Philosophy Personal Statement Example 10

Philosophy has had an irrevocable impact on my life in the past couple of years. It has enabled me to think critically about myself, my actions, my responsibility as a human being and my conception of the world in general. More over it has helped me a great deal personally. Having fallen into a depression whilst originally studying music at a previous university I believe it has since given me the intellectual training to distinguish between what I am feeling and what is realistically the case which helps to alleviate symptoms and enables me to live my life with less of the physiological and psychological effects that such a condition brings. This is one of the many reasons why I feel indebted to philosophy and why I have pursued it as an active interest.

The first school of thought in philosophy that grabbed my attention was Existentialism, namely because the word itself fascinated me. Mistakenly I took it to mean the study of existence, something which I later learnt was more to do with Ontology. Intrigued to find out what exactly Existentialism was, I began listening to a series of audio lectures by an American professor named Robert C. Solomon who explained some of the central concepts behind Existentialism and such thinkers as Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Nietzsche and Sartre.
Armed with the basic knowledge of the subject I began reading literary works like The Stranger, The Fall, Nausea, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Ecce Home and Beyond Good and Evil. I have also explored themes relevant to Existentialism in film, namely in the works of Ingmar Bergman and Robert Bresson who I feel depict existential and absurdist notions such as Absolute Freedom and Bad Faith in a way that is visually complementary to what literary figures like Camus, Kafka and Sartre were writing about.

Philosophy has also aided me in expanding my social awareness and has led me to ask questions about the fairest way in which our society should be run and so I naturally became very interested in Anarchism and its ideas of human liberty, freedom and what forms of authority are justified as well as its economic alternatives to Capitalism. It is from Anarchism that I learnt about (amongst many others thinkers) Noam Chomsky who I am a great admirer of and who I have read and listened to a great deal. I have also read books by Max Stirner, Rudolf Rocker and David McLellan's biography of Karl Marx in an effort to understand Anarchism better and society in general.

It has become apparent to me recently that one mainly bases his political ideologies on what his philosophical conception of man is. And so I am very eager to learn about different traditions within philosophy and what they have to say about human nature and the kind of creatures we are and whether it is due to something intrinsic in us that stops us from moving to a more egalitarian society such as Anarchism.

Perhaps the single biggest reason why I wish to commit to a degree in philosophy is to verify what I think I may have learnt from it already. As almost all of my friendships are founded on and revolve around the love of music it is hard for me to enter any sort of discourse on philosophy with friends or family and so difficult to asses how much I am actually learning. It is my hope that going to university will provide ample opportunity to solidify my knowledge already, to gain insight and understand a range of thinkers and ideas and to make friends who share the same enthusiasm with philosophy.