Patricia Kitcher

Professor Kitcher is arrogant and cold, just like Kant. Probably why I won't be majoring in philosophy.

Patricia Kitcher quite probably is one of the worst professors I have had at Columbia. There is no doubt that this woman is extremely intelligent, as mentioned in previous posts about how quickly she answers questions and with the great ease that she does so. Her breadth of knowledge is extremely extensive, as she has even written a couple books on Kant, etc. Basically it is like she expects her students to just KNOW and easily understand philosophy in the same light she does. If you challenge a view she has, most likely you will be wrong. Before this class, I had no previous exposure to philosophy or any of the texts we studied so I was actually looking forward to learning it. This woman deterred any interest I may have had AT ALL. I have come to despise it because of her evilness. In essays and the midterm/final, if you steer away from any of her arguments she made and come up with your own ideas/challenge the philosophers, you will most likely get a terrible grade. She comes across as this sweet old lady and then will completely screw you come the midterm/final. I cannot tell you how many people I knew in that class that thought they ACED the tests and then would come back with C's and D's. This is a CORE CLASS aka WE HAVE TO TAKE IT, and Professor. Kitcher acted as if we all were some brilliant philosophy students that should have known everything she was talking about and…

I do not recommend this class for people who are not philosophy majors. There is a TON of reading for each class, which she spends all of class going over so you do not really have to do it. However, the material is not interesting and her lectures are quite boring. The papers and exams are graded harshly by the ta's.

I guess I'm in the minority of CULPA reviewers, but I didn't think Kitcher was too great (why did I take 3 courses with her then? I don't have a short answer to that). The good parts: She's an easy grader. Just turn in average papers of adequate length and you'll get your A minus. The bad: All texts covered are interpreted through the lens of the philosophy of science. Science is GOD (she'd hate me writing that, since she absolutely despises religion of every form and lets you know it at least a couple of times each lecture. She's ALWAYS making fun of Leibniz, for example. I'm not religious, but I find people who are so vehemently opposed to the religious mindset to be more deluded than even religious fundamentalists - but that's just me). And like most people in awe of science, she has an idea of almost inevitable progress in all things, including philosophical thought. The latest stuff is almost always the best. Well, that may not be a bad aspect of a professor for everybody, but it was for me. What else is bad? She seems to get lots of things wrong - or at least dumbs them down to the point where the author's point is completely obscured. She'll find fault with every position she teaches (don't worry, she's not so critical in grading student papers and will let stupid arguments pass if you write enough pages). I didn't find her very good at answering student questions, eith…

Critique of Pure Reason and Kant's metaphysics and ethics.

Patricia Kitcher is an expert on Kant, so it's hard to hope for a better person to explain what's going on in the critiques. She was also helpful one-on-one in discussing the papers. The only thing I would criticize is that in lecture, she sometimes has a tendency to take the class's silence as a signal that everyone is following her. She often starts her sentences with "does everyone see that..." and tends to assume that people do. With Kant, sometimes you yourself don't even know when you have a question or need to clarify, so I get that this is hard to gauge. I don't know if I would say that she presented a whole lot beyond explicating exactly what is going on in the text, but she did that really, really well. In general, Prof. Kitcher's lectures made Kant's writing clear enough that I was able to reflect on it in greater detail on my own and with friends in the class. I definitely would say that I understand Kant as well as I probably could hope for after a first reading of the first and second critiques.

A few caveats, most of them already mentioned before: Professor Kitcher is a philosopher, and she does not try to hide the fact. She is incredibly well read: even if she does consistently try to summarise out-of-class material for her students, you're going to get a more than a few references to something you may not understand. She's breathtakingly quick on questions -- both asking them and answering them. Be prepared for a full 2 hours of paying attention and taking notes if you want to tackle her essay questions and exams with some confidence. On the other hand, Professor Kitcher is an incredibly approachable professor. She genuinely cares about her students, and tries her best to cater to your needs. More than that, she honestly cares about the Core -- about the texts you read, about why you're reading them, about the texts you *aren't* reading and why you should care about those too. The readings she added to the usual semester's work were some of the best I've read, even though I'd never have thought of picking them up myself. Professor Kitcher grades anonymously, a fact I respect her for. Papers are submitted electronically, so you won't have to even try with her south-paw scrawl (?!?!?!, is my reaction to anything she writes by hand). Exams are also graded anonymously.

You will not love this class. You may like it, you may think it's ok, but you won't think it's great. I cannot say anything against Kitcher as a person: she's very nice, approachable, and extremely tolerant of her students' absolutely moronic and masturbatory questions that often monopolize the class and totally divert the discussion, precluding you from actually learning anything. That's one problem anyway: she never shoots anyone down. What should be a lecture often becomes a FIFTY person seminar-- not exactly a good way to learn. Her lectures are easy to follow, but in no way systematic. I found her clarifications helpful, but wanted a more in-depth and detailed account. Another problem: the philosophers we studied at the beginning of the course (Spinoza and Leibniz in particular) are maddeningly obtuse. Anyone interested in making accusations that philosophy is pointlessly speculative need look no further. On the other hand, the material gets better: Hume and Kant are brilliant, and do a lot to undermine the ridiculously stupid positions of their predecessors, which is fun to watch, in a vengeful sort of way. Moreover these texts have a lot of intrinsic value. Studying Kant in particular has exposed me to a whole knew way of thinking about things. In the final analysis, though the class was pretty mediocre, it gave me the introductory information I wanted. It could have be…

Patricia Kitcher ia able to convince students that she knows what she's talking about without intimidating the hell out of them. Her lectures are always insightful and bring clarity to even the most obscure of texts (by way of saying, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason isn't exactly a page-turner). She is also extremely approachable, and her patience in answering questions is a great resource. A thoroughly wonderful professor.

I gained exposure to Kant's major philosophical projects in the first two critiques, and an introduction to some contemporary approaches to them.