By: Rachael Jackson Campus Life Editor
Brandt Van Soolen, senior philosophy major and veteran.
“… Whatever you may study, be it earth science, political science, at the base of all those things is philosophy. Philosophy is a way to understand the world.
… I really love [Martin] Heidegger, the German philosopher. He comes with baggage because he became a full-blown Nazi there at the end. His idea of what philosophy is is a good starting point. He says that philosophy is the study of beings, so I think it is a good place to start.
… A lot of the time when I say I study philosophy, people will start asking me questions on religion. They are thinking about moral philosophy – ethics – but before you can even start that discussion, you need to try and understand what a human being is so you can discuss these things.
… There are [existentialist] ideas that your life’s goals are achieved after you die, so really your life here doesn’t have a purpose until you die. But what if we are born with certain things that are basic knowledge to being human, like you understand certain things and that is how you perceive the world. It is when you recognize the person besides you as a human being that you start to understand yourself, start to ask questions about what it is to be human.
… [Dr. Hickerson] teaches classes that other people won’t teach, like phenomenology and continental philosophy [which is defined by its opposition to analytic philosophy]. But, more than that, he makes it accessible and really tries to help his students.”
… In the military, you get trained to focus less on yourself and more on protecting the group. What is good for the whole is most important. A person jumping on the grenade to protect five other people and sacrificing himself is seen as heroic … but really they are just reacting to their social training. They are trained that that is the right thing to do. The actual desire is just a result; the person has been trained to sacrifice themselves. One person suffering so everyone can be happy is not the world we should want to live in.”
