> The works you study in such a course, including literature and the other arts, are arbitrary. Not really. It's like any field of study. If you have N-many hu

> The works you study in such a course, including literature and the other arts, are arbitrary. Not really. It's like any field of study. If you have N-many hundreds of hours in which to teach undergraduate-level math, ultimately you just have to pick the topics you think are most appropriate/beneficial. Same if you're teaching history, or graphic design, or engineering, or philosophy. I don't see that it's particularly difficult to assess a student's grasp of philosophy. You can just ask exam questions to assess their understanding, and/or use long-form essays. Undergraduate philosophy courses seem to manage this ok. It's not like assessing an art project, which is inherently very subjective.