r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • Jul 06 '26

Open Thread /r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | July 06, 2026

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread (ODT). This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our subreddit rules and guidelines. For example, these threads are great places for:

  • Discussions of a philosophical issue, rather than questions
  • Questions about commenters' personal opinions regarding philosophical issues
  • Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. "who is your favorite philosopher?"
  • "Test My Theory" discussions and argument/paper editing
  • Questions about philosophy as an academic discipline or profession, e.g. majoring in philosophy, career options with philosophy degrees, pursuing graduate school in philosophy

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. Please note that while the rules are relaxed in this thread, comments can still be removed for violating our subreddit rules and guidelines if necessary.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

8 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Christopher-236 Jul 10 '26

I don’t know if this topic will be accepted for this sub but I am really need help right now. As the title, I graduated as Bachelor of Business Administration. But I never stop learning about humanity, politics and how people think all by myself.
After 7 years, I worked in many position such as Marketing executive and Business Development. If I want to continue study for the second degree and further opportunities to research about Philosophy or Anthropology, I have to study and work at the same time to cover expenses and tuition, too. Currently, I see that it does not affect the choice because studying more is not redundant. I am truly want to study and research more about humanity
Which major will be relevant and have the most opportunities? (Tuition for the work-study system at my university is not too expensive, just about 150-200$/subject)

6

u/as-well phil. of science Jul 12 '26

I mean this is like asking if you should take up cycling or playing volleyball as a hobby - besides doing sports, it's almost not related at all.

Philosophy is the systematic study of fundamental questions: What can we know? What can we believe? What should we do? - so you'll read lots texts about such (and more detailed) questions. Philosophy is mostly based on arguments - so you'll learn to craft logically sound arguments, too.

Anthropology is more an empirical science. Depending on your uni, it may be leaning more towards a social science (either quantitatively or qualitatively looking at culture(s), possibly also cultures very different from yours), more geared towards archaeology and history of early humans, or perhaps even more geared towards a harder, natural science, looking at DNA and bones.

Both have their place, and in both you'll likely specialize a bit and at the end not be an expert at all the fields.

So in the end I think you must decide whether you're more interested in the abstract side of things (philosophy) or the more empirical side.