Now that I officially earned a BA in Philosophy, it is time to sit down and think about this long and wild journey. I say long because it took me five years instead of the standard three that a regular student is accustomed to here in Italy. I say wild because, well, let’s start from the beginning to understand why.
Back in summer 2019, I was watching Astra Taylor’s What Is Democracy? and missing the point of almost all of its philosophical inquiries. Nonetheless, I was intrigued. I was so intrigued, in fact, that in the following days I asked my partner whether me going back to university sounded like a mad man’s project. It would have meant trying my luck with university again, but I do not want to dig into my past failures. The obvious truth is that trying serious studying with the wrong mindset is a rather pointless endeavour.
Anyway, this time my mind was really set. In order to start the courses in September, though, I had to pass an entry test to certify some basic knowledge of philosophy.1 Coming from a software developing background meant spending a couple of months on high school manuals to get a general idea of more than two thousand years’ worth of Western thought. The test itself was based on a book with key philosophical concepts, most of them unknown to me. I had to pick a subset of these terms and explain them along with the motivation for my choice. I still remember me and about fifty kids2 sitting everywhere outside the professor’s office, raising our anxiety bar every time we randomly revised the material. I waited for hours, but eventually my turn came and in about ten minutes I was out again. One question, one answer, another question, another answer. Done. I felt like a door was opening for me right there. I was ready to begin.
The first real exam was a deep dive into Plato’s and Aristotle’s works. On the one hand, it was the right course at the right time. What better way to start than back at the origins of Western philosophy? On the other hand, it made me realise the extent of my ignorance. This is why I will always treasure a tip a kind student gave me on my first days on the campus. They recommended two courses with a specific professor from whom I would learn an invaluable approach to philosophical texts. Admittedly, halfway through the first of these courses I was struggling to keep up. The now-retired professor was well known among students for taking no prisoners whatsoever. His were two of the most difficult exams I had to prepare, but to this day very little comes close to what I learned with him.
Nevertheless, a good chunk of the courses left me with many impressive insights, and this is especially true for the most demanding ones. The hours devoted to unpacking Hegel’s The Philosophy of Right will never be forgotten,3 but I will also remember fondly the energy put into preparing presentations on beloved topics, not to mention the emails exchanged with kind professors luckily never tired of my relentless enthusiasm.
Being a part-time student meant using what was left of the day after work for lessons and actual books, something requiring a sort of discipline to achieve. This is not to say that I have never been on a trip in the past five years, of course. Still, evenings, weekends, and Christmas holidays all became victims of my studying schedule. In retrospect, I could have taken some exams more lightly, enjoying some breaks more. Over and over again I pushed myself harder than necessary because I wanted to learn as much as possible and not just for that great mark.4
However, in the end the overall experience has been highly rewarding. I can read Hegel, for instance, and as anyone already familiar with the German philosopher knows, this is a wonderful achievement in itself. I fell in love with Spinoza, the true driving force of my thought in the years following our first encounter. Wittgenstein hypnotised me multiple times and I can only think of Plotinus as a question mark, fascinating and lonesome just like Simone Weil. I have much to learn yet from Kant and Adorno, from Deleuze and Derrida, from Hume and Schopenhauer.
They are all there, right where I can see them now. They are all there waiting for me to catch up.