The New Philosophers

Queenie Ngo ’24 developed an interest in philosophy 作为华盛顿州穆基利奥市卡米亚克高中人权俱乐部的成员., where students gathered each Monday to discuss current events. “In this horrible, treacherous, beautiful, cruel, amazing thing called life, I was looking for an instruction manual,” she says.

“You’re born into this world that you’ve never been to before. You know nothing. There are a lot of people telling you what to do, but no one’s right. 没有人知道他们在做什么，因为我认为人类活得不够长，不会变得聪明. So, I started thinking to myself, ‘How do I do this? Someone’s got to know something.’”

A double major in philosophy and theater, Ngo directed her first play, A Madness Upon Us, in April 2022 at Keck Theater. She hasn’t decided what she wants to do after graduation, but it will involve “telling stories” in a complicated world, 她的哲学基础将是其中的核心:“哲学帮助我处理混乱和混乱, and find a way to thrive within it.” 

To those who might question Ngo’s choice of majors—namely, 她的父母——只要看看17世纪法国哲学家雷诺·笛卡尔就知道了, whose “I think, “故我是”这句格言往往是对这件事的开场白和结束语.

“It’s not my job to put them at ease,” she says. “很明显，有些事情你必须为了钱而做，并以某种方式生存下去. But I don’t think the purpose of life is to labor.”

Philosophy has always had an air of inscrutability, 每个哲学家对这个领域的定义可能都略有不同. “我更喜欢的观点是，哲学是对哪些信念值得相信的系统研究,” says Professor Clair Morrissey, 2017年西方大学琳达和托德·怀特教学奖获得者. Loftsgordon ’50 Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2023.

The study of philosophy at Occidental is as old as the College itself; in those early years, it was referred to as “mental science” in the curriculum. (1910年左右，在约翰·威利斯·贝尔(John Willis Baer)担任总统期间，它被改为“哲学”.)长期以来，这一学科一直被柏拉图等大理石半身像的墨守成规的教义所主导, Aristotle, and Descartes, 哲学正在改变——西方学校重新设计了课程，以反映全球视角的更大多样性.

“The profession is very different than it was when I got my Ph.D. in 2007,” says Associate Professor Ryan Preston-Roedder, 你于2017年加入学院，自2019年起担任系主任. (He also is faculty adviser to the Barack Obama Scholars Program.) “We keep an eye on national job searches, 你会看到越来越多的非西方哲学或非正典哲学的探索.”

随着两位Oxy最受欢迎的教授——2019年的玛西娅·霍米亚克和2021年的索尔·特雷格——退休，“系里的每个人都在权衡他们认为合适的哲学课程愿景,” says Professor Caro Brighouse, who joined the faculty in 1993. “我们最终得到了一些非常独特的东西，与其他哲学系不同.”

这些变化中最主要的是要求哲学专业的学生学习西方经典以外的课程. 学生们现在可以学习墨西哥、中国和非洲哲学传统的课程. 该系现在要求学生参加体验式学习课程，作为“在世界上做哲学”的一种方式,” Brighouse says.

For example, 哲学专业的学生在服务不足的社区与高中生一起工作, 教他们逻辑和推理，帮助他们在标准化考试中取得好成绩，并成功地在大学申请过程中导航. The efforts align with moral philosophy, in which students consider how to live a good life, and how to build a better society.

而哲学专业的人数(2023届毕业生中有11人)永远赶不上经济学专业的人数, 布里格斯也是学院负责学生学术事务的副院长，他对此并不担心. “家长们总是担心他们的学生是否会选择一些有助于他们在生活中找到工作的东西, and I think students are worried about that, too,” she says. “But 10 years out of college, 与其他专业相比，哲学专业的学生赚的钱很多.”

Indeed, 在医生、医师助理和法律专业中，哲学专业的学生占多数, politics, computer science, and community organizing, among a “huge range of fields” that demand big answers to big questions, Brighouse notes. “Philosophers are very good at clarifying messy problems, and then finding concrete solutions to those messy problems.”

Both in terms of its curriculum and its faculty, Oxy拥有全国最多样化的哲学系之一. “Our department really is a leader in this respect,” says Preston-Roedder, one of seven full-time faculty in philosophy. “We investigated what other departments were doing, and then did some reflection on how we thought it best to proceed.”

Preston-Roedder teaches classes on Africana philosophy, moral and political philosophy, moral psychology, and the philosophy of religion. His wife, Resident Assistant Professor Erica Preston-Roedder, 专门研究应用伦理学和哲学思想的应用, race and gender, public philosophy, and social morality. (Her current research examines the dynamics of multiracial families.)

