Interesting, I had an ethics class that began with a worksheet titiled " How Machiavellian are You?" and proceeded to endorse the practice of his principles of conduct.

to the last guy:
the author says "instead of constructing our arguments against his conclusions, we were forced to merely summarize them."

that was his main objection, that his philosophy department didn't encourage critical thinking and hence dissent.

I'm just saying he appears to have experience with only one philosophy department, so i don't think he's qualified to make that generalization about dozens of other philosophy departments.

and what, was he expecting his philosophy degree to give him all the training he needs for a career in political activism and being a revolutionary?

it's typical of adbusters style of hating the status quo and thinking revolution is the solution to everything

I am not a philosophy major, nor did I take more than two philosophy classes. Philosophy hasn't ended, but it is easy to see that he doesn't mean it is completely dead. Very similar how punk rock musicians say punk is dead. To Jason from UBC, I don't think you even read the article correctly so your comment is kinda anoying to read. I found the article to very true to my everyday experiences. In my experiences I see a great improvement in technology and knowledge, but no greater decision making than ever before. What a let down.

First of all, I've taken some 300 and 400 level philosophy courses at UBC, it's not my major but I really enjoy what I've been exposed to.

My professors are rarely just looking for a summary. In every class I've taken, we were asked in most of our take-home assignments something like "do you find this argument convincing? why or why not?" They usually ask for straight summaries in the in-class essays, which is reasonable actually due to time constraints.

Your department or prof probably just isn't very good. And it's kind of stupid to generalize that philosophy as a whole is dead because of your experiences at one university.

This is just another example of adbusters publishing attention grabbing doomsday articles that make inflammatory over generalizations to sell their product. Or maybe i should give the editors the benefit of the doubt and assume they just can't spot bad writing when they see it.

"All progress comes from change..."

Two thoughts on this.

First, some progress comes from same. Second, very little change is actually progress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raX60qjOqpg

A professor talking about Philosophy for Children, and "Big P" Philosophy as abstract argumentation versus "small p" philosophy as a dialogical method of inquiry.

well said as to the thought that is lacking, the understanding of one's location in life, one's contribution to the world-as-it-is. i was a frustrated philosophy major, eager to live what the profs talked about. but like sid67 says, you really do need to understand the foundations of philosophy to think and discuss and benefit from the historic others who paved the way for you to have the privilege to just think and ponder your place in space. or for me to do the same. so i hit the road with my phil in my head and my worn hardcover being and time book in my hands and explored amerika, looking for the revolution, the peeps who thought and dissented ... along the lines of philosophy being the truest form of dissent. my foundations in philosophy, coupled with experience and other life and educational pursuits, definitely underscore the need to sometimes just think. the spectrum of politics encourages action. it matters not what your political ideology, but a politician must promulgate possibilities, advocate alternatives, try to find and implement solutions. sometimes solutions are more problematic. contemplation, thought, reflection on being and ethics and conduct and purpose, can definitely reveal the need to take a step back. amerika does not follow the tao ... does not be like water ... we act and consume. consuming the old texts and truly understanding what they mean allows you to be like water ... take the path of least resistance by surfing along the contradictions faced in the day-to-day, from personal to societal, from ethical to ideal, and everyotherwhichway on the spheric weathervane of the paths traveled and less so. balancing ideas, pausing in reflection, contemplating how to drift, how to best and meaningfully and simply drift. all of that definitely stems from the knowledge you learn when being taught how to learn and being of the mentality that you resist it because you already know how to learn, you want to spout your own philosophy, cry it out from the tops of the mountaintops yelp yelp!! but you still learn it, and it becomes a part of you, and as you embrace the drift, your urgency mellows and you truly just think ... think and flow and try to be more still ... but active, contemplative, a part of the solution. well, that is how it was for me. be patient, grasshopper. in time, your great ideas will flow. for now, learn ... and just think, rather than thinking that the ancient and modern philosophers have little to offer to your postmodern, or present, thought.

"Let’s be honest: being lost in the clouds never saved a child from starvation and it never will. "

If we do not know why we save children from starvation, then how would we do it? If you're going off and saving children, you have adopted some philosophy, possible on the subject of saving children, or a general philosophy. Every thinking being must be a philosopher. Every person who opposed any war was a philosopher. Granted, every person who ever started any war was also a philosopher, and there is a philosophy of war along with a philosophy of peace.

