Why did you leave NewAPPS?

So, why did you leave NewAPPS, really?

In the Summer of 2006 I was having drinks with a senior philosopher I admire professionally and as a human being. We were celebrating my having landed a tenure track position in philosophy at Syracuse and my interlocuter's endowed chair at a top department. While initially there was shared satisfaction, there was a bit too much of it. In fact, I was shocked to learn (after a few cocktails) that my drinking partner was expressing dissatisfaction with the present chair, and a desire to 'move up.' Status is a scarce good, and I saw with a sudden, naked clarity that even if you have a lot of it from one perspective, it may feel as too little too late, especially if you have nourished the need for some such recognition over the course of a life-time.

A year later, I willingly gave up working with the best philosophical colleagues I could imagine, and moved back to my native Amsterdam. Among many other motives, I feared that all my reasons for staying in Syracuse had been reduced to professional happiness (their collegiality and mentoring) and, crucially, professional ambition. I decided there was more to living than that.

Digressions has just celebrated it's first month, and I have settled into my daily rhythm. It's been more than eight weeks since I wrote my last post at NewAPPS. Given how frequently I still get asked about my departure from NewAPPS, I now realize that people that follow NewAPPS had assumed (absent gossip about a behind-the-scenes-fight), I left because I was tired of blogging and wanted to devote more attention to other projects.

 

When we founded it, NewAPPS was not intended to be a blog about professional philosophy by professional philosopher for professional philosophers. It evolved that way over the first few months of its existence. It works well, especially as readership increased, as an alternative (Avis) to the Leiter reports (Hertz) as a place where disciplinary norms and practices can be made visible and discussed. More subtly, and less frequently, it has proved to be a vehicle to generate attention within and even outside professional philosophy for high quality, professional philosophy.* As a pleasant by-product most of the regular contributors at NewAPPS have become familiar names to their peers.

I wrote that "I take great pride in the fact that we [at NewAPPS] have revived the art of the philosophical essay." But this revival has been incomplete. Throughout my last year at NewAPPS, I had the nagging feeling that qua professional philosophers, we could not take this art quite seriously as a fully distinct species of philosophy; 'essaying is a luxury that is subsequent to other professional priorities.' Digressions is an attempt to escape from such restriction within, of course, a political economy that, having awarded me a "Research Professorship," demands ongoing contributions to the profession.

The most recent arc of professional philosophy was inaugurated in the eighteenth century, and has -- despite some notable costs -- been splendid for philosophy. I expect to keep contributing to professional philosophy as a practitioner and as a controversialist-blogger. But...these digressions & impressions are, also, my attempt to find an art for the expression of a daily flirting with and receptivity to banality and madness, that is, philosophy.

 

*For example, my post on Res Philosophica's cfp "on the topic of transformative experiences for a special issue of the journal," initiated an avalanche of publicity and professional attention for "What Mary can’t expect when she’s expecting." I adore L.A. Paul's piece, which can be read as a contribution to decision theory, as an instance of analytical existentialism (or phenomenology).

Comments

[M. Anderson]

From my point of view, the recent hyper-professionalization of philosophy, and the blog-obsession with philosophy as a profession, has been very bad for philosophy as a creative and existential practice (philosophy as a way of life etc.). I for one am glad you're out of that game, or rather out of that playground where they play games in which you never seemed particularly inclined to participate. In short, I thank for a philosophy blog to which one can turn for thoughtful reflections on--philosophy.

[Eric Schliesser]

I will try not to disappoint!
However, we may disagree here; I believe that on the whole, blogs have been good for (professional) philosophy. (Obviously I am biased because I devoted three years to developing one of these blogs.)
More subtly, I recognize that one alternative to professional philosophy, is philosophy conceived as a way of life. I'd like to believe that essaying is an additional alternative that partakes from a bit of both.

[M. Anderson]

Yes, we may disagree there. But only somewhat, and I take your point. And I certainly agree with your concluding sentence. Thanks again.