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I'd be interested to hear where you did your BA. In my experience in the UK and US, the focus is much more on using philosophical arguments than regurgitating them (sometimes even to the exclusion of understanding the context, which makes Plato and Descartes just seem like they are making terrible arguments). I've heard that in France the focus is much more historical, though.

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University of Pittsburgh, USA. It's a top-5 program internationally, so I take it to be quite good.

I'd say that the program on a whole doesn't focus too much on historical philosophy, although it can, if you want. The problem is that the majority of the intro classes are historical. Philosophy is a gen ed requirement there (similar to France's secondary school system), so the average non-philosophy student's exposure to philosophy is obscure Aristotelian metaphysics.

> It's a top-5 program internationally, so I take it to be quite good.

Most of the international rankings are heavily biased in favour of English speaking countries and particularly the USA (especially ARWU). It's mostly fine in sciences where all the important publications are in English. It's clearly dubious in the humanities. Beware this kind of claim.

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