophers'. I'd even go so far as to say that the common idea that being a good philosopher requires detailed knowledge of lots of philosophers and their philosophies is quite misguided. Too often philosophy students are deceived into thinking they're "good at philosophy" because they have detailed knowledge of various "big names" in the discipline; more often than not, they're actually quite poor independent thinkers, even if they might be very capable of critically dissecting another person's view.
Mind you, this isn't really exclusively their fault a lot of the time - unfortunately, the majority of philosophy at tertiary level is extremely text based, especially at the undergraduate level.
Anyway, just read the excerpts; for any even half-curious thinker, they should provide plenty to think about. The emphasis should always be on you and your thinking, not on understanding the thinking of others. What's the point in understanding everything about other people's ideas, while having no idea what you yourself believe?
If you'd take say 1 hour to read the excerpt, but 10 hours to read the full text - most of which will be highly irrelevant to the kinds of questions you'll want to be exploring - you'd just be so much better off, both academically and philosophically, if you spent that extra 9 hours thinking about what you'd read in the first hour instead of reading.
--- Quote from: Mech on December 04, 2012, 06:19:12 pm ---However, if this is just an academic exercise to regurgitate the content, without a deeper understanding than just reading the excerpts, it is fine. You will be fine by VCE standards.
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This isn't really true. The current study design isn't conducive to blind regurgitation at all, and definitely emphasises independent reflection of the ideas raised by the texts. The fundamental purpose of Unit 3, for example, is to make students think about what a good life is. Unit 4 likewise invites students to challenge the prevailing conception of science as rational, objective and truth giving. Unit 4 also gets students to ask themselves "what exactly is the mind?".
The texts should only ever been secondary to thinking about these issues as issues; the course is text-based, but it is not text-centred.
--- Quote from: Mech on December 04, 2012, 06:19:12 pm ---Get familiar with the text, see where the philosopher is going or the gist of things (which I believe is what I said in my OP). The excerpt selections sometimes do not do justice to the content and arguments of the philosopher; you may as well just pick up an anthology or read summaries online and throw the original texts away (which I am almost certain most philosophy students in high school do).
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The excerpt selections for the VCE course are actually quite well chosen, and you wont really run into this problem, except maybe for Nietzsche, but Nietzsche is often just as confusing when you read a whole text of his for the first time without guidance anyway. For any of the wider context about the author or related issues you'd be better off just using the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or even Wikipedia.
Most of the excerpts are actually chosen so that they start at the start of the overall text, so you aren't randomly thrown into the mix of things. Those that do not do this are otherwise pretty self-contained =)
--- Quote from: Mech on December 04, 2012, 06:19:12 pm ---[Y]ou may as well just pick up an anthology or read summaries online and throw the original texts away (which I am almost certain most philosophy students in high school do).
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I can't vouch for everyone, but definitely all the schools from which I've tutored students, or schools I've otherwise taught/lectured at have stuck to the original texts. You couldn't really survive the VCE course if you just relied on online summaries, to be honest.
binders:
so avicenna, descartes, hume, kant, these guys weren't "proper" philosophers?
Lasercookie:
--- Quote from: binders on December 04, 2012, 07:44:21 pm ---so avicenna, descartes, hume, kant, these guys weren't "proper" philosophers?
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I think Aurelian was referring to the students when he said
--- Quote ---Proper philosophers should ultimately deal with ideas and their own thinking, not with other philosophers'.
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Aurelian:
--- Quote from: binders on December 04, 2012, 07:44:21 pm ---so avicenna, descartes, hume, kant, these guys weren't "proper" philosophers?
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To be clear, these guys didn't solely write whole books entirely dedicated to one philosopher; they had their own, well thought out philosophies which they expounded at great length. Where they did do a detailed analysis of other philosophers, they did it within the context of a wider issue, and made significant independent contributions to that issue.
All I'm saying is that a purely text-based approach to philosophy isn't sufficient to be a good philosopher, but of course it doesn't necessarily preclude it at all. Textual analysis can definitely be helpful to doing good philosophy, but it just needs to always be placed secondary to one's own thinking.
Mech:
--- Quote from: Aurelian on December 04, 2012, 07:35:15 pm ---Proper philosophers should ultimately deal with ideas and their own thinking, not with other philosophers'. I'd even go so far as to say that the common idea that being a good philosopher requires detailed knowledge of lots of philosophers and their philosophies is quite misguided. Too often philosophy students are deceived into thinking they're "good at philosophy" because they have detailed knowledge of various "big names" in the discipline; more often than not, they're actually quite poor independent thinkers, even if they might be very capable of critically dissecting another person's view.
