“A Philosophy Degree Can Lead to a Great Career - Associated Content” plus 3 more

A Philosophy Degree Can Lead to a Great Career - Associated Content
Price expands GOP repeal campaign: We should repeal all ... - Think Progress
Wayongo Philosophy and the Question of National Decency - Modern Ghana
Not For Profit, Eh? Hold on There, Martha Nussbaum! - OpEdNews.com

A Philosophy Degree Can Lead to a Great Career - Associated Content

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 07:28 AM PDT

All the Possibilities of a Degree in Philosophy

Philosophy. What was I thinking? I graduated with honors and a philosophy degree, plans to go to graduate school on hold, I actually had to find a job. Little did I know that a philosophy degree is a very marketable career finding tool. I am now a licensed alcohol and drug counselor enrolled in master's degree program for human services, concentration mental healthy counseling. My employer actually likes that I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy, and it helped me land my job, this is how.

An undergraduate degree in philosophy teaches an individual how to think. The classes in logic give one a framework to make quick decisions under pressure that have a logical course and result in correct action. Additionally, with a philosophy degree one learns how to think succinctly and understand theory. The ability to understand theory is very marketable-because you have been trained to read quickly and understand complex materials. Therefore something your employer wants you to read and then summarize or handle large amounts of data is within your capabilities because you have been trained to understand complex theory. For example if you can read and understand Nietzsche you more than likely can understand an office memo.

In a more direct and marketable way within the realm of an undergraduate degree in philosophy you are exposed to many different ideas, religions, and history. You become culturally competent and are not afraid to ask why or why not. In the counseling field this is extremely important having a foundation of understanding religion and the impact it has on a person is great to bring to the counseling process. Being able to ask questions and investigate is another skill, being curious to understand a human being is a large part of the counseling process.

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Price expands GOP repeal campaign: We should repeal all ... - Think Progress

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 06:31 AM PDT

GIORDANO: And then I look at Republicans saying that they may not nationwide, this is the leadership now, Mitch McConnell and others, use the repeal the bill thing, which I think all conservatives that I know of, that's the mantra, that's the battle cry, going into this. That's what worries some of us about the backsliding among some Republicans.

PRICE: Well, listen, let me give you some optimism and hope. The conservative Republican majority that will be in the House of Representatives, I believe, after the November 2010 election will be a different kind of Republican. The majority of the Republican conference will be, have served three terms or fewer. It's a different kind of Republican, it will be a new style of leadership that will demand a decrease in spending. Demand truly smaller government. Demand individual responsibility. Demand that we get within our means and also harken back to those wonderful American fundamental principles that have made us the greatest nation in the history of the world. Look, we're not only interested in repealing the egregious aspects of the health care bill, we're interested in repealing the money from TARP. We're interested in repealing the non-stimulus bill. We're interested in repealing the bailout philosophy that continues to move us in a direction that makes us all subjects of the federal government as opposed to that wonderful American liberty and freedom that we all cherish.

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Wayongo Philosophy and the Question of National Decency - Modern Ghana

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 05:55 AM PDT

Among the Akan of southern and central Ghana, there is a maxim which loosely translates as follows: "Under almost any circumstance, death must be preferred over humiliation." For the Akan, therefore, it can hardly be gainsaid that the salient gauge of a civilized society, perforce, includes the level and extent to which the tenets of human dignity and human rights, in general, are both observed and enforced by the statal apparatus. And it is also not for naught that the Akan are fond of saying that: "No level of humn degradation is befitting of an Akan person."

And while, indeed, the preceding could be vehemently argued over as not being the especial preserve or cultural peculiarity of only Akan-speaking people but, in fact, a globally shared and cross-cultural value, still, what is left unsaid, in terms of how other Ghanaians of non-Akan descent, or extraction, envisage themselves was recently demonstrated by the country's Upper-East regional minister, Mr. Mark Wayongo, when the latter seemed to have implied that the public parading of some two male suspects of attempted-shooting stark naked on a principal street in the Upper-Eastern capital of Bawku was perfectly normal because, in the opinion of Mr. Wayongo, "the people of Bawku [have been living] under abnormal circumstances and conditions [for quite awhile now]."

The suspects, whose punitive nudity had been videotaped as well as photographed to accompany a flurry of media reports about the incident, are alleged to have gone on the lookout for some potato harvesters whom they intended to gun down for reasons not explained in any of the legion media reports (See "Stripping Suspects Naked Is More Acceptable Than Killing – Wayongo" MyJoyOnline.com 11/29/09).

And here may be promptly recalled for the benefit of readers that Bawku, Ghana's Upper-East's regional capital has been in the savage grips of inter-ethnic battles for sometime now, with quite an alarming rate of casualty figures being periodically reported.

Still, whether such local climatic turmoil warrants the summary suspension of the rule of law and moral decency, as Minister Wayongo appears to be implying, is one that may aptly be deemed moot. And to be certain, in the wake of his reportedly apparent complicity with military vigilantism, quite a slew of Ghanaian media reporters, commentators and letter-writers have demanded the resignation of the minister.

For their part, some members of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), billeted in Bawku primarily for peacekeeping purposes, but who have allegedly orchestrated this bestial Rawlings-like breach of public and moral decency, released a statement vehemently denying the fact that, indeed, anything of the aforesaid description might have occurred under their watch and, even more significantly, with their complicity. Curiously, albeit hardly surprisingly, almost immediately following the denial of its flagrant complicity in the humiliation of the two attempted-shooting suspects, a Ghanaian newspaper, the Daily Guide, released a video footage poignantly contradicting the GAF press-release denial, with the video footage clearly showing the two naked criminal suspects being drilled by some armed members of the GAF. The website of Ghana's leading private radio station, Joy-Fm, would also shortly post an article captioned "Stripping Crime Suspects: Were Soldiers Right?" with a terse lead reading as follows: "It is now established that the security establishment trying to maintain peace in the protracted Bawku conflict were economical with the truth in the matter of the two suspects arrested for allegedly attempting to gun down another person" (11/24/09).

