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A crucial point of teaching is to convey means to find out where exactly the difficulties lie and why they arise. That requires all sorts of texts—primary, secondary, tertiary, etc., as Justin Weinberg, Daily Nous reports.
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| Are Philosophical Classics Too Difficult for Students? (guest post by Martin Lenz) Photo: Corinne Wasmuht, “Bibliotheque CDG/BSL” |
Personally, I think it’s good to start with primary texts, get confused, ask questions, and then look at the introductions to see some of your questions discussed. Why? Well, I guess it’s better to have a genuine question before looking for answers. However, even before the latest controversy on Twitter (between Zena Hitz and Kevin Zollman, among others) took off, I have been confronted with quite different views. Taken as an opposition between extremes, you could ask whether you want to make philosophy about ideas or people (and their writings). It’s probably inevitable that philosophy ends up being about both, but there is still the question of what we should prioritise...
If you want to learn about Kant, you should read Kant just like you should listen to Bach himself. But what if you’re not really interested in Kant, but in a sort of Kantianism under discussion in a current debate? In this case, the purpose is not to study Kant, but some concepts deriving from a certain tradition. In this case, you might be more like a jazz player who is interested in building a vocabulary. Then you might be interested, for instance, in how Bach dealt with phrases over diminished chords and focus on this aspect first. Of course, philosophical education should comprise both a focus on texts and on ideas, but I’d prioritise them in accordance with different purposes.
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Source: Daily Nous
