Picking up unit 3/4 Philosophy

[Aurelian]

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

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.

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.

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.

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).

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 =)

[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).

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]

so avicenna, descartes, hume, kant, these guys weren't "proper" philosophers?

I think Aurelian was referring to the students when he said

Proper philosophers should ultimately deal with ideas and their own thinking, not with other philosophers'.

[Aurelian]

so avicenna, descartes, hume, kant, these guys weren't "proper" philosophers?

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]

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The excerpt selections for the VCE course are actually quite well chosen, and you wont really run into this problem

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
 

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.

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.

[Mech]

Just saw this response. And I will respond to it.

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.

Kant said of Hume that it had awoken him from his "dogmatic slumber". I am sure Kant did not have this profound realisation by just reading excerpts of Hume's work. I am also certain he went to great lengths to know the texts he was responding to with his ideas. Exegeses and notes, sleepless nights and what Nietzsche described as the "blurring" of emotion and thought, this intense engagement with ideas as if they were your own emotions -- the dichotomy of thoughts and emotions disappeared for Nietzsche. You must really know the ins and out of an issue which are raised or responded to in particular texts before you have any interesting independent contributions.

You should marvel at the expositions and thought that has went into addressing a problem and not sell it short by just reading the excerpts (maybe just for VCE do the excerpts, but if you have the passion and the urge to get a more informed view you should read the entirety of the text). This inspires you, this gives wind to your philosophical sails so to speak. Philosophy starts out with a resignation to the fact you probably know nothing with certainty (I would even go as far as to agree with Critchley and say that philosophy starts in failure or a misgiving in reality you wish to reconcile). Your want for answers should lead you to seek answers, to want to read that tome of work by Parfit in the hope you will glean something precious to add to your own philosophical tapestry.

Hume was largely inspired and responding to Malebranche, Kant was inspired and responding to Hume. Philosophers beget one another. They did not just sit around having read excerpts of one another's works and then have these great ideas, these profound moments and motivation to write. If this is how philosophy is done nowadays, no wonder we are not seeing any larger works being pushed out the birth canals of philosophy departments (with the exception of Parfit) and just very specialised discussion of certain topics. We never really see the totality that the philosophers of the past provided with their great works. I think this is exactly because people are not prepared or taught to have respect for the texts in entirety or are placed in an environment where a hurried and isolated understanding of a few arguments is acceptable. You should take the time to digest it all, to really know what Kant had to say about X or Y and then challenge it.

So, I meet you halfway. I agree you must sit and do those hours of pondering about key ideas that grab your attention (or what your curriculum tells you must grab your attention), but you must also do the extra hard yards to really sink your teeth into a work of philosophy and read it all. You will probably get to the end of it and feel like you have got a grip of some things and then, suddenly, it will slip from your fingers because you have ruminated about it some more or honed in upon a subsidiary point that the philosopher made. You will then probably feel the need to read more, be nauseated and giddy enough to reach for another book, for your antidote or the answer to this question (which, for the most part, you do not find). Not only that, you will spend hours thinking about it and probably even talking about it with others (if you have the luxury of comrades with a listening, interested ear).

If you just want to treat philosophical texts as just a series of aphorisms (which most are not) that stand alone, I really do think you will not have this wonderful journey. These texts are not adages, they are expositions which probably follow to the logical conclusion. You might as well and sit down and read some works by Marcus Aurelius or Seneca.

All I'm saying is that a purely text-based approach to philosophy isn't sufficient to be a good philosopher...

And yet I never endorsed that. I endorsed reading the texts and getting some context if you are really passionate about philosophy as something to do for the sake of doing it. It was you who misrepresented my views and made it out I was endorsing just sticking to the text and regurgitating it (which, I am sorry to say, is the VCE curriculum for the most part; I dare you to tell a philosophy professor you have a knowledge of the ideas, thought problems and questions (i.e. the issues) raised by Kant, Nietzsche or Hume by just having read the limited excerpts of VCE).

