Philosophy

I’m honestly not sure what to talk about here – so I’ll settle for my favorite part of the semester so far. I’ve got a pretty weird relationship with academics, so I’m as surprised as anyone to find a class that I actually love – Manuel Rodeiro’s Intro to Philosophy. Now, there’s a few factors here – I love theoretical nonsense, and philosophy’s practically nothing but. I hate busywork, and it’s really difficult to assign busywork if you don’t assign homework whatsoever – the only work needed for Philosophy is readings, which are barely work, considering I’m reading something I enjoy. My only complaint is the relative lack of discussion, but I guess it makes sense considering it’s more history-oriented, it’s an intro class, and the curriculum is time-limited enough as is, so with that in mind, I’m not sure I’ve got any complaints with it, actually. Of course, that’s balanced by the amount I could whine about the other classes, but I don’t think this is quite the time or place. Over all, the purpose of the class is just a historical overview of the more prominent/influential Western philosophers, segmented into bits by topic – we started out with metaphysics and ontology for the first half, and now we’re on to political philosophy. I was a bit more fond of the first half, so far, but we’re not quite done yet, so I suppose that could change. Still, though, in large part what I like about it is the professor’s lecture style – he doesn’t speak just to hear his own voice, and he’s good at explaining the stuff he’s teaching. Sounds like a bit of a low bar, I know, but it’s apparently very hard to meet, in my experience. Anyway, enough implicit ragging on my profs – I’m really happy with the class, like I said, and though I don’t think it’ll push me into a philosophy concentration, it’s really helpful to have a class like it to temper the flaws of my others.