Digressions&Impressions

They Never Sleep

Like a great many articles published in our journals, some of these essays adopt a variation of what Jonathan Bennett promoted as "the collegial approach" to the history of philosophy. In this approach we treat the Great Ones as our contemporaries and hold them accountable in the same way as we would our colleagues. The special variation often employed today is to take it as given that the Great Ones can be defended against any alleged confusions, incoherencies, or lapses. As a result, we publish many essays and articles that cleverly defend the Great Ones against problems and objections that not only never entered their heads, but probably could never have entered their heads, given their time and place and the normal constraints operating on any human being trying to do philosophy. In truth, no one can think things through as thoroughly as many of us would like to believe. Sometimes, even a Spinoza or a Leibniz nods. It is an odd thing to do, these daring rescues of the Great Ones. I sometimes wonder whether, as we read and interpret, we ought to recall more frequently the familiar limits of history and human capacity.--Charlie Huenemann [emphases added--ES].

I disagree with my friend Huenemann.

First, a situational claim. Those of us that are trained as analytical philosophers are skilled puzzle solvers and conceptual slicers & dicers.  Our very best are also amazing at thinking many moves and counter-moves deep. But we are not trained as systematic philosophers ([recall my post on Thomas Nagel] although I am open to the idea that this is changing with the rise of analytical metaphysics). In particular, we are not trained to discern systematic trade-offs and the way fundamental constraints interact with each other. So, what may seem to us to require an impossible skill in another, may well just be a limitation that is a consequence of our perspective (which has its own virtues).

Second, it is of great instrumental value to try to figure out what a very good philosopher would say to an objection. When I was starting out in the profession -- and in the thrall of extreme antiquarianism --, I would frown on, even ridicule papers that would pose to, say, Descartes, 'what if he rejects P' (whereby P is anachronistic, etc.).  But the fact is such exercises can be very fruitful: one often learns, thereby, unsuspected features of another philosopher's position that mortal you had overlooked on earlier readings. With luck, one even starts to find evidence that some textual evidence that historical predecessor to P was, in fact, reflected on by (say) Descartes (in correspondence, or in the Passions of the Soul, etc.).*

There is a further way in which such an exercise is very fruitful: one learns to develop a systematic sensitivity. I know this may sound as special pleading on  behalf of the history of philosophy, but I believe one reason to expose advanced students of philosophy (folk like you and me) to the history of philosophy is to help think in critical conversation with systematic thinkers. (Alan Nelson has defended such a view.) Not all historically important philosophers were systematic thinkers. But even some of the most persistent anti-systematic-philosophers [i.e., my own philosophical ancestors] have to become adept at recognising the moves of the enemy.

Self-loathing in Philosophy

Under no circumstances should this department sponsor or be affiliated in any way with an event that includes alcohol. (Report  on  Site  Visit Conducted  by The  American  Philosophical Association  (APA) Committee  on  the  Status  of  Women  (CSW), p. 12.)

Last night I was reminded of the passage above. I heard a story about a prominent philosopher that I admire, who had groped a graduate student while under the influence of alcohol. I wondered if there was a pattern or a one-off. A few weeks earlier, before the Peter Ludlow story hit the media, the philosopher Abe Stone, asked on his facebook page, "why do philosophers drink so much alcohol in professional contexts?...Even if this had no bearing at all on the issue of sexual harassment (though clearly it does have some!) it would be something we ought to discuss." I think Stone is right about the phenomenon: there is a problematic, drinking culture in philosophy. In some departments it is passed on from one generation to the next. I always found it remarkable that my supervisor preferred Chinese food over beer.  (I am pretty confident that was one of the many subtle reasons why I gravitated toward him.)

This is no surprise, of course. There is a lot of drinking in the societies in which professional philosophy is embedded. But the problem is notable in professional philosophy because it has extremely fluid boundaries between work and not work. (This is a field that has, of course, low tolerance for the very intelligibility of ontological vagueness.) So, even if one were to ban alcohol from all sponsored events (not just the Boulder department, the APA smoker, etc.), the alcohol related problems, including sexual harassment, would not disappear in professional philosophy. (This is no criticism of the CSW Report at Boulder!) For, alcohol is one of the social glues of our profession (which, after all, has a legitimate professional fondness for conversation). For example, I edited a volume where in his acknowledgments, my co-editor promised me a drink.