Professor Hsu is one of the smartest, most articulate, most interesting people I've ever talked to at UCLA.
He's probably the most patient person in the world. The only reason I'd discourage taking his class is because when I took it the questions a lot of people asked were either already addressed ad nauseum or just a bunch of moronic, garbled, pseudo-philosophy that wasted a lot of time.

so like, andrew hsu is like, really smart and stuff, but like his grading's like really harsh, and like philosophy is like kinda cool n all but really abstract and like just weird n stuff

Oh well, at least I got an A

Excellent class! Hsu was the most approachable professor I've taken yet, and always seemed willing to discuss the material in depth with students after class, whether clarifying or exploring new issues. You need to take this class seriously though, but if you do the prerequisites, going to lecture and discussion and finishing the reading (and there's not that much), then it will definitely help. This is the kind of stuff you just need to give time. And sure he may seem to belabor points at times, but think of it as an open guideline on how to do philosophy, and listening closely you can learn a lot from the detailed approach of his thought process.

Overall it was a pretty good class. There's one midterm that's a take home essay, a take home essay final, and in class all worth 1/3 of your grade. Very little reading. Bassicly the whole quarter was on Descartes meditations with a few pages here and there of other people's comments on the issues Descartes raises. Hsu is nice and English accent is entertaining, but the most important thing in this class is to get to know your TA who will be grading all your work. It is a very detail driven and whole class periods can go on about a paragraph or two in Descartes. I'm sure that can get a little boring but for people like me who aren't philosophy majors it was handy. Hard class to get an A in, but an A- is doable. Hardest thing about this class is getting used to writing essay in the backwards unequivocal philosophy style. My TA told us that he didn't want us to use more than 14 words per sentence, and that if we wrote an introduction or conclusion he wouldn't read it. Tough grading scale, but very little work.

This class was a major disappointment. The exams were excruciating (the average on the multiple choice for the 2nd midterm was less that half correct, you be the judge)... and everything was graded harshly on top of that. Hsu was a good speaker but had a tendency to make a 15 minute lecture into a 2-hour one. I would not recommend his class. It would not have been so bad if there was a participation grade or something, but there is nothing to cushion your grades. I got a B+ and I worked VERY hard for it.

very nice guy but PAINFULLY BORING class. lecture is way longer than it has to be and the material is a little abstract.

Boring lectures, but the midterm & final are pretty much based on it. Not much reading (the book is tiny) and the pace is slow. Section was incredibly helpful.

Ridiculously repetitive and boring lecture. He gives out the midterm questions before the exam and the TA's give you the answers in OHs. I stopped going to lecture after the first week and stuck with section. Final was take home. Overall, almost no work and I got a really easy A.

Hsu was a compelling lecturer, but he would spend 2 hours exhausting a point that really would take only 20 minutes to make fully and completely. Sometimes in this class I got to feeling like I had to do philosophy on his terms and not my own, which isn't fun; he was so steadfastly anti-Descartes that, if you didn't take a step back and create your own view of the material, you had to wonder "why on earth was this canonized as a great work of philosophy?"

Philosophy 21 Professor Hsu - Winter 03

This class was the hardest class I've ever taken. Not because the exams were difficult, but because the subject matter tested on was extremly abstract and didn't flow from the lectures. The lectures were ramblings that could have been summarized in a 15 minutes time frame, instead of the hour and fourty minutes wasted. Professor Hsu is a nice man, but an awful teacher and the TAs, especially Sachin Pai, are not effective communicators. I felt even more lost after section. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS!