{"id":10,"date":"2007-07-23T17:21:04","date_gmt":"2007-07-23T16:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phdwhat.com\/?p=10"},"modified":"2009-05-19T09:14:45","modified_gmt":"2009-05-19T09:14:45","slug":"teachers-of-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/teachers-of-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"1.1 Teachers of Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ph.D. means literary &#8220;<em>teacher of philosophy&#8221;<\/em>, from Latin <em>Philosophiae Doctor, <\/em>abbreviated\u00a0 to Ph.D, sometimes, as at Oxford, also <em>D.Phil<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>With this definition in mind, and a practical approach, I started a careful examination of everyone I knew to be a <em>teacher of philosophy<\/em>. In the following days, I observed lecturers, researchers and some professors strolling around, going to seminars, gathering for meetings, having a coffee break and casually chatting in the corridors.  It didn&#8217;t take me long to perceive a certain discrepancy between the observation and the image I had in mind of <em>teachers of philosophy<\/em>. Such image was somehow impressed upon me by the famous painting &#8216;The School of Athens&#8217; by Raphael, which depicts a hall in which Plato and Aristotle are surrounded by other famous ancient philosophers.<\/p>\n<table border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"The \" src=\"\/blog\/img\/school1.jpg\" alt=\"The \" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/td>\n<td><span>Particular of the <em>School of Athens<\/em> by Raphael. The detail is from a picture of the whole painting available on <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Sanzio_01.jpg\">wikipedia<\/a>.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>The  inconsistency grows even more when scrutinising the <em>teachers-to-be<\/em>, or Ph.D. students, who on average&#8212;although there are exceptions&#8212;cannot be seen during morning hours, walk around with music players, wear trainers and sloppy T-shirts, and have a cheerful and carefree, only occasionally downcast, appearance. One of course must take into consideration that music players and trainers did not exist in the ancient Greece, and fashion had not produced fancy T-shirts yet. However, even making allowances for all the aspects that modernity has introduced, it seems still clear that the current meaning of Ph.D. does not match the literal meaning of <em>teacher of philosophy<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>My first attempt to find out what Ph.D. is then appears to have gone amiss.  Yet, the fact that the term Ph.D. does not match well the current, practical meaning is a possible source of confusion itself.  After such investigation, one feels that universities ought to provide some further definition of Ph.D., there must be some general definition that describes the real meaning, or core, that makes a degree be called Ph.D. And that is what I&#8217;ll try to find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ph.D. means literary &#8220;teacher of philosophy&#8221;, from Latin Philosophiae Doctor, abbreviated\u00a0 to Ph.D, sometimes, as at Oxford, also D.Phil. With this definition in mind, and a practical approach, I started a careful examination of everyone I knew to be a teacher of philosophy. In the following days, I observed lecturers, researchers and some professors strolling &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/teachers-of-philosophy\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">1.1 Teachers of Philosophy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[17,28,20,32,21],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-definition-chapter-1","tag-phd","tag-phd-meaning","tag-philosophy","tag-teaching","tag-university"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74,"href":"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}