Philosophy, Interdisciplinary Teaching and Student Experience Essay

Philosophy, Interdisciplinary Teaching and Student Experience ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on novel approaches open to teachers of philosophy in particular, but more generally also to other university teachers, in the face of what Allan Bloom saw as the waning of a literary culture. It is argued that, although some of Bloom's suggestions regarding the successful engagement of students' interest-against overwhelming odds-are didactically valuable, he neglects precisely those avenues from which students could benefit most on the basis of their own experience in a world largely devoid of literary attachments but saturated with audiovisual ones. These options are explored in some detail from various perspectives, including the difference between a written and an audiovisual text, the philosophical-critical potential of rock music and the interdisciplinary value of a teaching model that has student experience as its point of departure. Does the ancient discipline of philosophy still have something of value to give to university students as we approach the millenium? In a world suffused by proliferating media-images and sounds, does a discipline whose insights are born of the interpenetration of thinking and language stand any chance of being heard amid the noise, or noticed in the headlong rush for greater global investment and development? I shall argue that it does, and that philosophy is, in fact, alive (perhaps dormant) in the most unexpected practices and activities, albeit not always easy to recognize, and although philosophers and teachers of philosophy face the sometimes difficult task of enlivening these philosophical sparks into a steady flame. My argument rests on the assumption that philosophy is not only an anc... .... Being and time. Tr. Macquarrie, J. & Robinson, E. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kearney, R. 1988. The wake of imagination. London: Hutchinson. Kierkegaard, S. 1987. Either/or. Vol. 2.Tr. Hong, H.V. & Hong, E.H. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lyotard, J-F. 1991. The inhuman: Reflections on time. Tr. Bennington, G. & Bowlby, R. Cambridge: Polity press. O'Neill, O. 1993. Kantian ethics. In: Singer, P.(Ed.) A companion to ethics. Oxford: Blackwell. Paglia, C. 1993. Rock as art. In: Sex, art, and American culture. London: Penguin Books. Pettit, P. 1993. Consequentialism. In: Singer, P. (Ed.) A companion to ethics. Oxford: Blackwell. Plato. 1974. Republic. Tr. Grube, G. M. A. In: Plato's Republic. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Romney, J. 1996. Kids, a gift to middle America. In: New Statesman & Society, Vol 9, 17 May, Issue 403, p35.