I teach philosophy... a lot. It's how I got my first permanent teaching job, even though my doctorate is in New Testament. I saw an opportunity and even wrote a darn good philosophy introduction for a Christian context.
Anyway, I'm teaching more or less three diferent groups of students intro philosophy right now. A new group joined one of my classes from California last week, so I'm meeting tonight with them to talk about the first module. I said to myself, "Self, you push this rock up the hill so often that you may as well capture informal pieces of your class here over time."
So here's the first topic I discuss when I get a new set of victims.
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1.1 What is philosophy?
1. I always start my philosophy classes with the question, "What is philosophy?" I get varied responses.
Some have no idea. Or maybe they thought they had signed up for a psychology class. Upon finding out, one student said they wouldn't have signed up if they had known what the class was about.
Philosophy has varied reputations. For some, it is stuff that makes your brain hurt. Decades after graduation, a pastor confided in me that she had dropped my class immediately after having understood nothing I said the first day.
For others, it is a waste of time. Of course I'm real. Of course you're real. Of course you shouldn't go around shooting people on sidewalks and should get out of the way of moving traffic. No I'm not in a vat in a matrix in some future century.
Others view it with suspicion. Maybe they've seen the movie God's not Dead, where one of the main characters is an atheist philosophy professor at a secular college. Some Christian schools have even expunged it from their general education requirements. Wouldn't it be more Christian to require a theology class?
I suppose this reputation is not entirely unearned. Philosophy courses at secular schools can be quite deconstructive. If philosophy asks questions about everything, then it should be no surprise if it leads some people to ask questions some do not think they should ask.
It's a good philosophical question. Are some questions off limits? More in a moment.
2. Philosophy can be defined in different ways. If you break the word apart, you might define it as the "love of wisdom." Then maybe turn to Proverbs -- "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (9:10). Philosophy doesn't have to be oriented around questions. It could be oriented around the pursuit of wisdom.
Eastern philosophy seems oriented especially around wise sayings. Confucius says... Lao Tzu says... African philosophy might use story to convey wisdom, much as Jesus did with his use of parables and proverbs.
Many Christians focus philosophy around the concept of worldview. You start with certain assumptions and presuppositions and proceed from there. In this way, philosophy plays out a biblical worldivew in relation to certain key questions about life and the world.
In my opinion, these are all legitimate ways to do philosophy.
3. I prefer the questions. Why, because philosophy for me is the ultimate "meta" discipline. It stands beside all the human quests for knowledge and asks what each is doing. What is the scientist really doing when the scientist does science. What is the artist doing when he or she does art? Where is history going? What is the nature of religion?
That last question is where philosophy can hit some really sensitive waters. Should we really ask whether God exists? Should we really question whether God is good? More in a moment.
Then there are the big three, the questions of all questions since ancient times. What is real (metaphysics)? How do we know that we know what we think we know (epistemology)? And what is the nature of the good (ethics)?
From my perspective, philosophy stands alongside all questions for knowledge, truth, and wisdom. That makes it the ultimate discipline. In the pursuit of truth, it is the central discipline. In my ideal university, philosophy stands at the core of the whole curriculum.
I realize these may seem like somewhat controversial claims, but I'm not in class right now. I'm giving my opinion, which I don't always do in class. That's probably enough for now. My reasoning will be clear soon enough.
Bottom line: we're all philosophers. We all have implicit anwers to these ultimate questions. But are we good philosophers? Do we know there are other options than the ones we assume? If we don't, we are simply slaves to the ideas and practices we've inherited from someone else.
I was very impacted by James Sire's The Universe Next Door in seminary. [1] In it, he proposes a series of worldview questions. I have my own list of philosophical questions that forms the skeleton of my philosophy classes. Here they are:
- What is good thinking?
- What is the nature of God and his relationship with the world?
- What is the nature of a human person?
- What is the nature of the good and the human pursuit of it?
- How might human beings best live with each other?
- How can we know that we know what we think we know?
- What is the nature of reality and our engagement with it?
- What is the nature of the beautiful?
- What is the nature of history and is it going anywhere?
[1] James Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, sixth ed. (IVP Academic, 2020).
1.2 Can philosophy be Christian?
1.3 How do faith and reason fit together?
1.4 What is good thinking?
1.5 Socrates and the Unexamined Life
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