I have two degrees in philosophy. I quit my PhD with an MA after I realized academic life wasn’t for me.
When people find this out about me… they rarely react positivity anymore. Most are confused, some look upset, others get defensive or crack cliche jokes about how I got a job with a useless degree like that or if I work at McDonalds.
It seems to have gotten way worse the past few years. In my late 20s/early 30s people seemed to react a lot more positively to this fact about my life? People would ask me about it and why I did it and what I studied specifically. I really liked those conversations.
I feel naive as to why philosophy is so controversial for the average person, anymore than English or History is? I really enjoyed my studies and still do them as a hobby now.
Quality of life wise philosophy is the best. Its the basis of most everything. I would be scared as heck to be looking for work with just that though. When I had an opportunity to get a masters I picked up education partially because I was interested in it but also because its largely a mix of philosophy, psychology, and statistics. Likely as close as I could get to philosophy while still being sellable on my resume.
BUT HOW DO JOB WIF HUMAMBNETEES DUGREE?
That’s basically why.
I think it’s cool as hell. We all need to read philosophy. I really wish I’d had the bandwidth to do something similar along with my own chosen path. Mad respect.
I personally think anybody here saying your negative response is because people hate thinkers or anti intellectualism or whatever are totally missing the point. Those things are certainly true. But probably not why you get weird looks.
Probably it’s a combination of 2 things:
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In 2025 philosophy, English, history, poetry, etc are to greater or lesser extents “hobby degrees”. People enjoy the topics generally but don’t see a way to repay loans using that degree, because if you’re not going to go teach it or write the next book, there’s no money in it. These are things we do with our free time for the love of it.
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By extension of 1, if you CAN have one of these degrees you either a) have a boatload of money, b) you must be naive of the fact (according to people you are talking to) that you have no idea that your job prospects are so limited, or c) you have extreme aptitude to be part of the small group that can make it, but everybody will still limp you into b.
I have a friend who majored in music in college, but not to teach: it was specifically to play timpani. He also was perplexed at the negative reactions he would get. Unfortunately that’s when someone told him that there are only like 10 professional concert timpanist positions in the country that provide a salary you can live from, and the rest just moonlight and have other jobs. After 1 year if hunting a good position he sold his drums and got a job in marketing selling windows and siding.
Of course the world would be less vibrant without professionals in these areas, but there are a lot more philosophy majors working in, say, marketing than there are Humes, Kants, Socrateses, Hegels, and so on.
Basically it doesn’t look practical so it seems like either a bad financial choice or that you’re a spoiled rich kid unless you mention “double major” type stuff.
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Just imagining the wasted time and brain power makes me uncomfortable
I think Western capitalist culture has slowly eroded the value of thinking in favor of doing and, through gradual financial coercion via the International Monetary Fund, this has slowly become the global dominant worldview.
In other words, you were born a few centuries too late for philosophy to be valued. Even in the past it was often met with scrutiny (though often commanded respect).
Nowadays thinkers are expected to ascend corporate ladders and embed themselves within instituions with the ultimate goal of extracting excess capital beyond ones needs from said institutions. That is what the current global value system supports.
I have a degree in philosophy and a degree in therapy and i promise the therapy part makes people way more uncomfortable than the philosophy part. I never really encountered weird attitudes about philosophy tbh. maybe it’s how I own it. I very earnestly live like a Socrates - Diogenes hybrid and try to make smart stuff sound dumb and safe to engage the community neurons. and my general excitement about it, if my philosophy background comes up, it’s from a place of passionate curiosity where we’re already talking about interesting shit and me using the ph word just makes them think “oh we’re about to get into it”.
it could also be the context with which ppl get to know me is more receptive to philosophical conversations. I genuinely believe that therapy is literally just a modern philosophy practice.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours outside a university course studying epistemology. It’s one of the most valuable skills I’ve ever learned.
I spread epistemology like a virus. Thank you philosophy, for the vessel you lend your brother.
I find philosophy fascinating. I’m especially fascinated by logic and logical fallacies.
When you repeatedly call out a theist for faulty logic, its so satisfying.
Those crappy old chairs in the classrooms have no lumbar support.
In this dissonant world people are afraid of logic as they may be vexed by what is discovered.
I think a philosophy degree is cool as hell. Fuck anyone who thinks otherwise.
it makes me sleepy
I have nothing about people choosing to study whatever they want.
I get a little bothered when people suggest philosophy majors as the “moral compass of society”. For instance, I’ve been hearing more and more on how “philosophy is central to society because we need philosophy majors in ethical committees everywhere”. And while I agree that ethical committees are important, I disagree that studying philosophy makes you more fit for a ethical committee than any other person. As moral of a society derives from the whole society, those ethical committees should follow more a popular jury structure imho.