"Most people would rather die than think. In fact, they do so." (Bertrand Russell)

where have people been? read robert pirsig's books zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance and lila. and if you care to snub it off because its 'main stream' well you're missing out.
he's a former philosophy professor who saw flaws in the system of teaching philosophy and in notions of current 'logic' itself.
and for those who are scared of the philosophy jargon its very readable, as articles should be in the first place.

for those discouraged by philosophy (not the educationbal system) there is a grat movie "Examined Life"

http://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/4827/Examined-Life-2008-DVDRip

Philosophy is turned into another consumable product
you can floss by philosophy

This is interesting: the end of the article indicates a plea which contradicts the main criticisms throughout. "What happened to just thinking?". Well, apparently, overly pedantic abstract thought was the problem. correct?

This kid's just trying to pull a Haddow. E for Effort.

Life is futile.

It's pretty amazing you got through any philosophy courses and are still able to create an article like this.

Didn't you ever learn how useless it is to draw broad conclusions from a very limited perspective and amount of data?

so you finished a degree in philosophy, now stop thinking and go to law school like those that came before you.

I thought this article was a joke. I'm still not convinced that that isn't the case, but I'll comment anyway.

"We found several flaws in Descartes’ arguments but instead of constructing our arguments against his conclusions, we were forced to merely summarize them. Such mediocrity and mental garbage drives me to one simple conclusion: philosophy is extinct. "

I am a philosophy major at another top department, and your experience sounds nothing like mine. We are most definitely required to critique arguments, and explicitly instructed to not merely summarize them. At my school, if a student were to submit a non-critical paper that only outlined the author's argument, then that student would most likely receive an F.

I am skeptical that a professor at a top program like Pitt would not only NOT require students to critically engage with Descartes' Meditations, but actually prevent them from doing so. What, so you approached the professor in office hours, offered your own counterarguments to Descartes, asked if you could write an essay that offered your own original analysis of the material, and then she refused? Did she say why she wanted you to submit a book report? Did you ask? I find this whole example really difficult to believe. At any rate, your conclusion is far too strong to be inferred from one particular instance in one required undergraduate survey course. Needless to say, you are at least correct that summarizing an argument is not sufficient to count as "doing" real philosophy.

"All progress comes from change, and philosophers used to be the backbone of change. Whether we go back thousands of years to Socrates’ “corrupting the youth” or more recently to Bertrand Russell’s condemnation of the Vietnam War, it is obvious that philosophers used to take a stand against a callous system. Now they simply summarize and overanalyze all the irrelevant aspects of life. "

Do you really think that philosophers are not concerned with contemporary problems? Surely you were required to take at least one ethics or political philosophy course? The number of philosophers working on global justice or just war theory is evidence that they ARE in fact interested in shedding light on and questioning the "callous system".

The professional ethics journals publish on topics such as the morality of affluence, the death penalty, abortion, euthanasia, etc. Philosophers do take real-life examples, such as a famine in Bangladesh or the obvious injustice of global political and economic structures, as their starting point for critical discussion of an issue.

In short, they are already, as you put it, "applying their timeless wisdom to reality". It's just that (apparently) few people care what they think. You yourself majored in the discipline yet appear to be completely ignorant of an entire branch of the field. That might be a shortcoming of your department, but did you ever seek it out? Did you ask your professors why nobody was concerned with these issues? They might have pointed you in the direction of Thomas Nagel or Peter Singer and opened you up to rich and lively debates that are very much ongoing.

"Instead of rigorously debating the problems of today, my professors lull the class to sleep with lackluster lectures on trivial topics. Do I possess a priori knowledge? What is the form of me? Am I a thinking thing?"

In most if not all academic disciplines, students are expected to complete a wide variety of courses. Presumably, this is so degree holders are fairly well-rounded in a particular subject and are at least familiar with a map of the terrain, so to speak. Not every English major enjoys reading Chaucer, but I'd bet that most are required to slog through The Canterbury Tales. That does not entail that all works of literature are similarly dull or that all English courses are a waste of time. Philosophy majors typically have to complete at least one course in each of the following: logic; metaphysics; epistemology; history; ethics. You might snooze through metaphysics, but that doesn't mean philosophers aren't heatedly debating ethics.

