Cogito, Ergo Sum

I am grateful to confirm that I am of the generation that was given a little more slack to “follow their dreams”. My bachelors degree is very unrelated to my career and professional skills. In that era of time, I was able to dream a bit and get a degree based off personal interest rather than what was conventionally wise.

My minor was in philosophy. I took more philosophy courses than required (by a lot by the way) for my minor requirements. I would not be surprised if I took more classes for my minor than my unrelated major.

I took logic courses and I wrote long, long essays—both analytical and argumentative papers. My undergrad minor was unique and actually useful in my later adult life.

There is so much to the broad range of philosophy that encapsulates the definition “philosophy”. The majority of my lessons circulated around names such as Rene Descartes, Michel Foucault, Immanuel Kant, and so on. If you are familiar with philosophy, you will catch my pattern.

Damn, I wrote so many pages and gave so many verbal presentations dabbling with concepts such as radical doubt, “The Golden Rule”, and the complicated dynamics between love, sex, and power. So on. So forth.

Philosophy was fun, useful, and helped me flex my brain. My philosophy courses were focused primarily on ethics, metaphysics, and theology. Hell, I was lucky enough to study philosophy and theology abroad in France and various cities in Italy. I actually was able to see the Pope speak in person on a Sunday in Vatican City.

It kept me sharp to study this. I am sure I was the worst to listen to when I was focused so deeply in these subjects. The term “philosophy” gets kind of a weird reputation.

When I was in Paris, I dropped by a French bookstore. I went to the philosophy section—all the books were in French. I used to be fairly comfortable reading French back in the day.

Why did I buy a book in a different language, in a subject matter that was incredibly dense?

I like a challenge.