Now, though, the question verges on one regarding whether in view of the fact that, as Minister Mark Wayongo maintains, "the people of Bawku live under abnormal circumstances and conditions," a wholly new and different set of laws must be permitted to be applied in administering the city of Bawku, in particular, and the Upper-East region, in general. Then also the question of the message that such system of governance may convey not only to the rest of the country but the global community at large arises. I mean, it is perfectly normal to maintain such momentarily commensurate measures as curfews and weapons codes, but to strip criminal suspects of all decency by luridly parading them naked through urban principal streets before these suspects have been arraigned before a legitimately constituted court of law, is one that may be aptly envisaged to be at odds with a model democracy such as Ghanaians prefer their country to be deemed by the proverbial international community.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI), the pro-democracy policy think tank, and the author of 21 books, including "Ghanaian Politics Today" (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.

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Not For Profit, Eh? Hold on There, Martha Nussbaum! - OpEdNews.com

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 08:26 AM PDT

By Thomas Farrell (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

For OpEdNews: Thomas Farrell - Writer

Duluth, MN (OpEdNews) April 2, 2010 The estimable Martha Nussbaum's forthcoming new book is titled NOT FOR PROFIT: WHY DEMOCRACY NEEDS THE HUMANITIES. Of course we are familiar with non-profit organizations (a.k.a. non-profits), so we should understand that not all worthwhile human activities have to be for monetary profit. As a result, we can speak of non-monetary profit or value. But "non-monetary profit" is a very cumbersome expression, so I'd prefer not to use it.

So I want to raise the following questions: How does one profit from studying the humanities (where the term "profit" refers to non-monetary profit)? What is the payoff and thus the profit of studying the humanities, if any?

Of course for a small percentage of people such as Nussbaum herself studying the humanities can lead to a career in teaching the humanities. So humanities teachers profit from the study of the humanities by the salaries they receive. But what about all the other people who might study the humanities in a series of core courses, but who do not go on to become humanities teachers?

At times in the United States, people thought that they should pursue a liberal arts education (which I use here as a rough equivalent for the humanities) so that they could develop a philosophy of life, whatever that is. Whatever this expression may have encompassed in their imaginations, it frequently did move them to take some philosophy courses, which are the core courses in the liberal arts and humanities. In my case I took six philosophy courses as the core courses in my undergraduate liberal arts education, in which I majored in English. By developing a philosophy of life, the college graduates would then be equipped for life, even if they happened to modify their acquired philosophy of life over the course of their lives. But today very few students enter college with the goal in mind of developing a philosophy of life. For them, a philosophy of life is evidently not a prerequisite for setting forth on their future adult lives.

But this brings us to Socrates' claim that the unexamined life is not worth living. By his standard, billions of people in the world in the past and in the present have lived lives that are not worth living. By his standard, the examined life is the only kind of life worth living.

Given his standard, Socrates could readily claim, "What would it profit someone to gain all the material wealth in the world if in the process of doing so he or she loses his or her soul?" In short, the purpose of the examined life is to find one's soul, not to lose it. This is the profit of the examined life. In other words, the examined life is for profit, the profit being to find one's soul, not to lose it.

Put differently, the unexamined life leads one to lose one's soul and not find it even if one gains all the wealth in the world.

Thus liberal arts education, or humanities education, is for profit. Its benefit is to learn how to live an examined life, instead of living an unexamined life.

Next, I want to discuss a certain point that Walter J. Ong, S.J (1912-2003) liked to make. He repeatedly made the point that we need both closeness (proximity) and distance to understand something, including presumably understanding ourselves.

By virtue of growing up in American culture today, we Americans bring our American cultural conditioning with us wherever we go. We might liken our American cultural conditioning to a portable prison-cage in which we move around wherever we may happen to go. Our American cultural conditioning is thus the closeness dimension of our lives.

Liberal arts education, or humanities education, provides us with the distance dimension that we need for understanding our cultural heritage and our cultural conditioning.

So 2 + 2 = 4 (in a decimal-based system of counting). According to Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living. But the examined life depends on understanding that which we are examining. According to Ong, we need both closeness (proximity) and distance to understand something, including our lives and our cultural conditioning. We have the closeness dimension by virtue of our American cultural conditioning. But liberal arts education, or humanities education, provides us with the distance dimension, so we need such education to lead an examined life.

Ah, but there remains the lure of the unexamined life, which is easily attained but at the price of losing our souls. But what profit is there, if any, of not losing our souls?

The profit of not losing one's soul is finding one's soul through living an examined life. The alternative to finding one's soul through living an examined life is to live one's life as a drifter drifting through life.

Arguably one of the most famous stories about someone drifting through life for about ten years of his adult life is the Homeric epic the ODYSSEY. But Odysseus is not happy about all his drifting. But does he live an examined life, or an unexamined life? In a certain sense he does examine his life because he recounts parts of his life on his journey. Yes, but does he profit from examining his life, and if he does, what exactly is the profit? He profits from recounting parts of his life because in the process of recounting his life he self-consciously appropriates his own life and thereby "owns" it as we say today. Thus the profit of the examined life is self-appropriation.

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