Furthermore, some debates that seem inconsequential on the surface are in fact relevant to the more applied topics that you are so concerned with. If you had continued pressing the question, "but why does this matter?" and actually reflected on it you might have found more answers. Even the most abstract branch of philosophy--logic--is relevant to "what ought I do in situation x?", which suggests that you were too busy feeling superior to your professors to engage in the very thing you are trying to encourage with this article.

Which makes me think it's a joke.

The Philosophy It's everywhere, maybe we think they it's over, in fact, exist.

Listen to philosophy lectures by this west Texan lecturer, Rick Roderick. They've been hosted at http://www.wimpywombat.net.

I've studied philosophy at university but none of my professors were as inspiring as Rick. He actually addresses why it is important to think and why it is important to apply the wisdom to reality.

I really like the Self Under Siege lectures. Fatal Strategies was especially good explaining Baudrillard's theory of the hyper real.

Watching these lectures will convince you that philosophy is not entirely dead. Although Rick is :(

Modern philosophy is not dead, its in a different from that is not taught in academic settings. the RZA just published the Dao of Wu and K'Naan's lyrics are of a 'Dusty Foot Philosopher' ..both explore the wisdom gained from experience and action. ...Unfortunately Western ways of thinking dominate our academic system and we lose a great deal of important philosophy.

University of Pittsburgh sounds like they have a pretty traditional department faculty. Besides, the cartesian dualism, beginning with descarte, is a huge problem with the philosophical tradition. You sound like a person who enjoys reading about life.
If you are looking for something more contemporary, I think it fits your feelings about doing something to generate better hope for humanity, I would recommend Richard Rorty's piece entitles 'Trotsky and the Wild Orchid' (I have a pdf of it.), a very good essay about a philosopher who dealt with your same concern about social injustice and self-education.
Don't be discourage plebe.

I take your point to be that the instructors in your philosophy program have missed the point of their own program: knowledge/thinking comes from experience and not just books. As some readers have pointed out, there are ways of getting there other than university classes, which raises the question of what are universities then doing. I think what you are experiencing, and I say this after teaching in universities for more than thirty years, is the triumph of careerism, which is also the triumph of utilitarian capitalism over humanism. This was not always the case, but if you consider that universities are places that order social privileges and access to power the conclusion follows that they are designed not for thinking but for ensuring continuity.

At the end of the day, if you chose to study philosophy at a university you must have had some purpose in mind. Be honest with yourself on this one because it's critically important to your life. If it was to expand your thinking, you don't need a university course and in fact that could better be done independently with like-minded friends. If it was to "get a better job", consider how you will think in that job as a consequence of your university experience. Best of luck in either case as maintaining your integrity in modern times is a constant struggle.

this short essay reminded me of this news article I read a few weeks back:

http://www.chaser.com.au/news-mainmenu-26/general-mainmenu-101/3516-unis...

times are tough for philosophers, dude!

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a great example of a philosopher and dissident rooted in the real world. Things aren't as bad as they seem, you just need to dig deeper to find those that are truly thinking.

Try reading something that isn't 400 years old. Try reading something from the last 30 years. Try reading A Thousand Plateaus.

So go out and do something. There's nothing intrinsic to reading philosophy; just as you could read engineering textbooks all day and never build anything, you can read every book ever, and never do anything. You've been given a set of tools, a series of theories designed to engage your mind. If you choose to do something with it, go ahead. If you would rather do nothing, then that's your prerogative, but don't blame it on professors. They did their job.

Yes, analytic philosophy often lacks application to life: presumably you'd be more satisfied with continental philosophy and critical theory.

But even if it doesn't tell us how to live, analytic philosophy has its own value and intellectual integrity. Analytic philosophy is not regurgitation and book reports, by any stretch of the imagination. If your course in analytic philosophy has really been taught badly, that says something about the department and your particular teachers, not something about analytic philosophy.

As a philosophy major, I get your position completely. What I think he may be referring to is the lack of a tangible effect from all the philosophizing. The Enlightenment spawned an era of revolution. Existentialist thought led people to use their radical freedom to justify radical leftist action. It just seems as though the philosophy being done these days has no repercussions. But I hope we can change that. Its a screwed up word we have to digest but I think we can come up with something out of all the nonsense.