Kylee Sanders
Junior Editor
Philosophy is a vast subject that means something different to everyone because it is hard to narrow it down to just one definition. After all, there are many branches of philosophy, such as ethics, metaphysics, logic, and so on. Looking into the subject means asking a lot of questions, which works out well, since questions are the base of philosophy.
Associate Professor of Philosophy Dr. Mark Hopwood explained the subject in a simple way that covers all the bases. “Think about it in terms of questions we ask,” he said. “Philosophy is all about asking questions. The kind of questions we [philosophers] ask are the deepest, most fundamental questions we know how to ask. For example, mathematicians ask all kinds of questions about how numbers and equations work, but philosophers of math wanna know what a number is and if they exist.”
Everyone will have a different answer to that question, but that’s part of philosophy. The most important part of philosophy is the attempt to understand these answers and why everyone has their specific answer, which is what Hopwood wants philosophy students to learn from the subject.
Asking questions and wanting answers is even how Hopwood discovered and became interested in philosophy. “I was always asking questions,” he explained. “I drove my parents crazy with questions.”
However, he was unaware of philosophy as a subject. It was not until he had a conversation with his high school counselor about college that he realized he could even study it. His counselor told him that he should learn more about philosophy and proceeded to recommend Sophie’s World, a novel about a young girl discovering philosophy. After reading it, Hopwood realized he had been asking the questions the girl had been pondering all this time. “I realized there was this subject you could study, and it was legitimate. I was completely sold. It was all I wanted to do. It still is all I want to do.”
Philosophy was a “discovery major” for Hopwood, and it is for a lot of students as well. It is not a subject many are aware of in high school so they don’t consider it until they come to college and discover it. As a professor of philosophy, Hopwood gets to see many students discover philosophy and realize it is what they want to major or minor in. “I get to see students realize that, and it’s really, really cool,” he explained. “There’s really nothing I find more fun and fulfilling than introducing students to philosophy. It’s like art or music, one of those things human beings naturally want to do.”
Hopwood also wanted to point out that “one of the worst things in the history of philosophy, it has been thought of and presented as something for just a certain kind of person. This is bad for a number of reasons, but one of them means that there’s this important human activity we have a natural desire to do that in the past we have excluded from whole groups of people doing. That’s something I think a lot about, and I think a lot about ways of trying to help people feel philosophy is for them and not for some kind of other person. I’m always interested in ideas students have that might get interested in philosophy or ideas that will help other people feel more comfortable in participating in conversations about philosophy.”
Hopwood is not only a professor of philosophy, but the creator of the Sewanee Night Owls event as well. The purpose of this event is to create a safe space for informal conversations about philosophical topics amongst students and professors. Do not fret, you do not have to be a philosophy student to attend; everyone is allowed to attend and participate in conversation! So far this year, two Night Owls events have been held, one this semester and one last semester. You can also read about the event in a previous Purple article, so if you’re interested in learning more about this event, go check it out!