Teaching Philosophy: A Utopian and Realistic Approach

The study is devoted to the consideration of different ways of meaningful presentation of philosophical knowledge in its teaching in a modern university. At the beginning, the author captures the not very honorable place of philosophy in the modern educational process aimed at practical applied tasks and taking place in corporate universities that require profitability from teaching. Further, we are talking about the fact that philosophy is still needed in the educational process, and not only for professional teachers, but primarily for students, as well as for the state, which is raising new generations. The author emphasizes that the approach to choosing subjects for teaching in limited programs can be “utopian”, that is, dreamy, but unable to really arouse students’ interest in the subject, and realistic, addressing the lively interests of today’s young people. The author considers the utopian attitude towards teaching philosophy to be the desire to immerse the audience as much as possible in the historical and philosophical process or in specialized epistemological and methodological issues. Both the distant past and narrowly epistemological issues are far from the “average student” who is essentially taking a survey course. The author considers it a realistic approach to address, first of all, anthropological-existential and axiological-ideological issues. This latter is really in demand by the state, which pays for education and is interested in the education of young citizens who are called upon to fully build the future. If anthropological and existential issues answer students’ personal questions, then the question of social and cultural values meets the interests of society. At the end of the study, it is emphasized that the models of realistic philosophy teaching may be different, depending on the academic freedom of the teacher and his personal choice.