My point is that when people follow this position they are, inherently saying “a philosophy major is more moral than you” which is the thing that ultimately bothers me.
i interpret that to mean ethics committees that provide oversight to other aspects of an organization should study ethics. i’d argue that’s a good place to start, but a better direction to go is to include conversations about ethics and their analysis in all curricula. there’s a huge difference between morality and ethics. morarlity is a moment to moment decision making process. ethics describes a critical systems analysis field directed at defining and building a more ideal society
But ethics and morality emerges from society. Giving a small group the power to decide and indoctrinate over that is dangerous and ultimately “unethical”.
I get the feeling of trying to push it. Nowadays most people studying philosophy is left wing. So pushing that those people should control society ethics is basically pushing our political agenda.
I’m leftist, but not the kind of leftist that would do “everything” for the cause. Because I see the dangers of it. What if we do that, we leave ethics of society into a small group and that small group now or in the future diverges from what the society or myself consider moral?
That’s why I’m also against that idea of trying to push a “ethics” course on every major. Now it’s seen as a way to push a particular agenda that we agree on. But surely in the future it will be used to push an agenda we don’t like (as it had happened in the past), that’s a big risk.
I prefer to leave ethics to the individual and society as a sum. An not giving a small group power over it.
yeah which is why i advocate everyone should study it at least a little. just leaving it to go without discussion or serious analysis just leads to anti-intellectualism and eventually fascism, but centralizing it just gives fascists a focus point to concentrate on getting into power. it’s a tough balance to strike. but the basics to me is, as someone who studied ethics, we need to be having conversations about ethics all the time because if we don’t, then moral relativists will justify genocide, rape, and whatever horrible shit they as individuals find acceptable.
we both agree that more left and more everyone is better, but i think we need to get everyone actively involved rather that passively involved
But that’s not advocating for everyone studying. It’s advocating for everyone being taught it. By a teacher. That implies that there would be a specific curriculum. And that curriculum will follow a specific dogma.
With other subjects you can have neutral teachings. Math is math. Others may be more complicated, like history, but there’s some degree of neutrality to be found
With ethics I think is inherently impossible to teach it on a neutral way. You would need to teach some particular set of ethics. And there’s not a scientific way to describe a set of ethic norms as the right one. Quoting Professor Farnsworth “Science have not prove that human life is important”. A set of ethics would be chosen as the correct one, and it will be taught by a teacher that will most likely come from a particular political scene. And even while agreeing with that political school of thought, I see great dangers in trying to officially push it as the correct one.
I remember in my school years. I had both religion subject (because it was a religious school) and moral subject (a subject mandated in school curriculum by the government). And it was just wrong, trying to push things like that into children (or adults) even if it was good (moral subject curriculum was written by a left wing government).
I think the members of society should conclude to the best ethical norms, not by indoctrination, but by experience. It should be the set of norms that they would see better for their experience in the society. Thus the way to “teach” people about the ethics we see as good is building a good society with those ethics. Basically teach by experience.
you don’t have to teach a particular set of ethics. you teach a framework of analysis and then analyze some systems. you’re still mixing morality with ethics, which is fair, they’re related. basically i’m advocating to teach kids to question every authority with a critical lens. but this hasn’t anything to do with religion, norms, or adopting a pre-existing system, but about teaching how to analyze systems
That is fair. And a sensible part of a school age curriculum (already included in my country, that’s included in philosophy mandatory courses). But I don’t see it having a extension to be included “everywhere”, once taught in school is taught. I won’t see a point continuing that formation in universities, same as I won’t see why someone studying history should have an algebra course in university.
where i am, the united states, serious analysis of philosophy and ethics doesn’t enter your curriculum until you are in college and studying either at a liberal arts school where even the engineers have to study the humanities, or you are majoring in one of the liberal arts. so i’m a little jealous of your outlook right now 😂
that’s where our status comes from teaching history majors math: it’s their first time learning it many times even though many places algebra was covered in middle school. our primary educations don’t start until adulthood here and we’re constantly behind, and those critical thinking courses are elective with it being totally fine to drop out of highschool up to 6 years before you ever would have been expected to be exposed to it.
and as long as that’s possible in one county, it’s possible in any country. our oppressors want us stupid, so talk to a kid today about identifying how someone else is justifying what right and wrong is today!
Philosophy gets a bad rap, even by fellow academics sometimes. Commonly cited criticisms are that it has become too prosaic and detached from society at large. Maybe that’s true of some philosophers but I don’t see a problem with people studying something purely for the joy of learning and there are philosophers who do an excellent job of explaining philosophical ideas to lay audiences, Alain de Botton immediately springs to mind. Status Anxiety is among my favourite videos.
The reality is that we have too few people who think about what it means to live a good life and make a wholesome society
anymore than English or History is
It’ll be the same for them too.
Nobody appreciates learning for the sake of learning anymore, learning is strictly for getting jobs. Although if you have the money to spend on getting many degrees worrying about paying off loans, then there may be another aspect to the resentment, considering the cost of university these days