Dylan Sabo, a resident associate professor since 2010, teaches classes on philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of language. The department’s newest member, Assistant Professor Season Blake, specializes in early Chinese philosophy, 而罗伯特·桑切斯副教授则专门研究墨西哥/拉丁/拉丁美洲哲学以及存在主义, and co-hosts a blog on Mexican philosophy.

When Sanchez arrived at Occidental in 2020, 他是墨西哥哲学传统的唯一传播者之一. In both his undergraduate and doctoral studies, 他被劝阻不要探索与欧洲传统不同的哲学家. “人们普遍怀疑墨西哥哲学作为一种传统的存在和价值, but more broadly about these other non-Western traditions,” Sanchez says.

部分挑战在于，很少有著作被翻译成英语. Sanchez is working to change that. He published Mexican Philosophy in the 20th Century (Oxford University Press) in 2017. With the support of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, he’s working on a translation and commentary of Samuel Ramos’ Toward a New Humanism (1940) for Routledge. One of Sanchez’s courses is Mexican Philosophy: Thought and Culture, 研究20世纪墨西哥哲学家塞缪尔·拉莫斯的著作, José Vasconcelos, and Emilio Uranga, as well as their 17th-century progenitor, Juana Inés de la Cruz.

在一节课上，桑切斯挑战了西方自柏拉图时代以来的美的概念. 西方哲学认为美在于对称、比例和比例. 桑切斯认为，按照西方的标准，阿兹特克雕像被认为是“丑陋的”和“可怕的”.他说:“这些雕像践踏了古典美学理论。. “It makes us wonder whether the idea of perfection, mathematical precision, 我们可以理解宇宙的想法并没有被误导. Maybe life is fundamentally ambiguous.”

No matter the changing look of the field, some constants remain. 哲学专业的学生被教导要有鉴别力:一段陈述是清晰的还是模糊的? They bring equal precision to writing, 只有在“不懈追求”所有相关信息后才提供解决方案, Brighouse says. “我们正在非常仔细地研究不同哲学家对某件事的看法. 这并不是要认可某个人或者模仿他们的方法论，而是要找到论点的优点和缺点, and how to make better arguments.”

“We have beliefs about how to live a good life, what’s right and wrong, but we also have beliefs about the nature of the universe, how we’re connected to it, what it means to be conscious, this huge set of different kinds of things that we have beliefs about,” Morrissey says. “And we can step back from those beliefs and then ask, which ones are mine, which do I have good reason to believe?”

Before graduation, 该系向哲学系的大四学生提出了一个尖锐的问题:你从专业中学到了什么? “他们最频繁、最激烈地说的一件事是，他们比刚开始时要开放得多, that they are able to see multiple sides of issues,” Morrissey says. (A former chair of the department, she is currently director of Occidental's Undergraduate Research Center.)

“他们愿意接受自己可能错了的想法，而错了也不会吓到他们. 这是哲学可以帮助的最大的事情之一:放下那些永远是对的需要. It’s humbling.”

One of Morrissey’s current students, Idris Smith ’24 of Pasadena, “哲学帮助我进入别人的思维空间. 能够基本理解并尊重他人的观点, and not necessarily see my own as the most valid.”

Smith started at Occidental as a computer science major, 但他想起了高中时读过的《柏拉图的洞穴, 这是一个寓言，主人公通过勇敢地尝试新思想，从智力的黑暗中走出来. The writing deeply affected him. “我受到鼓舞，要做最好的自己，做最有教养的人, and philosophy has always helped me do that,” says Smith, who hopes to teach philosophy at the secondary or college level.

Growing up in a bilingual household in San Francisco, 19岁的克莱莫·夏庞蒂耶一直想知道，她的语言——法语和英语——是如何帮助她形成对世界的理解的, and how words simultaneously contributed to “meaning-making.” She took her first philosophy course as a high school senior, 与她所谓的“人生大问题”作斗争:我们有自由意志吗? Are faith and reason contradictory?

她进入奥施康定大学，打算主修经济学，辅修哲学. 这在她大二的时候发生了变化，当时她和萨博一起学习了语言哲学. “那门课证实了这是适合我的专业，”夏庞蒂耶说.

她的哲学兴趣扩展到性别和莎莉·哈斯兰格的著作, Ford Professor of Philosophy at MIT, who spoke on “Ideology and Moral Knowledge” at Oxy in October 2017. (演讲结束后，夏庞蒂耶与哈斯兰格和她的教授共进晚餐.)

