Studying Philosophy

PREFACE TO STUDENTS A student's job isn't easy. I remember it as exciting and challenging, but also stressful. It's tough being constantly evaluated, week in and week out. That's the bad news. The good news is that it's almost certainly a once-in-a-lifetime experience: rarely are people graded and tested so much. The other piece of good news is that if you can manage the stress, being a student can be the most exciting and enriching period in your life. I wrote this for two pretty simple reasons: to help students like you get as much as possible from your college education, and to help you excel in the courses you take. My assumption is that students want to do better in classes. Sometimes that may be motivated by the desire to get into a good graduate, medical or law school--a perfectly reasonable goal, in my view. Or maybe you have other reasons (I suggest some others in the first chapter). But whatever your reasons are, I wroteStudying Philosophyto help you succeed in your classes, in particular in Philosophy, and to improve your reading and writing skills. In the interests of full disclosure, however, I should add that I also hope to make you see the value--and the fun--of learning and of education in general. But more on that in a moment. Maybe as long as we're doing introductions I should say something here about myself. I graduated from Cornell College and went on to graduate school at Vanderbilt University where I got a Ph.D. in Philosophy and then an M.A. in Political Sociology. (No, I never burned a flag to protest the Viet Nam war, though I didwashone in 1969. But that's another story.) I also spent two years at Harvard Law School, where I became even more convinced that being a professor was the right thing for me after all, even though I'd always assumed I would be a lawyer. I did, however, meet my wife Amy at Harvard, so it was worth it for that reason alone. Sheisa lawyer, and also a critic, as you'll see. Our most recent travels took us to Oxford, where I spent a year as a Visiting Fellow at Balliol College and she studied law and economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. As for publishing, besides a variety of articles and two books on political and philosophical topics,The Unfinished Constitution(1989) andWords That Bind(1995), I've also edited or co-edited seven books. These includeMorality and Moral Controversies(sixth edition, 2002),Readings in Philosophy of Law(third edition, 1998),Justice and Economic Distribution(second edition, 1991), andColor-Class-Identity: The New Politics of Race(1996). I've taught philosophy for more than twenty years, at a variety of colleges and universities including Brandeis, the College of Charleston, Harvard, Lake Forest College, Tennessee State University, the State University of New York at Binghamton, and (in England) the University of East Anglia. So the odds are, I've taught at some point at a college or university like yours. I've also been chair of two departments, and am now Director of the Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Law at the State University of New York at Binghamton. We have three hundred majors in our program, most of whom go on to law school. So I guess I've never really escaped law after all, now that I think about it. My main teaching interests are--you guessed it--law and politics. In the classroom I'm best known for calling on students in the style of law schools, even in a large lecture course of more than 200 students (actually, I don't really "lecture" much at all). I'm proud to say that I've won two awards for my teaching. As you can perhaps already tell, this book is written in a direct and informal style. That was intentional, though it is not the style you should use in formal academic writing such as exams and papers. I do think, however, that it is the right style here.Arthur, John is the author of 'Studying Philosophy', published 2003 under ISBN 9780131839427 and ISBN 013183942X.