Yes and no, I'd say. Let us assume that two of the things that makes a good elementary school teacher are (i) encouraging thinking and asking questions about why things (including the pupils themselves) are the way they are, and (ii) encouraging a certain playfulness with concepts (seeing what happens when one tries to extend their reach, use them outside conventional employment). These activities are also a significant part of the basic toolkit of philosophy. So, even without knowing it, a good elementary school teacher is teaching philosophy. However, does such a teacher need any formal, academic training in philosophy? Almost certainly not. Please see the materials listed under a link on the right hand side of the AskPhilosophers page.

How 'irrational' are we talking, here? It's Friday, I've justfinished giving a six-hour long lecture on Kant, which was nearly asdistressing to me as it was to the poor freshmen who had to sitthrough it. Now I'm thirsty. I go to the pub with friends, and drink,and talk about football, holidays, movies – nothing 'abstruse' andcertainly no philosophy. Is this rational or irrational behavior? Your question is a good one, and it leads us to questions aboutwhether there is any positive or negative relation between studyingphilosophy and happiness. This question has been raised many times inthe history of philosophy, and on this site. As you phrase it,however, I think your question involves an equivocation between'abstruse thinking' and 'rationality'. Plenty of concrete activitiescan be 'rational' (in the broad sense of happening according to law,order, a consideration of means and ends, moral principles orwhatever) without being 'abstruse' (again, in a broad sense ofdifficult to understand because...

It is certainly possible to show, empirically, that the naturalsciences are very often influenced by political forces, broadlyspeaking. For example, the practices of scientists of all disciplinesare demonstrably affected by: decisions about research funding andcriteria; how research problems are prioritized, ordered, evaluated,posed; how results are interpreted, published, ignored or celebrated;historically variable standardization of procedures forexperimentation, the selection and treatment of subjects, dataanalysis, recording or reporting; indeed, what even counts as'scientific'. But moving from this 'very often influenced' to'inherently political' is not easy. The question is no easier toanswer in the second form of it that you pose, concerning the 'bodyof knowledge'. On the one hand knowledge appears impersonal andisolated from its conditions of production or use in the way thatscientific 'conduct' or 'process' is not. On the other, it might seemhopelessly abstract to claim for a body of knowledge...

It is certainly possible to show, empirically, that the natural sciences are very often influenced by political forces, broadly speaking. For example, the practices of scientists of all disciplines are demonstrably affected by: decisions about research funding and criteria; how research problems are prioritized, ordered, evaluated, posed; how results are interpreted, published, ignored or celebrated; historically variable standardization of procedures for experimentation, the selection and treatment of subjects, data analysis, recording or reporting; indeed, what even counts as 'scientific'. But moving from this 'very often influenced' to 'inherently political' is not easy. The question is no easier to answer in the second form of it that you pose, concerning the 'body of knowledge'. On the one hand knowledge appears impersonal and isolated from its conditions of production or use in the way that scientific 'conduct' or 'process' is not. On the other, it might seem hopelessly abstract to claim for a...

Two points of clarification. In my response above, I am certainlynot endorsing Kant's solution, and I apologise if my wording gave that impression. Rather, I was giving his argument as an example of how some philosophers reply to the very fine question 'What makes God, GOD?'. That is, I am claiming that his versionof the moral argument is philosophically interesting in that it triesto avoid the problem that Professor Antony and I both believebedevils (so to speak) the traditional arguments. It does this bytrying to show that faith is entailed by, and indeed incorporatedwithin, moral action. Does Kant's argument work? Well, it certainlydoesn't threaten my atheism -- but it is certainly also not'tortured' in the manner Professor Antony suggests. (On the point ofthe supposed contradiction between moral and atheistic beliefs seethe end of sec. 87 of Kant's Critique of Judgement .) I should also clarify what Imeant by 'in the sphere of faith'. Historically, when Anselmdeveloped the ontological...

As we know, there are a small number oftraditional arguments, and many hundreds of variations, that purportto prove the existence of a perfect, necessary or all-creating being.What is sometimes glossed over in presentations of these arguments isthe last step, which must be something like 'we have proved the existenceof X, and X is the being that we call “God”'. This last stepinvolves more than just attaching a name to something. Rather, it isarguing that the properties of X are such that X must be deemed to'have authority' as you put it above; that is, a being that should beworshiped, obeyed, or whatever. Now, if the properties of X are thatof an all-powerful, all-creating or perhaps all-knowing being, doesour concept of this being demand worship? That is, even were I to accept theexistence of a being matching this description, with what force doesit follow that I also accept this being's authority? These problemsconfront the philosophy of religion when it deals with thetraditional arguments, and...

