Philosophizing...

In case I haven’t made it clear yet, I am loving my philosophy class this quarter. I was reasonably excited when my books arrived (a basic introductory text and then separate books on epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of religion), but now that I have begun to really dive into the class, I am discovering that I simply can’t get enough. Why? Because this is the type of learning that I have always loved and will always love. Studying philosophy encourages the style of learning that I think should apply to any subject—inquiring, probing, and questioning deeply.

Philosophy encourages me as a student to abandon all my presuppositions and preconceived ideas. It is all about asking ultimate questions and not being willing to rest until I understand exactly what I believe and why. There is a danger to such reckless questioning, of course; if followed to an extreme, a philosophy student could potentially reach the point where he or she no longer thinks that there are any objective answers to life’s ultimate questions. But with the proper—and, as a Christian, I would add, biblical—framework in which to pursue the study, I am discovering that it is both an exhilarating and enlightening experience.

This is the kind of learning that I love. Rather than rote memorization and meaningless repetition of facts, this is all about asking questions and getting to the heart of an issue. It’s all about understanding how and why things work the way they do. It’s all about not just understanding a concept, but understanding why that concept is important, and how it relates to our lives in God’s world.

So much learning, especially in the modern education system, is superficial, trite, and seems unimportant to the student. We barely scratch the surface; we don’t understand why certain things are important or even relevant to everyday life. Developing a philosophical mindset (learning to ask the ultimate questions and pursue more than just surface knowledge) restores to the process of learning the joy, wonder, and excitement of discovery that should have been there in the first place. It is a wonderful thing to find oneself standing on the threshold of knowledge—to get that first taste of new facts and ideas that draw back the curtain on something that you’ve never thought about before. There is a sense of eagerness and excitement. There is a true joy in learning. And that is not something that is found through education that barely skims the surface, drilling the facts so the student can spit out the right answers for the test but leaving so much richness just out of reach. Those treasure troves of knowledge are what we should be reaching for every day; what we should be seeking our whole lives, not just when we’re students.

This is the kind of learning that gets me excited. This is the picture of eagerly seeking knowledge that I want to share with my own children someday, God willing. This is the kind of discovery that makes me recognize all over again just how magnificent is the God who gave us the gift of learning—and how small I am—and how much He still has to teach me.