Benjamin Wand - Verbose CV

Teaching Philosophy

Since March 2021

Previously

When I was asked to teach philosophy to a private student in February 2021, I felt a little confused and conflicted. Although I had studied philosophy in my early twenties, in the recent years I thought the best thing one can do with it is theory of science, and otherwise philosophy is about as good and useful as contemplating whether ketchup is a smoothie. But then, I was offered money, and, being endlessly curious, I quite like being appointed to absurd-ish positions.

Practically

The student is a retired architect. We are reading Sophie's World and I prepare homework for him. So far in his life he had been used to dealing with decidable and practical subjects and introducing him to discourse is challenging, both for him and me.
Being a theory teacher for the first time, I have to learn to give useful homework. If I do not explicitly say 'justify your reasoning', I typically get answers like 'Yes' or 'I don't like him'. (He dislikes Aristotle.) And even if that is a little frustrating, I probably learn more than him.
To make things less frustrating, I try mixing it up with tasks in cultural studies, for instance I asked for a short presentation about Architecture subjects of the times we're in. The culture-subjects are much easier for him than the philosophical ones.
Mostly we spend two weeks with each chapter/philosopher, except when I find it more interesting like with Descartes and Kant. So far he hasn't expressed interest in specific philosophers or philosophical questions but I hope that it will happen before we are finished (what ever that means).

Positioning

So, what do I think now, is ketchup a smoothie?

Socrates made a good start

Getting reminded that European philosophy started with Socrates 'I know that I don't know', suddenly made it likable again. I profoundly agree to the appreciation of not knowing, as itself and as a requirement for deeper understanding. If differentiating oneself from people who feel safe in their knowledge was the birth place of European intellectual history, we can continue to learn and humanity might not be lost.

Empiricism!

Dealing with philosophy again also made me realize that I am an Empiricist in the age of computers and big data, I believe that in order to understand things we need acquired data about real life, which during studying made me feel uneasy about theories that are theory-only. (One might still enjoy them like fiction though. *)
It would be a philosophical question to ask whether humanity is able to live in peace and under which conditions, but I want a scientific, psychological or sociological answer to that and not discussions of someone who made up their own image of humanity. This is a hard filter, I don't have much humor for economic or psychological theories built on a self invented image of human as well.

Being a philosopher

So, on the one hand I'm still at 'philosophy is good for theory of science', but I also learnt that, being endlessly curious and enjoying learning together in a dialogue, I am a philosopher.


* For your rationalism entertainment, here is how the Proof of God by René Descartes works: He has a sense of a perfect being, and he notices that his buddies have that too. This image of perfection can't come from his own, limited mind, it has to come from the perfect being itself. Therefore god exists. Isn't that delightful?
Here is another one: Descartes starts his book Discourse on the Method 'The sound mind is what is best distributed in the world because everyone thinks they have enough, and even people who are difficult to satisfy in other regards, do not desire more understanding than they have.' Hallelujah! 😅

Text last updated: January 25th, 2022