Post Presentation Entry - Dave's Final Thoughts! (Blog #6)

Deviant Philosophy.
Group Topic – “Paid Work is Voluntary Servitude”
Post Presentation Thoughts:

This morning (Thursday 6^th) we did our presentation. After a bit of a hiccup with the starting time everything got going. I was the only group member who opted to read directly from a script – this was for several reasons;

1) At 10am (after a 6:30am start to get to Wolverhampton from Telford) I struggle to concentrate effectively so early.

2) I’m not actually a student of Philosophy and I don’t mind admitting I found it rather difficult to get a clear understanding of all the concepts and theories being discussed in our group – Rousseau his self was rather perplexing for me at the best of times.

Aleksy opened with a fairly well winged introduction. We decided at the last minute to introduce ourselves independently just before we began to talk so that everyone would be able to put a face/voice to the names for the Q&A section that we’d be closing with.

After Aleksy had given a introduction to the topic and how we’d be handling the presentation I read my script. Despite for a few misreads and missing a word or two I thought that I had delivered my part of the presentation accurately and clearly. I was disappointed with my inability to hold eye-contact but as I’ve mentioned before I never really got comfortable with the philosophical side of the argument and so I needed my script to function and present a structured argument – plus there was just too much information for me to memorise.

Nick delivered his part of the presentation neatly – he had known for a while exactly what he had wanted to say and it showed in the way he presented the information. Blair followed and started off fairly well; however I think that his lack of interest in the topic may have been the reason that his argument strayed slightly in the middle and he unfortunately spent longer than we’d originally planned presenting his section. Despite this his contribution to the presentation filled in the last gap of the argument perfectly and allowed Aleksy to close the presentation with a somewhat rushed conclusion.

The Q&A followed and the first question was the worst – “What did we get from Rousseau’s The Social Contract?” Quite possibly the worst question that could have been asked – Aleksy gave his opinion first – but as he hadn’t really dedicated much of his time to reading it I felt I should try to add to what he said by giving some of my own opinions about Rousseau’s work as well… this I found hard because, as I started at the start of my presentation, Rousseau’s theories are full of paradoxes and I think that I might of actually confused area’s of Discourse on Inequality with that of The Social Contract.

The next question was the best – a question concerning work which people enjoy; Nick quickly took pole position for answering this one as it was something that himself and I had discussed in our group meetings. Nick used his example of how engineers might enjoy their work as it would allow them the opportunities to work on big projects that they could never achieve if engineering was merely their hobby. I supported his argument by comparing someone who enjoys their work – like Meena for example – with people who are brought into a lower social class or are born with less opportunities and how these people who work in the lower tiers of society – cleaners, dustbin men, factory workers… are less likely to enjoy their work and thus they don’t do it voluntarily.

That ended the presentation and with the few hiccups aside I feel it went suitably well. The presentation had a few holes in it, but with a twenty-minute time-frame I’d like to see anyone cover the subject of ‘Paid work as voluntary servitude’ to any great extent.