I have read the first hundred plus pages of Trump's deposition in the suit brought by Leticia James against his organization, and he is clearly around the bend. If she can win her case, she will cost him perhaps $250 million and also bar him from doing business in New York State. The next year and a half Is going to be devoted almost entirely to Trump's legal problems. There is so much really bad happening in this country right now that one must take once pleasures where one finds them.
ReplyDeleteI'm picking this thread since there were no responses to it, and therefore I won't be topic.
Here's a sentence I just ran across in an online book review dealing with philosophy at Oxford from 1900 to 1960:
"Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, Isaiah Berlin, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, A. J. Ayer, R. M. Hare, Bernard Williams, and Derek Parfit—not a single doctoral degree in philosophy among them. A first in their undergraduate exams—meaning a grade of “A+”—was enough to send them on their way."
What do the PhD's among you think of it?
DP - I read that same review. It was a somewhat different time and a somewhat different system of higher education. Wm James objected to the emphasis on the PhD (see his essay "The PhD Octopus") but pretty much lost that battle (in the U.S.).The reviewer went on to point out that many of those named had graduate fellowships or etc. For example, Murdoch spent a year as a student at Cambridge after finishing her undergraduate degree at Oxford. The reviewer also mentioned that many of them had read "Greats" (basically classics, ancient history and philosophy) though Parfit didn't. I'm not really sure what the overall point is here.
ReplyDeleteIn unusual cases it's still possible to have an academic career w.o a PhD (limiting myself to the U.S., which I know a bit more about than UK etc.). It's also v possible of course to have a PhD without being an academic.