The Long Awaited "My Ex-Intro to Phil Professor is Full of Shit" Post

Part B Five Required Textbooks for Summer 2004

Five? Five. For a five week course... an introductory five week course? That's absurd.

Reports, in outline form (3,000 to 4,000 words), are required of three of them, and the professor will comment on them in class. The other two will be read in class.

3,000 - 4,000 words on 3 books. That's 9,000 to 12,000 words for an introductory course that doesn't count as a writing-intensive course.

In addition, you're not receiving an "introduction to philosophy". That implies you're introduced to a variety of philosophies; I've talked to Bonelle, Kenny, and Beth about their class, and that's what they got. An introductory level course covering a wide variety of philosophies.

Nope.

In this course, he shoves his philosophy down your throat. There's a list of "required readings", that are in addition to the five required textbooks. 53 entries. There's one entry, two readings, about Ahimsa, the philosophy of strict non-violence. There's also a small entry about Buddhism. The rest - almost fifty entries - is about his crazy ass little metaphysical philosophy. There's excerpts from the bible, ancient philosophies, the New Thought Philosophy, Presocratic issues, and a few modern ones. That sounds good initially, until you look a little further. They're ALL covering his little philosophy thing.

Sidenote: His philosophy is some bizarre cross between metaphysics and New Thought. Basically, nothing is real except the mind; we create everything with our minds, project an illusion, if you will. It's important to not get "lost in the illusion", because then, well, you're lost. In the illusion, no less. You also have to meditate in and out of class (using the mantra "Ding Dong Do", no less), and manifest something - use the power of your mind to cause something to happen. I fully believe that you can cause things to happen, but not by sitting around and thinking about them.

He also is very liberal and constantly reminds us of that. I personally don't have a problem with either political philosophy, but I don't share either. I don't have opinions on a number of important issues, and don't align with either dominant political party. Hell, for that matter, I don't align myself with any minor political philosophies - socialism, communism, libertianism, anarchism, etc - but don't really have anything against any of them. I'll debate any of them on an issue I disagree with. However, I do take issue when he uses his position as teacher of the class to constantly re-iterate his opinion to his class. I mean, saying it once or twice, yeah, that's fine. But constantly harping on your anti-Bushism in the middle of an Intro to Philosophy class, that's just inappopriate.

Another direct quote from the course website:

After class yesterday one of the students and I discussed the notion that I have been teaching, which is central to the Perennial Philosophy, that we are God, reality is God, all that is is God. The student was having a real hard time with that idea. I can’t make it any easier. It is 180° the opposite of human common sense—but human common sense has to do only with the illusion, not with truth and reality.

To clarify, I have no problems with this philosophy. I think it's bullshit, but I don't take issue with it. Except, of course, when it's being shoved down our throats during an Intro to Philosphy class, and presented as absolute, unquestionable truth.