You are certainly not alone in having a little trouble! These terms are used by Nietzsche in his Birth of Tragedy, which was his first published book. It is important to keep a few things in mind when reading this book. First, Nietzsche’s explicit intent was not to talk about the Greeks at all, but rather to talk about the contemporary European scene by way of a complex historical analogy with Greece. Thus, it is not even clear whether any particular artists that Nietzsche may have had in mind are to found in ancient Greece, or 19 th Century Germany. Second, Nietzsche is employing a fairly conventional anthropological notion: that deities and myths are ideal representations of underlying cultural trends. Thus the Apollonian and Dionysian as concepts stand for trends or forces in Greek culture rather than specific cultural products. Third, Nietzsche is also not particularly interested in the Apollonian or Dionysian in themselves. He becomes interested only insofar as these two cultural forms work...

The dialogues we read today were written by Socrates' student, Plato. Socrates was a teacher who believed that debate and discussion were the only ways to arrive at knowledge or, at least, to recognise ignorance. So, Socrates didn't write books of any kind. Plato's dialogues are a kind of compromise: they are written down, but written down as debates and discussions , and presumably designed to stimulate thought in the reader in a way that is at least akin to the face to face teaching of Socrates. (In the Phaedrus , one of the Socratic dialogues by Plato, a rather compelling argument against writing can be found.) It is usually assumed that Plato's earliest works are pretty close representations of Socrates' techniques and ideas, and that later works are in Plato's own voice, so to speak. However, since the dating of the dialogues involves considerable guesswork, this is difficult to establish. Plato probably wrote treatises on philosophical topics along the model of other Greek...

I run a freshman course with the rather over-egged title 'The Metaphysics of the Everyday'. It's purpose is to begin, each week, with a different current event or issue, and try to tease out what philosophical issues might be at play. Obviously, we cannot go into a great deal of depth about either the issues or the philosophical notions; that's not the point. The point is rather to encourage the recognition of the influence and ubiquity of certain ideas. Why am I telling you this? Seeing philosophy at work in 'everyday life' is a skill that first has to be acquired. A good, though probably a silly, analogy is with bird-watching: one might think that the ability to spot birds is related simply to eyesight or attention, but it really is a skill that needs to be acquired by many chilly dawns in forests. Moreover, there are good reasons why many people never acquire this skill (spotting philosophy, I mean, not birds), or even feel the need to acquire it. I would say that we all have a relation to...

Thank you for your question. It seems to me that the 'rational philosopher' in your question starts out from the assumption that there is one and only one type of rationality. This, however, is patently false, since what is and what is not rational, and why, and how do we know, are all key questions within philosophy. Think of Quine or Wittgenstein, among many others. 'Rationality' is indeed one of the categories on this site (on the list to your left). The philosophers you mention one and all believe that philosophy is essentially historical. By this I mean they tend to agree that philosophy is not an enterprise that can be conducted except through a constant interrogation of its own roots. Not surprisingly, one of the historical facts that fascinates these philosophers is that the notion of rationality is constantly changing. A few examples: the dialectical method in Plato should be considered (arguably, at least) not a technique among potential others (others that could have arrived at or...

A fascinating question. In defining philosophical error, we are venturingclose to trying to define philosophy itself -- and about that there is littleagreement! So, I’m going to try to avoid answering your question in such away as to assume an answer to that other one. This time of year, my thoughts turn to the marking of student philosophyessays. It's worth remembering that not all errors in philosophy essays aredistinctively philosophical in some way. There are factual errors about historyor language; errors of understanding or exposition; errors of reasoning. Thesecould be errors in a science paper, a history paper or whatever. In fact, I'mhaving trouble thinking of any type of error that could not be re-categorisedadequately in one of these ways. The best I can do are something like anerror of omission. For example, where an opportunity is missed to draw andinteresting conclusion, or make a fruitful connection to some other idea. To besure, such errors are also common in other disciplines....

Nietzsche was very careful in his presentation of the notion of 'eternalrecurrence'. In his published work, it is always put forward as a hypothesis --the purpose of which is, as you say, something like a guide. Mainly innotebooks did he experiment with trying to demonstrate it as a metaphysicaltruth. Assuming for the moment that we disregard Nietzsche's well-knownscepticism concerning the standard modes of metaphysical argumentation, theargument does indeed require as one of its assumptions the infinite extent oftime. But this is not the only assumption: he also requires a broadlydeterministic conception of cause and effect, the idea that all events areinextricably interconnected, and the principle of the conservation of energy.And many of these assumptions, also, he himself challenges elsewhere. In brief, in order to take seriously the eternal recurrence as ametaphysical claim, you would need to redefine almost beyond recognition manyof the constituent concepts. One such attempt, controversial...