STE LY ES a NE a Ce

 

 

Philosophy in a New Key (With Bells and Whistles)

In my Introduction to Philosophy course, I use a
“problems approach,” discussing such perennial issues
as ultimate reality, free will, knowledge, morality,
political obligation, and the existence of God. In so
doing, I have always treated philosophers without
regard to any historical sequence of their lives or
works. Even though I may have mentioned that
Descartes lived in the seventeenth century or that
Socrates died in 399 B.C., I found students had no
concept of what these times were like. I decided to
attempt a solution to this problem.

I reproduced 12” x 17” photographs of various
philosophers. As I discussed a particular thinker, I put
the photograph on an easel in the front of the room. I
reproduced some great paintings of philosophers—
Chartran’s Descartes in the Streets of Paris, Jacque
David's The Death of Socrates, and Rembrandt's Aristotle
vith a Bust of Homer. But, more frequently, I have used
photographs of contemporary thinkers, such as Russell,
Wittgenstein, and Sartre; pictures of busts and statues
of the ancients; and photographs of paintings of
philosophers who lived before the invention of photog-
raphy.

In addition, before and after the class, | play music
of the period from which that particular day’s philoso-
pher came. The intricate logic of Leibniz is communi-
cated well by a Bach fugue; John Cage captures well
ihe disjointed, absurd, God-abandoned world Sartre

{.cribed. Mozart captures the spirit of Kantian

rm alism; and Strauss, in his Thus Spake Zarathustra,
makes a fine musical focus for a discussion of
Nietzsche. When discussing out-and-out egoistic he-
donism, a picture of a bust of Aristippus is before me
and a copy of Playboy magazine is in my hand, and I
play Janis Joplin’s “Lord, Won’t You Buy Me a Mer-
cedes Benz?” Country-and-western singer Gene
Watson's “14 Carat Mind” provides a fine entree to a
discussion of J. S. Mill’s notion of qualitative differ-
ences in pleasures.

Philosophy students, quite on their own, came to see
similarities between the philosophy being discussed
ond the costumes and hair styles of the pictured phi-
Josopher. They commented on how similar the pic-
tures of Descartes and Leibniz were and how different
hey were from the pictures of Berkeley and Hume.
hus, grouping philosophers became easier for the
students, as they saw the similarities and differences in
the photographs. I sometimes used other sorts of

pictures. For example, students can see similarities
between Cartesian philosophy and the precisely-
trimmed hedges of Versailles or between a Miro paint-
ing and the philosophy, say, of Albert Camus.

The music and photographs set the tone for the
day’s lecture and allow the students to participate non-
cognitively in the Zeitgeist. Students are very respon-
sive to the pictures and music and like to speculate
about what will be said in that day’s discussion and
lecture. At first, I was afraid that a picture of the bust
of one Greek philosopher would look to the students
very much like all other pictures of busts of Greek phi-
losophers. But, in fact, many students were able to dis-
tinguish, on their own and without invitation or
prompting, pictures of the bust of Aristotle from that of
Plato and that of Socrates.

On occasion, a few minutes before class began, I
would place the easel with the photograph outside the
classroom. With the door open and the music playing,
we often drew quite a crowd of the curious. Several
students who were not enrolled in the class often
would decide to visit for that day, just to see what was
going on. These students added a new dimension to
class discussion, and the strategy proved to be an
excellent recruitment device for philosophy classes.

In addition to the music and photographs (a collec-
tion which has grown with numerous student contri-
butions), I have insisted on the immediate availability
of maps. I find my students are quite geographically
illiterate. When I mention Socrates’ Athens or Kant’s
K6nigsberg or Hegel’s Vienna, I point to that city ona
map in a very casual and offhand way, but the pointing
seemed to increase the students’ geographical aware-
ness.

It is my belief that philosophy may be learned other
than through reason. It is also my belief that to gain
full appreciation of a philosophy, students must have
some sense of the time and place of its development.
Through the bells and whistles—the pictures, music,
and maps—I have played my philosophic tunes in a
new key this year. It was a key which, hopefully,
expanded students’ historical, aesthetic, geographic, as
well as philosophic, horizons.

Robert Bennett, Instructor, Philosophy

For further information, contact the author at El Centro
College, Main and Lamar, Dallas, TX 75202.

 

Suenne D. Roveche, Editor

 

November 30, 1990, Vol. XII, No. 29

The University of Texas at Austin, 1990
Further duplication is permitted by MEMBER
institutions for their own peisonnel.

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