We implicitly treat philosophy as if it is an importunate, jealous lover demanding all our love and love without remainder or reservation. We overstate the distance it has from all manner of other human endeavors, too often treating it as the sine qua non of critical engagement with the world. We overrate its significance with respect to other academic disciplines, treating it as Grundwissenschaft in an academic world populated by (alas, regrettably) duller and more intellectually modest endeavors. We overestimate its difficulties, speaking of our work and especially that of others as if kingdoms rose and fell on getting the smallest minutiae just right. We wildly overstate its activities and ambitions, behaving as if philosophers do indeed “question everything,” that patently empirically and historically false bit of self-heroics. And we try our best to valorize at least some of philosophy’s practitioners, engaging in professional dialogues preoccupied with identifying “top philosophers” as if genius status is not only real, but to be coveted and conferred through polling or ephemeral professional repute. Most unhelpfully, we offer prospective graduate students advice that they “only go into philosophy if you can’t imagine any other sort of life for yourself,” as if ensuring that we keep the field populated with the strongest C-types is our priority. Especially with respect to this last, we treat imaginative poverty about worthwhile lives as a desirable or indeed necessary passion or, worst of all, as an entry qualification for doing philosophy at all.
My tone in the above already surely gives away that I think there is much self-valorizing vanity in the way we too often speak of the field. My great concern is that we have implicitly sold ourselves on a naively romantic conception of philosophy, one that has much high drama attached to it. Philosophy is not a bit of work, it is The Work.--Miss Manners* "The Work or a bit of work@FP [HT Dailynous]
One of the selfish, great joys of these digressions is the near-instant gratification of sparking thoughtful responses among one's peers that make me reflect on my own commitments. I was also pleased to see MM's response (partially quoted above) not just because she clarified my positions to uncharitable and foolish readers, but also because she extended them wisely; I agree with her that there is a genuine danger that we professional philosophers, "treat imaginative poverty about worthwhile lives as a desirable or indeed necessary passion or, worst of all, as an entry qualification for doing philosophy at all." I had not sufficiently reflected on this danger before (although reading Elizabeth Barnes (recall) alerted me to this danger, which Iris Marion Young had tried to teach me about), although it routinely leads us to embrace all kinds of hierarchy biases that are noxious and worse.
In the quoted passage above, MM makes many fine points (not the least is the denial that we “question everything.”) Yet, I don't think "we" (professional philosophers) "overrate its significance with respect to other academic disciplines...[and] overestimate its difficulties, speaking of our work and especially that of others as if kingdoms rose and fell on getting the smallest minutiae just right. We wildly overstate its activities and ambitions." If we really did so we would behave very differently. In what follows, I am going to leave aside here all the sociological markers that make it clear that professional philosophy is a zero-sum game over status, jobs, and attention. {Professional philosophers are, in fact, also engaged as philosophers in many worthwhile activities!}
For example, if we really thought philosophy were really difficult we would lengthen PhDs not shorten them; we would publish a lot less and run our journals not as cartels. We would be trying much harder to experiment with finding journal and publication formats that facilitated mutual collaboration and mutual learning. We'd spend a lot more time trying to discern and articulate what is best in other people's positions rather than focusing on the knock-down argument. After all, if it's really thought difficult to contribute to philosophy then it should be widely known that it is easy to find problems with other people's views, but hard to figure out what is best in them. How come we value knocking down others if we know to be easy?+
If we really thought that getting the "smallest minutae just right" matters for real, why do we value novelty and cleverness? If we thought that getting anything right matters, why, in fact, do we value arguments more than positions? Why do we cultivate professional habits of thought that reinforce not reading what others may have said about the same topic?
To speak from my balloon, our civilization is on the precipice: we don't know if we can collectively navigate the challenges of rising ocean waters and temperatures; we don't know if we can survive the end of the Pax Americana (however imperfect); survive run-away technologies and fragile networks; and, most dangerously of all, rising expectations everywhere while we emphasize our differences and not our commonalities. It falls to philosophy not to be the ground of the other sciences, but to be the attic where their insights are brought together with judgment, humanity, and perspective so that we can cope and collaborate as well as keep collapse at bay. This is an age of "much high drama"--we should meet it with lofty aspirations.
Friday evening sermon done.
*(Amy Olberding).
+Possible answer: we like duels. (We that? Because we have been habituated to cruelty, etc..)
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