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With enrollment dates coming up, I am sure everyone is scrolling through courses on iGPS and scheduling appointments with their advisors to figure out what their schedule might look like in the upcoming semester. All undergraduates at IU need to complete a general education requirement, which includes at least six credits of GenEd-approved arts and humanities classes. If you are a freshman or sophomore, it is quite likely you haven’t completed this requirement yet. I have just the solution for you.
Most 100 and 200-level philosophy classes at IU fulfill the A&H requirement, making it an option students might opt for. It was this very requirement that drove me to take a philosophy class my freshman year. I am three semesters in, and I haven’t had a semester without one. Growing up in India, I did not have a formal background in philosophy; my high school education was a program that focused on the natural sciences — physics, chemistry and mathematics. The way these were taught was not foundational but instead steered toward memorization for doing well on tests.
My first philosophy class was not offered through the philosophy department; it was a critical approaches class called “Original Sin: Religion, Psychology and Behavior” that intersected the fields of philosophy, religious studies and psychology. It was this intersection that introduced me to foundational thinking. We studied structural thinkers who developed clear and organized ideas, leading to a complete theory about the topics they were discussing.
These thinkers included theologians like Martin Luther, early modern political thinkers like Jean Jacques Rousseau and contemporary leftist thinkers like Paolo Freire. All these in a single 100-level class may seem overwhelming. However, the structure of the class made it all just make sense. I know “just made sense” is not a convincing enough argument. So, let me illustrate through example.
If I were to commit the sin of oversimplifying this class, I’d say that the structure was mostly arranged like a survey of competing ideas rather than learning only about stand-alone thinkers. Because it is only when we compare and contrast that we truly understand the scope of an idea. This analysis of an idea by an expert allows us to see the strengths and weaknesses of both arguments from a broader outsider’s perspective. We then from that perspective form our beliefs about the original idea.
Making someone question their base beliefs about something and then providing them with people who have produced interesting ideas about those beliefs helps develop critical thinking. A major aspect of critical thinking is to question our dogmatic beliefs and develop a mature understanding of the circumstances that led us to form those dogmatic beliefs. The dogma weakens as we critically examine a belief, helping us examine concepts with conviction and openness. This is essential when navigating a world of difference and diversity.
It is not just the reading and interpreting thinkers or contrasting perspectives that help develop critical thinking. It is engaging in an active conversation with people who are in a similar setting to you. This is why most philosophy classes either have a discussion section or are conducted in a fashion that forces students to engage with the ideas through verbal articulation.
Developing an ability to think and engage with complex foundational ideas is one of the great advantages that a philosophy course offers. However, that is not all. Converting these thoughts into a communicable language is essential for a liberal arts education.
Most of my ability to articulate comes from the papers that I wrote for my philosophy classes and not from the required English composition class. Just the sheer complexity of ideas provokes you to search for a language in your response that brings justice to the complexity. It is this provocation to think about language that I found missing in the English class that I took.
In my experience, the discipline of philosophy, through its nature of being the mother of all disciplines and its rich history from ancient India and Greece to contemporary post-modernists, presents a practice of creation. It is a practice of creating concepts, as Deleuze would say. It is this process of concept creation that is examined in philosophy classes.
So, if you wish to gain an understanding of the process of concept formation, if you wish to develop an ability for critical thinking and good articulation, then don’t forget to add a philosophy class to your spring schedule.
Advait (he/they) is a sophomore studying economics and sociology.
