General Tips for Studying Philosophy

Ashley McDowell:

General Tips for Studying Philosophy

See below for a short essay on what it is to study philosophy. This can help you get a general idea of what your instructor is looking for and grading you on.

Also see Help Studying Philosophy, Writing Philosophy Papers, Reading Philosophy Papers, How to Revise a Philosophy Draft, and Links for Philosophical Skills.

Quick tips on studying philosophy:

go to the lectures.

Philosophy is hard to learn on your own from books.

go to discussion sections.

Socrates knew that doing philosophy out loud with others works really well; he never wrote down any of his philosophy. Sitting around asking questions and trying out your answers will help you learn philosophy better.

talk to other people about what you’re studying.

Organize a study group; go to Philosophy Club meetings; corral your roommate and make him or her hang out and talk some philosophy with you. Again, doing philosophy out loud helps you learn it much better.

read the material – preferably more than once.

For many people, reading both before and after the lecture makes it much easier to understand the material. If you don’t want to read the whole selection again, at least skim it after you’ve heard about it; it will help it sink in. It probably saves time over trying to understand it weeks later before the exam if you didn’t do enough to really comprehend it at the time it was being taught.

make good notes.

Not just in class, which is essential, but it can also help to take notes on what you read. If you’re having to sum up what you’ve read in a few phrases, you’re having to pay attention and make yourself get the gist of the reading. Try to take good notes in class – what seems clear at the time can be baffling or fade away after a little time.

explain philosophical ideas to someone else.

You know that you really understand something if you can explain it to someone else. If you can’t find someone to try to explain an argument or theory to, pretend. Use a pet, mirror or wall and act like it just offered you a million dollars to explain this philosophical concept in your own words (hey, it could happen!).

if you’re studying logic and reasoning, do the homework.

The skills in these classes are more like math skills – they’re a matter of memorization and practice. If you get behind on the homework or practice assignments, it will be hard to catch up; if you do them all, you’ll almost certainly do better in the class.

on assignments, learn to explain your answers.

The shortest answer is almost never the best one on a philosophy test or paper. You will usually be expected to say something about what makes that the right answer, even if it’s a matter of fact. For example, if you’re asked to reconstruct an argument that you’ve studied, remember to define philosophical terms and make sure each point is getting across loud and clear. This may mean saying the same thing in more than one way – that’s okay as long as you’re not just saying it over and over to fill space. Think of yourself as telling the reader why the answer you’ve given is the right answer; what it is about it that makes it right.

do your best to see what’s good about each view.

Even if your gut is telling you a philosophical theory is dead wrong, you’ll understand it better if you try to figure out why someone might think it’s right. Then you can do a better job of deciding what’s wrong about it. You could pretend that you really want this theory or argument to be right – that it’s your mom’s great idea or if it were right world peace would happen. Whatever – before you knock an idea make sure you’ve tried it out thoroughly.

try to make it real to yourself.

Think about how a philosophical issue might apply to your interests or your life (we know, sometimes that’s a stretch). Imagine situations where the answer to a philosophical question matters. Make up your own examples to test theories. Use your creative and imaginative abilities to try to engage the topic, and you just might (gasp!) find it more fun than if you think of it as memorization. And what’s more fun is easier to learn.

What it is to study philosophy

In most philosophy classes, the point is not to get you to memorize things or learn facts. The point is to get you to understand positions and arguments. This can be different from other fields, so it may take some special effort. But thinking philosophically is a skill, which can be learned, which means that it gets easier the more you do. And it’s a skill that transfers into tons of other things you will do, so you’ll be rewarded in more than just this class if you learn it.

Philosophers are not just talking to hear themselves talk (although it may seem that way sometimes!). They are trying to get as close as they can to the right answers on very difficult issues. Most of the time the issues you’ll study are still live issues – there is no consensus as to what the right answers are. Otherwise, those issues wouldn’t still be philosophical issues. Don’t expect the instructor to tell you the right answers and test you on them! He or she may be asking you to understand various attempts at answers and decide which one you think is most likely right. You may need to provide reasons why you think one position is better than others. But first you must make sure you understand the various positions and how the arguments for them work.

This means that there are lots of things you can be judged right or wrong about in a philosophy class – just not what the right answer is to the deep questions. You can be right or wrong about matters of fact you’ve studied. For example: what some particular philosopher said or thought, how an argument you have studied goes, what the definition of a philosophical term is, whether an example works for or against a certain theory, and much more. To really get a question right, it’s often necessary to do a good job of explaining your answer, to show that you understand what you’re saying and aren’t just regurgitating memorized words. See tips above about giving explanations.

There are also things you can be judged to have done well or badly in a philosophy class – getting the right answers about those matters of fact is usually not enough. If you are asked to take a stand on an issue, you have to do a good job of defending your position. This means giving reasons that are meant to convince other people that the position is more likely to be true. You are most likely learning a lot about argumentation and logic in your class, both in lectures and in studying what philosophers have written. You should know that to do well in most philosophy classes you have to show that you have learned the skills of argumentation and logic as well as the facts of philosophical arguments and theories.

So there are two basic tasks for you to prove you have accomplished in a philosophy class: understanding the material and deciding what you think about it. In lower-level courses you will mostly be focusing on understanding; and in any philosophy course you can’t go on to deciding what position you think is right until you understand what the positions are. So don’t make the mistake of thinking philosophy is going to be about saying what you think alone! The tips above can help you get better at learning and understanding the philosophy that others have done so that you can go on to do your own.

last updated 2/04