Reflections

Overall, I think I had a good experience with this course. I learned a lot about the application of philosophy to real world issues, practiced my writing skills and got to read a lot about a huge range of issues, many of which I had no idea even existed. 

Before taking this course, I tended to look at political issues that interested me, and through discussion with people who had different points of view, come to the philosophical differences at the root of our disagreement. One example would be that in arguments about capitalism, my friends and I would differ on what our understanding of freedom would be. We would realize after talking for a while that they understood freedom to be a lack of rules by a paternal government or organization, in some frameworks this is referred to as the freedom to, while I thought that freedom must also include freedom from hunger, overwork and sickness, all factors which severely limit people’s ability to do what they want. It was only after we recognized our philosophical differences that we could begin to have a productive discussion, as before we realized these differences we were talking about completely different things.

This class sort of took the opposite approach in that it was proactive about identifying these differences: first we learned about a few ethical frameworks, then we looked at what sort of issues those frameworks might be usefully applied too. I like this approach as it seems more transparent. We can better have a conversation about a topic if we all agree to use a common framework to analyze it. This especially showed up in our online forum discussions, as we had to explicitly use a certain ethical theory to talk about an issue. 

I also thought I did get better at writing papers, especially research papers. I finished a paper early for the first time, so I had time to edit and look over it more than usual. One thing that I struggled with was that this class had a lot more structure around writing than I am used too. In the last two years of highschool, my teachers would give a prompt (sometimes a very vague one, as simple as :”Make an argument about this book”) and set a due date a couple weeks later.  We were free to go about the writing process as suited us, which of course led to some procrastination but also allowed for us to figure out what methods worked best for ourselves specifically. It was kind of tough for me to go from that environment to a class in which we had far less freedom to write the way we chose. I think I definitely learned some things from the intermediate assignments, but I also think I could have been more academically successful in this specific class had I had few constraints on that process.

Finally, I think that this class helped me grow in my open mindedness when reading an argument.Many of the readings had rather provocative premises that I would almost immediately have an opinion about. Through reading their line of logic, I would frequently reconsider my initial reaction. I think doing this so many times made me less judgmental at the start; in the last few readings, I sort of gave up being opposed to the point until I had finished reading. This made the actual experience of reading papers much better. 

I’m glad I took this class. While it differed from my expectations, these differences weren’t necessarily bad ones. I’ll sign off with a good spoken-word/rap piece about philosophy that reminds me of this course: