Just an addition to Nicholas Smith's suggestion that in order to avoid adhering to a specific philosophical viewpoint, one adopt a standpoint of 'epistemic humility', which I don't think is that easily achieved. (I, for what it's worth, don't think that one can up and decide to epistemically humble.) Historical, contextual, study of the history of philosophy can help to lead one to take such a position. As one sees the extent to which philosophical questions and answers are deeply bound up with contingent historical circumstances, circumstances which vary greatly from our own, we can come to see not only that philosophical positions developed by 'the mighty dead' were deeply contingent, but also that our own cherished positions themselves are deeply contingent, and may well be bound up with contingent historical circumstances. Reflection on the extent to which philosophy is contextual in this way may well lead one to begin to question the assumptions that we take for granted and that underwrite the...

Although philosophy, like most of the 'liberal arts', does not directly prepare one for any career, majoring in philosophy does equip one with 'portable' skills--the ability to read carefully and to think and write clearly--that are useful in many careers. Surveys have shown that philosophy majors are among the top scorers on LSAT exams; I have heard that Wall Street firms like philosophy majors, because they have good analytic skills. I myself think that a Philosophy major is good preparation for almost any career that does not require specialized knowledge, so you should not worry about your future!! (Information on this topic is also available from the American Philosophical Association website, which I urge you to check out.)

The question needs to be clarified a bit, I think. Philosophy is taught in high school in certain countries: for example, in France, in the last year of high school, ' terminale ', all students studied philosophy; in the US, philosophy courses are taught in some high schools, largely private schools; however, it does seem to be the case that philosophy courses are not regularly taught in American secondary schools. I agree that the skills taught in philosophy courses--careful reading, clear prose, the construction of arguments--would be beneficial for all students, for they are highly 'portable' and are used in all walks of life. I am inclined to think that one reason that philosophy courses are not generally taught in high schools--at least today--is due to the tests to which schools must teach; another reason that philosophy may not be taught in high schools is that there generally aren't qualified teachers of philosophy working at the secondary level. (Here the contrast with France is...

The remarks on the topic at the Philosophical Gourmet website seem to me to be generally on target. (For those remarks, click here .) Generally, I think that liberal arts colleges (such as Amherst, Williams, Oberlin, or the Claremont Colleges), or universities that do not have graduate students (e.g., Dartmouth), are better places not only for undergraduates interested in studying philosophy, but for undergraduates generally. (Full disclosure: I attended Amherst College as an undergraduate, and did my graduate work at Harvard, before moving on to Johns Hopkins and am now at UC Irvine.) I have been associated with a number of different kinds of institutions, from a small college, to a largish research university, to a small research university, to a very large research university. While I think that in principle, it is possible for an undergraduate to get a good education in philosophy--or any subject, for that matter--at any school. However, at a large research university, the student may...

Just on the basis of my own experience, it does indeed seem to be the case that a disproportionate number of undergraduate philosophy majors in coed institutions of higher education are male. (The same disproportion is to be found in the profession itself.) I'm not sure whether the data has been collected, although you might just do a simple Google search to see if anything comes up. I can only speculate why such a disproportion exists. It may in part have to do with the fact, noted above, that the overwhelming majority of faculty members in philosophy departments are male; it may have something to do with the nature of philosophy itself, which, on account of its focus on arguments, can often be seen as combative--although, of course, it need not be, and at its best, probably should not be--and such intellectual combat seems to be coded male. Philosophy courses may be seen as part of an 'argument culture' that puts off certain female students while attracting male students, therefore accounting for...

Russell's History of Western Philosophy , while consistently entertaining, and worth reading on that score, is not a reliable source for knowledge about the philosophers it treats. The work may be not altogether unfairly described as one of the several 'shilling shockers' that Russell, who always needed money, wrote: sales of the History of Western Philosophy guaranteed Russell's financial security for the rest of his life. I myself don't know of a good single-volume history of Western philosophy. Anthony Kenny has written multiple volumes on the history of Western philosophy; there is also a very fine series, published by Oxford University Press, with volumes covering various periods in the history of Western philosophy, including Terence Irwin on Classical Thought, John Cottingham on the Rationalists, and Roger Woolhouse on the Empiricists, but I can't vouch for the quality of the other volumes. Perhaps other respondents know of a good single-volume treatment of the history of Western...

Another relatively recent, good, general introduction to a variety of philosophical issues is Thomas Nagel, What Does it All Mean? , which I myself read in my first year of graduate school and found most illuminating. Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy is a classic from relatively early in the twentieth century. You might also consider reading some of the canonical texts of Western philosophy (in my ignorance, I don't know Eastern philosophy, and so am not in a position to recommend any works of Eastern philosophy): a good place to begin is with Plato's 'Socratic' dialogues, the Apology , Euthyphro , and Crito ; if you like those dialogues, you might move on to the Republic , which treats many of the problem areas of philosophy, including epistemology (the nature of knowledge), metaphysics (the nature of what there is), ethics, and aesthetics, among other areas; a couple of more 'modern' works that you might consider are Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy ...

In Between Man and Man , Martin Buber recounts the following story, which he takes to illuminate the experience at the heart of I and Thou : "When I was eleven years of age, spending the summer on my grandparents' estate, I used, as often as I could do it unobserved, to steal into the stable and gently stroke the neck of my darling, a broad dapplegray horse. It was not a casual delight but a great, certainly friendly, but also deeply stirring happening. If I am to explain it now, beginning from the still very fresh memory of my hand, I must say that what I experienced in touch with the animal was the Other, the immense otherness of the Other, which, however, did not remain strange like the otherness of the ox and the ram, but rather let me draw near and touch it. When I stroked the mighty mane, sometimes marvelously smooth-combed, at other times just as astonishingly wild, and felt the life beneath my hand, it was as though the element of vitality itself bordered on my skin, something that was...