You’re in a philosophy class. An eccentric professor is lobbing confusing and perhaps implausible ideas at you and you are becoming frustrated and feel yourself becoming lost. What’s worse? —you’ve got an exam in a week. What do you do?
Don’t panic. Here are seven tips to get you through your test in one piece:
1. I repeat: Don’t Panic!
Philosophy is, at base, about reason and logic. If you’ve gotten at least this far in education (in an upper division elective at a four-year university) you’re probably at least decently reasonable and capable of basic logic. Further, philosophy is the basis of all areas of knowledge, so you’ve probably asked some quasi-philosophical questions yourself. You can do this!
2. Find the arguments!
When you’re reading, take your time and try to identify the arguments. Philosophers like to augment their discussions with lengthy descriptions, analogies, and thought experiments; but at the base of all this is a basic logical argument. This is even truer for old philosophers (the kind you’re probably reading in PHIL 230 and 231); it was common practice back in the day to make your work lengthy and verbose. Don’t be intimidated.
3. Try to translate the arguments into your own words.
This is really helpful in overcoming the difficulties discussed in (2) above. The beauty of concepts is that they are translatable across languages (roughly, anyway), so if you put arguments in your own words you are likely not to be far off! This will also help you remember arguments better.
4. DON’T BE “DEEP”!!!
A lot of philosophy professors require you to do some writing for their classes. In this writing, don’t try to invent some new system about the way reality functions or try and give some profound insight about the nature of life. Philosophy is about reason and argumentation over important concepts—not about making people think you’re really complicated and tortured.
5. Make a list of concepts.
The philosophers of the old days really liked to invent a whole host of concepts to convey their arguments (they should have followed my advice in [4]!). If you’re reading through and get confused about what Forms are (Plato), or what an Infinite Substance is (Descartes), or what the difference between analytic and synthetic propositions are (Kant), stop and make a careful list of what concepts are which, and which are confusing. Many concepts come in the form of distinctions (like analytic and synthetic propositions), be sure to know how each concept is distinct from another.
6. For Math & Science people:
Philosophical arguments can be thought of as sorts of formulas. This actually isn’t just an analogy—for a lot of philosophers it’s literally true (looking at you, Wittgenstein and Russell).
Here’s an example: under many theories of knowledge, some person S knows some statement P if and only if (or “iff” for you experts) (i) S believes P, (ii) P is true, and (iii) S is justified in believing P. So, conditions (i) – (iii) have to be met for S to know P. If you get an example situation, just plug and chug! Additionally, if you know math (sorry, pun admittedly intended), you probably know some introductory logic as well. Draw up some truth tables or truth trees if it helps you parse out the logical relationships present in arguments. (I personally find this very helpful!)
7. For Arts & Humanities folks:
Philosophy has, of course, many similarities with its fellow disciplines in the humanities. If you’re used to slogging through 17th century literature or reading hundreds of pages of primary historical sources, you’re in luck: you’ve already got an advantage in dealing with, say, Descartes’s antiquated prose. Use your skills deciphering old linguistic forms to help unpack the arguments made by these classical philosophers. Try to think about the currents in history or literature at the time, too; the character of philosophy prevalent during a given period often has a lot in common with other cultural themes also prevalent. (For instance, think of Descartes and the rule of the Church, Hegel & Marx and the Bildungsroman, or Mill and the rise of science in England).
I hope you’ve found this helpful! Philosophy is difficult and can seem rather pointless at first glance, but rest assured it’s actually the foundation of all knowledge, and whether you know it or not, you end up doing philosophy all the time! Think about the last time you tried to convince someone something was morally wrong, or that God exists, or that science has the best answer for X problem…etc. Try to keep a positive attitude, and have fun!