“学习哲学为我们提供了更好地了解我们的世界的工具和时间, ourselves, and our lives,” says Charpantier, 她目前正在纽约萨拉劳伦斯学院攻读创意写作硕士学位. “When looking for work after college, I was driven to do work that felt impactful, and that made a difference.”

24岁的伊丽莎·柯克(Eliza Kirk)计划主修生物学，这将满足医学预科的要求. 在2020年参加Oxy沉浸式学期(Oxy Immersive Semester)期间，她爱上了哲学。在这个学期中，学生们参加了一系列课程和社区/实习部分. 这些课程在大流行期间远程授课，以医学伦理为中心. The program is an innovative introduction to Oxy, providing three interrelated courses, and giving an interdisciplinary focus on the liberal arts.

具有讽刺意味的是，其中一门课是由莫里西教授的一门名为“与人相处”的哲学课. “I was doing it alone in my basement on Zoom,” says Kirk (who first met her high school and Oxy classmate, Queenie Ngo, in Kamiak’s Human Rights Club). “这门课程是关于病人和他们的医疗服务提供者之间的权力动态，以及塑造这些互动的种族和性别因素. 上完那门课后，我立刻意识到我想主修哲学.”

Kirk plans to become a pediatrician. 拥有哲学背景将使她能够给病人带来“很多关怀和很多思考”, many of whom struggle for access to healthcare. “It’s not that I’ll be pulling out Descartes all the time, but it will have a big impact on my approach to medicine,” she says. “It will make me a more thoughtful doctor.”

对塞拉·莫雷蒂-希区柯克来说，哲学给了她一张地图，让她明白自己在世界上的位置. “我开始批判性地思考什么是好人，”她说. “Philosophy wasn’t a subject that I had ever considered before, but I found that it studied everything I was interested in. We study philosophy to learn more about ourselves, what we know—or think we know—and why we believe the things we do.”

在加州大学河滨分校上了一门名为“当代道德问题”的课之后, 莫雷蒂-希区柯克转学到牛津大学，不久便宣布主修哲学. 这个话题培养了她对辩论的热爱，同时也磨练了她从各个方面考虑问题的能力.

Moretti-Hitchcock graduated summa cum laude from Occidental with a B.A. 主修哲学，辅修认知科学，并获得哲学系劳特奖最佳高级综合项目奖. (该奖项以名誉教授哈尔·劳特的名字命名，他于1963年至1991年在Oxy任教 died on September 27.)

She’s particularly drawn to the writings of Aristotle, who nearly 2,400 years ago advanced the idea that ethics require practice. Moretti-Hitchcock, who is studying for the LSAT and teaching music lessons in Burbank, has heeded the call. “We become virtuous by practicing virtuous activities, even if we don’t have it all figured out yet,” she says. “I’ve taken this attitude into my career search as well. 我可能还没有完全弄清楚，但我能做的就是不断向前迈进.”

Asked if she identifies with a particular philosopher, Sera Chang ’25 replies, “曾经是伊曼努尔·康德”——18世纪德国哲学家、人类自治的倡导者——“但是, after learning more viewpoints, I am not so sure anymore.”

As Chang tells it, “我总是天生就会问bpq——大哲学问题——并试图相应地过上‘美好的生活’. Apparently, 在我上第一节课之前，我就开始实践哲学了，不知道这是一门可以认真学习的东西!”

The Alhambra native, who transferred to Oxy as a sophomore, 她说，她是被“一位非常了不起、观点两极分化的教授”推入哲学领域的, Justus Richards,她在帕萨迪纳城市学院(Pasadena City College)读一年级时，从他那里学了一门应用现代伦理学课程.

作为一名哲学专业的学生，张说:“到目前为止，我很喜欢我的所有课程. Right now, I am really loving my Happiness, Meaning, and the Good Life class with Professor Ryan Preston-Roedder.”

Chang希望利用她的Oxy学位“进入一个能够帮助人们并造福‘更大利益’的领域”,’” she adds. “我希望以某种有意义的方式为社会做出贡献，尽管我还在摸索什么是有意义的.”

Even if they choose another major, she says, “我鼓励任何有兴趣更多地了解自己与自己以及整个世界的关系的人，至少上几门哲学课程. Although many questions will not have straightforward answers, they are out there somewhere waiting to be found.” 

Andy Faught is a freelance writer in Fresno. He profiled Associate Professor Bhavna Shamasunder in the Spring 2023 magazine.

Top photo: Seated, l-r, Resident Associate Professor Dylan Sabo (appointed in 2010), Professor Clair Morrissey (2010), Associate Professor Robert Sanchez (2020), and Professor Caro Brighouse (1993). 站立:副教授Ryan Preston-Roedder(2017)和助理教授Blake Season (2023).