Where can I go with a degree in philosophy? ?

Question

I love philosophy and fully intend on attaining a degree in it. I couldn't imagine studying anything else save for maybe psychology, linguistics, history and religious studies. As one could presume it's to my great dismay that careers connected to philosophy are scarce. I figured I could either proceed to law school and become a lawyer, study psychology and become a psychologist, or perpetuate to a PhD in philosophy and become a professor. The last one I like the best obviously, but is it feasible? I need advice on what career paths I can take with a degree in philosophy, so please help. And please do not advise me to study business, medicine or something more "practical." I acknowledge the difficulty of pursuing philosophy but it's my passion and I am adamant about studying it.

Answer 1

Personally, philosophy is one of the majors that I admire the most. A philosophy degree shows that you have superior critical thinking skills and you're creative and an "out of the box" type of thinker. Unfortunately some business are more concerned with their employees adhering to business orthodoxy than someone who can think outside of the box. So I think that even if philosophers have less jobs, the jobs they do find are likely to be "better" jobs that appreciate their thinking skills than "deadbeat" jobs.

As for a career path, maybe consider this: you said you like psychology and linguistics as well. With those interests you could take courses or a degree in cognitive science or neuroscience and learn how the brain works. Now do you mind working with math or computers, even just a little bit? If so you might be able to take some computer science courses, and then you'll be well equipped to study artificial intelligence with your logic and reasoning skills and your knowledge of how the brain works. Maybe you could even do grad studies in it and end up designing the AI for a robot or something. Some universities also offer courses in computational linguistics or cognitive modelling. I'm not a prof or employer so I don't know if you can actually do it from this route, but I'm a computer science major and I feel that philosophers are a lot more brilliant than many CS majors who can just code, and might be able to do better at AI (or algorithms or theoretical CS) than many computer scientists could. Just a thought...

Answer 2

I have an undergraduate degree in Math, did two years of graduate work in Math (no degree), did two years of graduate in Philosophy (no degree), have an MBA from a top ten school and a PhD in Finance from Berkeley.

I found the study of Philosophy to be more useful than any of the other degrees.  You can go into nearly any field.  After all, who wouldn't want to hire someone who can think critically and express himself clearly?  You just need to be able to market yourself.

If you are going on to Law School or Grad School, your undergraduate degree won't matter much in getting a job.

However, if you are not going on to grad school, I'd suggest taking some courses in economics, business, math and other seemingly more "practical" classes.

Answer 3

Philosophy is a great track to go down.  We need philosophers.  I covered some aspects of philosophy during my science degree and really enjoyed it.

This is thinking a bit down the track but one suggestion is that a degree in philosophy could lead to a future career in ethics.  It's an area that is always ground-breaking and cutting-edge.  Usually people who are interested in philosophy are also interested in ethics so it's just a thought.

Along that line of thought, if you're interested, would be to perhaps combine a philosophy degree with a biology degree (or something in that ballpark).  If you did that, you could end up in a university or organisation on a panel deciding appropriate techniques to use for scientific use of animals, clinical trials of drugs involving humans, and so on.  Just a thought but that's something you could consider.

Good luck and, most of all, I hope you enjoy whatever you choose to do! :-)

Answer 4

God, that's exactly what we need, another person with a PhD is psychology. Every one and their brother gets a degree in psychology, a PhD in psychology is extremely unimpressive.

Go for philosophy, it's more interesting, and you won't be one of the masses that get a degree in psychology. Then go to law school, do something impressive at a high ranked school and get your J.D. Practice Law, get your LL.M, become a person with substance. A PhD in philosophy is also a good choice, but doesn't pay out as I am sure you know.

I'm just sick of psych. majors. It's like every single person does it, and most go on for a Master's or PhD. Also, they might be the most smug people you meet, which I can never understand because that major is so freakin' easy. They're all full of themselves. Engineers have waaay more difficult subjects, and they rarely try to indirectly compliment themselves.