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This is partially true. One must first have a firm foundation in order to know how others have approached certain questions. I never said philosophy is exclusively having a detailed knowledge of other philosophers; I endorsed the view that one must be very well accustomed with foundational ideas, history and some biography to see what motivated a certain understanding of a topic or the themes of a philosopher. You need some tools and reference points before you can just start tackling big problems; you also afford the risk of re-treading and re-constructing a whole lot of things that may have already been said or discussed without providing any new insight. Nothing is more embarrassing than criticising a philosophical position and then getting the response that this 'criticism' was responded to (I remember a philosophy lecturer of mine had this happen to him when he was discussing a recent paper someone published, hah. This has also seemingly happened at a few philosophy guest lectures I have went to during question time).
You will not really have a lot to say or think, philosophically speaking, without a solid foundational knowledge of philosophy.
--- Quote --- The emphasis should always be on you and your thinking, not on understanding the thinking of others. What's the point in understanding everything about other people's ideas, while having no idea what you yourself believe?
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The whole course is about responding to the thinking of these philosophers; you have to focus on their thinking and their motivations as well in order to respond with your informed view. What is the point of ignorantly addressing someone's position? That is definitely going to lead to setting up straw man arguments. I do not think you do a position justice by solely sticking to the excerpts.
--- Quote ---If you'd take say 1 hour to read the excerpt, but 10 hours to read the full text - most of which will be highly irrelevant to the kinds of questions you'll want to be exploring - you'd just be so much better off, both academically and philosophically, if you spent that extra 9 hours thinking about what you'd read in the first hour instead of reading.
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You have to have some working and reasonably comprehensive view before you can truly discuss their work or the related ideas; philosophers set up philosophical problems for others to consider in most cases. This, I find, is found with reading the whole text to give a feeling and a direction; it helps order my mind, and it can just require a skim reading to get that direction. I never said anything about exegeses of the texts of philosophers and I regret you giving that impression of my view. I also think I made it clear when I talked about getting the gist or skimming the whole text that this does not have to be an overly onerous exercise, but can give you some sense of order and a context to the arguments you focus on.
Your focus will be, for the exercise of VCE studies, be on the excerpts, but it will definitely help if you have an idea of where certain ideas are going, what is motivating them.
--- Quote ---The texts should only ever been secondary to thinking about these issues as issues; the course is text-based, but it is not text-centred.
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The texts are platforms, yes. However, a lot of the course does require you to have a knowledge of the arguments and then respond to those specific arguments. I think you benefit from this exercise, and have a deeper knowledge, if you can suggest where the philosopher was going with his idea to its conclusion; it will inform your knowledge of the argument and your criticisms of that argument. You of course are challenging your ideas with the philosopher's ideas; however, I highly doubt many people have comprehensive views on the topics at hand and will probably be engaging with them for the first time. It can be refreshing to see someone's full perspective on a topic and give you some platform to actually inform your own ideas of the topic. Of course, for the purpose of VCE, you have to hone in on the specifics of the course.
--- Quote ---The excerpt selections for the VCE course are actually quite well chosen, and you wont really run into this problem
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I do not agree. I did not find the selection of excerpts in my year very well chosen. In fact, I found myself reading the texts in entirety to make sure I had not misrepresented the views of the philosopher. Nietzsche and Hume stick out as examples for me; even to some extent Simone Weil I found a tad confusing with the given excerpts I had (I ended up reading most of the book). Perhaps I like or need a more holistic view.
--- Quote ---For any of the wider context about the author or related issues you'd be better off just using the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or even Wikipedia.
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For history. Stanford generally treats a philosopher as a corpus and may have pages dedicated to certain discussion of topics, but they are mostly interpretative or do use a lot of jargon (i.e. assumes you have a foundational knowledge of philosophy). I find Wikipedia provides very little in terms of setting out the arguments well. It is usually best to read the text, think about it and then see if these sources can fill in the gaps; they complement your knowledge and not supplement it.
--- Quote ---I can't vouch for everyone, but definitely all the schools from which I've tutored students, or schools I've otherwise taught/lectured at have stuck to the original texts. You couldn't really survive the VCE course if you just relied on online summaries, to be honest.
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The curriculum of the school does, but I know a lot of students I met up with at events and chatted to online used mostly secondary sources or the wonderful handouts from lectures without fully exploring the text itself. This is largely the case in first year philosophy at university as well.
I am not really just talking about VCE here, however.
--- Quote ---Mind you, this isn't really exclusively their fault a lot of the time - unfortunately, the majority of philosophy at tertiary level is extremely text based, especially at the undergraduate level.
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That is because you are still getting a foundational knowledge of philosophy. Nobody is really interested in your views at this level and are more interested in your knowing the arguments, the jargon and the thought exercises put in motion and point out some strategy to address them (which you will do in your graduate studies or further work). You are not really at a stage to be levelling a whole philosophical position or providing some new insight on a specific problem. You would have to be very prodigious.
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