✨💫Always Another Way Podcast✨💫

💫✨Ep: 27 - Modern Day Philosophy with Rachel Anne Williams✨

Is philosophy just for people in academia?

Are philosophers just academics?

Or is there ANOTHER WAY to look at Philosophy?

I received an email from Medium (online publishing platform) and this title --> Why I Left Academic Philosophy --> grabbed my attention.

Especially this part --> "I will never forget sitting in our auditorium listening to a long talk about meta-ethics when, right outside the doors of the university, Black Lives Matter activists were marching (this was in St. Louis at the time of Ferguson).

I could hear them chanting; the stark contrast between the esoteric subtleties of meta-ethics vs. the concrete realities of what would be considered “applied ethics” — a term usually uttered with slight contempt — made me deeply uncomfortable.

How could I justify this exuberance of abstraction when there were so many real-world problems that needed the minds of intelligent people.

✨💫So — why don’t we talk about this more. ✨💫

Or maybe the fact that if you had known that Rachel is transgender— you might have never read the article or give her the credit for her academics.

Why do we treat humans as if they are less than for any reason?!?!?

This blows my mind.

Certainly no higher power that claims itself to be love could even hate someone for existing!!!!

I know these are uncomfortable and not fun to talk about. Your life as you exist, is not threatened. However, millions of people live differently. Their existence is threatened because of skin color, gender identity, religion, economic status...and more!

Rachel Anne Williams is an author, writer, and ex-academic philosopher. She has a Master's degree in philosophy from LSU and spent six years in Washington University in St Louis' Philosophy-neuroscience-psychology program before ultimately dropping out. She started her gender transition at 28 years old and is now 31. She grew up in Orlando, Florida and currently lives in Saint Louis, Missouri.