Hi,

Does anyone have experience doing a PhD in Philosophy after studying Literature? Or any comparable jumps between the humanities?

I have a BA and an MA in Literature. I am currently teaching English in Asia, and am figuring out my next academic step. I attained decent grades at undergrad and masters (2:1/Distinction).

I chose literature for its breadth. My areas of interest, prior to attending university, were politics, philosophy, eastern religion and literature. I went for a literature degree because I wasn't ready to specialise and it offered a lot of flexibility. I took courses whenever possible that were on the margins of politics and philosophy, and have written undergraduate essays on ideas relating to ethics, political theory and theology, but always in connection with works of literature.

My general experience was that the literature component stood in the way. I felt frustrated and wanted to write about the underlying concepts directly. I read enough of the recommend material to complete the assignments, but I read far more philosophy, politics theology than novels, and this trend has continued in the two years after graduating.

I want to complete a PhD in philosophy and pursue a career in academic philosophy. I am familiar with some of the better-known ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche. I am particularly interested in the work of Schopenhauer, and how his critiques of Kant's categorical imperative relates to utilitarian thought.

I covered post-structuralism and contemporary French philosophy extensively at university.

I haven't read much analytic philosophy.

I'm quite confident that I could handle a masters in continental philosophy without much difficulty, but the time and expense makes this option less desirable.

My plan is to apply for online Philosophy PhDs, such as the University of Birmingham, and complete it part-time whilst teaching English full-time. My main concern is that much of my knowledge of academic philosophy is self-taught.

Will there be too many gaps in my knowledge? Or will there be time to fix this during the PhD?

Hi there, my PhD was also in the arts and there is no way you can just know everything there is to know about everything in a discipline. In my opinion you are very well placed to go for this - have you thought of a subject? What would you like to study? A PhD is not a general survey course but the specific study of a "problem" or occurrence that has been understudied. What would you do?

Thanks for the reply. I have some ideas for a thesis but nothing developed enough to put together a proposal yet.

I understand that it would be impossible to know everything within a given discipline. My concern is that I've read a selection of philosophical works that are either relevant to particular literature modules, or to my own interests. But I lack the broad survey of the history of philosophy, and the knowledge of context, that a philosophy student would presumably have.

Another concern is that the writing style and methodology is different. Referencing a philosopher in a literature essay, as part of a wider argument about aesthetics, is different to dealing with the ideas directly. So there would be a transition that a masters would give me time to make. I might be overstating the difficulty of this.

My plan is to find teaching work at a university. It's possible that having qualifications in both disciplines could be an asset. But, I can imagine that universities would want someone who has been through the process themselves to teach philosophy to undergraduates and masters students. Even a strong PhD thesis and some published articles wouldn't rectify this. Would you say that this is a valid concern, or does the difference in BA and MA not matter so much?