As the University of North Carolina at Asheville phases out majors such as philosophy, students find a way to keep the ideas and conversations alive via the Philosophy Club on campus.
Currently led by UNCA students Nicco Avallone, Hannah McCowen and Nia Vines, students meet every Thursday in the Ramsey Library Green Room to discuss philosophical thinking and questions.
Avallone said ideas for meetings are usually thought out during a brainstorming session in the beginning of the semester and are flexible, as a discussion from one meeting can lead into a related topic for a following meeting. He mentioned that the leaders try their best to make topics accessible to anyone, even people not familiar with philosophy.
“We’re trying to make this as accessible as possible, to enrich the love of philosophy,” Avallone said. “I mean, in my opinion everyone is a philosopher.”
“If you are interested in something, if you have a passion then you can philosophise,” McCowen said. “It’s not like you need to have a certain level of intellect. It’s all about having passionate, original ideas and sharing them and absorbing other people’s ideas and learning from them.”
Even with the philosophy major not accepting new students, the club manages to continue to function as it is fully student-led. Avallone noted as ironic as it is, attendance at the club has skyrocketed since the closing of the department.
“I think people who want to think and have community, who came here looking for those things, this is where they end up a lot of times because this is one of the last places where you can really find that,” McCowen said. “Last semester, we got almost every philosophy professor in for a meeting just to talk about something that they were interested in because we knew that almost all of them were leaving.”
McPrince Ongig, a Philosophy Club member, said that he wasn’t too big into philosophy before joining the club, but his curiosity for wanting to learn more led him to join.
“I like seeing people’s experiences and how they talk about things in general,” Ongig said. “I think that’s a really important part of the club. I love doing everything that we do.”
Ongig said that the Philosophy Club is a valuable space on campus given the lack of philosophy classes offered at the university. He mentioned that as a transfer student, he could only take one philosophy related course which was Greek ancient philosophy.
“It’s changed the way I talk to people because with philosophy, I think the most important thing for me was understanding how everyone thinks,” Ongig said. “Everyone else’s brain thinks radically differently than yours. Confronting that and changing your mind in some ways, you come out better every day.”
McCowen said that the Philosophy Club can be a good start for students to learn more about philosophy, as many of them can be scared of the concept. She noted that she had a lot of fun introducing the subject to other students and sharing the ideas.
“I think it’s great to have philosophy be accessible to all people who are open to learning about it,” Vines said. “I, myself, was scared because I thought I wasn’t smart enough for philosophy. So I think encouraging people to make them feel like they can think deeply and critically, then maybe they might crack open a philosophy book and start reading.”
