End of the Semester

It is the end of yet another semester at the College of Marin, and tonight I’ll attend this year’s commencement ceremony to celebrate student accomplishment. This latest crop of philosophy students has been as serious and as passionate as ever. At least five of them will transfer to four-year schools to pursue their bachelor’s degrees in philosophy, and one student has been accepted into a graduate program to pursue her master’s in philosophy. I’m very proud of the commitment that all of them have made to the discipline that I love.

I sense that philosophy has provided many of the graduating and continuing students at the College of Marin with more than just a field of study or with a college degree. It has opened the way to an authentic life path. When I was an undergraduate, school became something like a church to me. I had no religious faith, but attending classes in philosophy helped me to carve a road through the chaos of reality, and I increasingly came to feel as if it was through academic study that I might discover the Truth about our world. The Truth has forever eluded me, but my aspiration toward that goal is ultimately what gave me a purpose and a direction. Something like this feeling is what I see in the eyes of the latest cohort of philosophy students at the College of Marin. They seem to find comfort in the traditions of philosophy precisely because, while offering no answers, philosophy does offer a well-worn path of unending, but earnest, inquiry and questioning. This path leads nowhere in particular, but in the company of other intellectual nomads, we all feel less alone in our wanderings.

These students are young and not-so-young. They are male, female, and transgender. Some of them are my own age. All of them have expressed a longing for something that none of them can fully articulate, but which philosophy seems to supply. Their longing is not for a job, or for prestige, or for fame (there are plenty of other fields that offer better chances to achieve those kinds of things). When I am with them, what I sense is a desire to be among others who are honest about their existential confusion, but sincere about wanting to make some sense of that confusion through the tools of logic, argument, discussion, and reflection. These are not students who want to be saved. What they want is authentically to engage with the most important, eternal, distressing, and human questions. Many of these students have faced setbacks and in the past have been encouraged to pursue goals and lifestyles that they found unfulfilling. I think what philosophy offers them is an alternative to the unreflective treadmill of mainstream culture; a culture that is fueled by endless consumption and hollow routine.

I am still in contact with many students from years gone by who have gone on to study philosophy and to earn graduate degrees. Many of them now teach, but many of them have pursued other careers and life paths that might seem disconnected from their college studies. Nevertheless, when I talk with them, philosophy clearly remains a central component in their lives, bringing a sense of wonder as well as distress to everything they do.

I look forward to keeping in touch with this latest group of College of Marin philosophy students as well. We will always remain friends.