How many humanitarians debating whether to major in Philosophy have heard that a philosophy degree is useless? Probably at least every other one. We can debate the practicality of "being a philosopher" all we want, but we cannot deny the statistics showing that young people are still choosing Philosophy as their major.
Private Wake Forest University, for example, reported a nearly 300% increase in Philosophy students in 2021-2022 compared to 1997-1998. For comparison, they point to their Politics & International Affairs department, where the number of students graduating grew by only 125% in the same period.
"But that's just one university!" you'll say. Well, not quite. In 2022, UC Berkeley saw a significant rebound in students interested in humanities education, too. Compared to five years ago, the number of students majoring in the Division of Arts and Humanities rose by 43.2%. And in comparison to 10 years ago, it's now up by 73%.
Philosophy may be having a moment in Canadian universities as well. Athabasca University reported a 12% increase in students taking philosophy courses in 2021. At the University of British Columbia, the number of philosophy honours students has risen by 17% too. The number of philosophy majors and honours students rose from 65 to 80 between 2014-2015 and 2019-2020 at the University of Alberta.
Young people might be turning to philosophy to make sense of the world in these tumultuous times. One student, Matthew Rowe, told UC Berkeley News that studying philosophy helps him understand and deal with the apathy people have for the current big issues, such as the climate crisis.
"Philosophy, in my opinion, asks more fundamental questions that seem to transcend global topics, such as politics, in terms of their everyday importance," he explained. "The problem largely has to do with how people have such a hard time comprehending the size and magnitude of the environmental crisis that they often turn apathetic toward it, in response."
If you've ever tried reading any philosopher's work (and not the SparkNotes version), whether for school or just for fun, you've probably experienced that it's not actually that fun (try Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari and get back to me, if you don't believe).
Most great thinkers have used overly complex, sophisticated language, assuming that the readers will be noble intellectuals or at least members of the upper class. Philosophy is about humanity, but is it actually for humanity?
Cambridge philosopher Simon Blackburn claims that the old masters of philosophy, from Plato to Wittgenstein, actually wrote for the people. Since Kant, Hegel, and other German philosophers, the subject apparently became corrupted. The concepts and the language have become so convoluted that philosophy has since been for the select few.
