Philosophy

Why study philosophy at CCC

If you choose to study philosophy with us at Clovis Community College you will encounter dedicated and caring teachers who remain students of philosophy themselves. For students and teachers alike, philosophy is all about clarification and solid comprehension. To that end, we will train you in logic, critical thinking, argument analysis, and argument construction. Acquisition of these general problem-solving skills is the greatest practical benefit of studying philosophy. These skills will help you to see the big picture and how the parts should work together to produce a well-functioning whole: skills needed by all great managers, however large or small the organizations they lead.

The philosophy program at Clovis Community College will also help you to apply the tools of analysis and evaluation to some of the great questions of human life: Are our choices made freely, or are they determined by forces beyond our control? How do the mind and body interact? Are there sources of knowledge other than our senses? Is there a reality that we can only access through our intellects? Someone with a philosophy education finds it difficult to be inflexible. Kelly Champ, a U.C. Berkeley philosophy graduate who went on to earn a law degree at Berkeley, said,

“ I never realized how nuanced things could be....I had certain beliefs for so long, but I didn’t even know why I believed them. Philosophy has helped me understand the other side isn’t so crazy and my side isn’t so great.”

Our Philosophy

In the philosophy program at Clovis Community College, we will continue the discussion until every student understands.

Tamara Keith, the White House correspondent for NPR, studied philosophy at U.C. Berkeley. The co-founder of Flickr, Stewart Butterfield, studied philosophy at the University of Victoria (Canada) and Cambridge University (UK).

Butterfield has this to say about his background in philosophy:

“I think if you have a good background in what it is to be human, an understanding of life, culture, and society, it gives you a good perspective on starting a business, instead of education purely in business. You can always pick up how to read a balance sheet and how to figure out profit and loss, but it’s harder to pick up the other stuff on the fly.”

Chris Hay is another philosophy graduate of U.C. Berkeley. He started an organic farming business in 2010, Say Hay Farms.

“I had no business background, no agriculture background, and I was completely unqualified to start a farm. But everything that comes up, we just problematize and find solutions.”

Hay says he learned the value of problematizing issues from one of his favorite Berkeley philosophy professors, Hubert Dreyfus.

“Philosophy helped me trim the fat in my own thoughts. And I learned how to sit with my thoughts and have some insight and get to know myself a lot better. It was enormously beneficial. It’s the best possible degree I could have gotten, for someone wanting to do something very independent and creative.”

For students hoping to go into law, philosophy is the undergraduate major of choice.