[Aurelian]

Lol.

[Mech]

Lol.

You obviously do not share my passion. 

[Aurelian]

You obviously do not share my passion. 

You obviously don't know me

I can respond to everything you've said if you want (although not right this second, I do have things to do...), but I don't think there's much point; I doubt either of us is going to be capable of changing the opinion of the other that much. I also think we're starting to simply talk past each other at this point...

[Mech]

You obviously do not share my passion. 

You obviously don't know me

I can respond to everything you've said if you want (although not right this second, I do have things to do...), but I don't think there's much point; I doubt either of us is going to be capable of changing the opinion of the other that much. I also think we're starting to simply talk past each other at this point...

And if you knew me, you would know I, too, take my philosophy seriously (that much should be self-evident). 

I think you just jumped to conclusions and it irks me that you did. I cannot really be bothered with a discussion with you if you cannot even give a polite and considered response when someone want to have a discussion with you and not just "lol".

[Aurelian]

To be fair, your tactic of reply seems to revolve around excessive name-dropping and responding at extreme length in order to demonstrate your admittedly impressive knowledge of other philosophers and thereby appear to others to "win" the argument by brute force.

I also don't think I'm especially jumping to conclusions about much at all, unless you are interpreting me to be attributing to you things which I myself did not intend to attribute (apologies if so for not being clearer).

I will reply a little later though =)

[Mech]

To be fair, your tactic of reply seems to revolve around excessive name-dropping and responding at extreme length in order to demonstrate your admittedly impressive knowledge of other philosophers and thereby appear to others to "win" the argument by brute force.

I think I am just trying to show you how philosophers read one another and with great diligence (i.e. not just excerpts). Hume and Kant was an example, Nietzsche was an example of passion. Critchley actually talks about the nature of philosophy and is therefore relevant (at least for me and my views)... They all served as examples, even Aurelius and Seneca. I am actually trying to get through Parfit at the moment. 

I would not say I have a good knowledge of any philosopher, really. I actually need to keep reading  I am passionate hence my length.

unless you are interpreting me to be attributing to you things which I myself did not intend to attribute (apologies if so for not being clearer).

I feel this is the case. I took it to be I am not a "good philosopher" because my views of the importance of reading whole texts. I wanted to challenge that.

[InsideJoke]

Well that escalated quickly!

My opinion is that no, you don't have to stress about any excessive disadvantage, going straight into 3/4. 1/2 is pretty much an overview, and while an enjoyable and useful one, definitely not an essential one.

You could read the texts over the summer holidays, but there's a lot to read and it's a big ask. You could get bored and you're unlikely to get the big ideas.

I found that most of the work I did was within the term. It's not like some subjects where you can demolish the course over the holidays. Instead, you should try to work consistently throughout the year. An average of 30 mins a day (and up to 40/50) is the general direction of what you'd aim for.

Right now, you'd probably find it useful to just do some basic philosophy. It doesn't even have to be relevant really! Just get to know it. Look up YouTube videos and articles, maybe find a 1/2 or equivalent text book. And tonnes of universities (iTunes u and the Oxford intro series) do introductory courses. A couple of videos and you'll start to get the gist. Podcasts can also be helpful. The partially examined life is a goodish one.

Note, for all of that, you don't have to comprehend every single word and idea. It's mainly about a bit of immersion.

During the year: summaries are a great idea, as well as 2 types of questions - exam type, and basic ones which are direct and without any fancy language. Discuss, discuss, discuss - not sure how this works for distance Ed, but do whatever you can. Finally - research. Don't get stuck to the course and ideas from people around you. Google search your questions, read far and wide, university theses, blog posts. You don't have to understand it all (especially the uni stuff, I didn't most of the time) but it will give your ideas breadth and will seriously enhance your understanding of the deeper ideas behind the texts.

Overall, philosophy is awesome! It's fun and very useful, and you can definitely succeed, if you give it the time it deserves!