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Tom Hartman
USA
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Philosophy: More than a Course of Study
As a Ph.D. in philosophy and long-time college professor, I have always wanted the study of philosophy to make a meaningful difference in the life of my students and my own life. However, for a variety of reasons, academic philosophy tends to drift away from real life. I remember the comment one of my students made about a just-retired professor: "That man must be really profound. We never understood a thing he said." The comment was not tongue-in-cheek.
From that point on, I made a huge effort to be understood. My courses did make a difference in the lives of my students, but – except for a few cases – not the profound difference I intended.
Even my own life, successful as it was, seemed stuck. I seemed helpless to resolve it. My style of thinking and acting seemed to have arrived at limits. To paraphrase Ludwig Wittgenstein's memorable lines – I was a fly in a fly bottle and although I had found my way in, I could not find my way out. There is nothing violent about The Landmark Forum, but it did smash my fly bottle and liberate me into dimensions I did not even know existed.
To me, The Landmark Forum is a liberation of philosophy itself from an academic tradition and style that has arrived at its own limits. And yet, it also honors the philosophic tradition. The great philosophers, and the not-so-great, have always sought to make a true difference and to break free from limiting styles and assumptions. I see the essence of Socrates’ in his simultaneous acknowledgement that "All I know is that I know nothing" and his unstoppable determination to free others from the illusion that they already do know what truly counts. That spirit of Socrates is powerfully alive and well in The Landmark Forum.
Tom Hartman is a former professor of philosophy, now a writer and an instructional assistant in a pre-school classroom.
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