Sample Statement of Purpose - For a Philosopher

Abstract

I haven't always wanted to be a philosopher. In fact, I've wanted to be many other things: a writer, a psychologist, an artist, perhaps even a scientist or doctor. As a child, I grew up imagining the things I wanted to be, but never what I wanted to do. "You can be anything you want to be," I was told, and I learned to think about just that: being something. Rather than seeing these prospective careers for what they would intrinsically require me to do for a living, I simply saw them for a collection of desirable superlatives. I imagined myself as an artist, popular and innovative, but I lacked the desire to create art. I liked the title of novelist, the prestige, what I imagined life being a writer would be like, but I did not want to write (creatively). As I grew up, I pictured myself in various roles; I imagined how others would view me, the respect I would garner, and all of the other instrumental benefits of each title, but I never truly envisioned myself doing the jobs that went along with those titles.

It was not until I was a philosophy major and thesis student in college that I found myself not just wanting to be someone, but wanting to be doing something. Everything I had wanted to be up until this point, I had wanted for the sake of getting something else: an image, celebrity. But I do not want to be a philosopher because of how I imagine the world will see me. I want to be a philosopher for the intrinsic doing, the practice of philosophy. I imagine the hard work, the scholarship, the research, the classroom, and that is what I want for my life. When I took my first philosophy course, I learned that my life's passion- the ideas, and questions that have always consumed my every thought and word, could be my life's work, and this has been my greatest realization to date.