What Am I Interested In? [The Eternal Question]

I guess what I want from Philosophy is the ability to stir the passions of people -- an interesting way, a way that appeals to myself too, to look at the world and understand it. I don't mean I have to move people; I'm not so much about moving people. That's politics. I just want to see the world in a more clear, helpful way, without frill and pomp, but still with beauty and majesty, and I guess that's what I want to get out of philosophy and eventually get into my writing. I want to touch people's passions in such a way that they see differently, but this has nothing to do with moving people, or making them do anything. It's an internal thing.

I'm trying to figure out the most moving regions of philosophy. Philosophy is very wide, and much of it is interesting, but there comes a point when you have to figure out what it is you're studying it for, and focus more on that area, otherwise you will only be weak in many areas, as opposed to strong or profound in any particular area.

I guess I'd be interested to learn more about:
  • consciousness and the philosophy of mind
  • the philosophy of language (perhaps)
  • morality (meta- and normative)
  • aesthetics (maybe)
 I don't really know. It's hard to figure out just what you want to go into. It's a shame that when you're getting into philosophy, they teach a very specific box of philosophy, instead of teaching a wide variety and then letting you specialise. I wish they did do that, but I guess it's up to me to look into it myself.

I'm curious about the philosophy of religion too, but I would like to stay away from it, mostly, because it's never all that interesting, and eventually boils down to whether you have the faith or not. If you have faith, you will believe in god; if you don't have faith and you take god's existence as a hypothesis, the reasonable conclusion to come to is either "no" or "we can't know". I don't know.

I'll also be taking advantage of the Italian literary side of my degree, see what I can pull from there, without getting too deeply involved in the study of literature (which I don't find as interesting as just reading itself -- I am still occasionally drawn to it, though, just to see what literary theorists have to say).

I don't know.

We'll see.

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