In Defense of Baroque Specialization (J. Stanley)

(MOVED TO THE FRONT by Leiter from April 17, since it's generated a good discussion.)

A common topic among my friends is the tension between writing for philosophers and writing for a broader audience. A small minority of the philosophers widely acknowledged by philosophers as the greatest philosophers of recent decades (e.g. Rawls, Fodor) have had substantial impact on certain fields outside philosophy. But most have not, and none of them have had a broad impact within the humanities at large of the sort that less respected philosophers such as Derrida have had. Furthermore, the philosophers who are widely acknowledged by philosophers as the greatest philosophers of recent decades have not been public intellectuals. Their audience has consisted of other specialists in philosophy.

There are two issues here. The first concerns discussions within the academy. Judith Butler is not by any stretch of the imagination a public intellectual. But her work has greatly influenced the direction of the humanities. The second concerns non-academic audiences. An academic such as Stephen Pinker writes for a highly literate non-academic audience. Does the fact that philosophers tend to write for other philosophers, rather than for other humanists or for the literate public at large, show that their values are in tension with the core mission of the university?

I tend to be attracted to the following position. The greatest philosophers are those who are able to construct new arguments or new philosophical positions (including new ways of understanding philosophers of the past). These are the contributions that matter most to the development of philosophy; the philosophical importance of a time period and a place will later be judged by their quality and their quality alone. The philosophers we still read from the past were not the public intellectuals of their time. Rather, they are the philosophers who affected subsequent generations of specialist philosophers. But it is just such contributions that will be least accessible to the educated layperson or even the educated academic not in philosophy. They will always seem considerably more baroque and complex than clear re-statements of age-old philosophical arguments and positions.

There should always be a space for philosophers who simplify and translate philosophical positions and arguments for a broader audience. But a university’s primary mission should be to advance the disciplines it represents. In short, a university should seek to promote work that will give that university prestige in the future and not in the present. So, a university’s mission with regard to its philosophy department should be to support those who are attempting to formulate new positions and arguments, rather than those who seek contemporary relevance.

I suspect this point holds across a number of disciplines. Administrators who prefer public intellectuals to specialists are confused about the core mission of a research university. The intended audience of most scholars in a university should be the future scholars of that discipline, not contemporary non-scholars.

UPDATE: Harry Brighouse of crookedtimber has further discussion here.

Comments

[Heath White]

Two points. First, I suspect that until quite recently there were no such things as non-public intellectuals; philosophers have only been professionals since the invention of the research university in the 19th c. A short list of prominent philosophers who were public intellectuals of one form or another: Plato, who went to Syracuse to advise a tyrant; Aristotle, who mentored Alexander; Locke, who was involved in constructing constitutions and questions of religious toleration; Bentham and Mill, who intended their philosophy to shape public policy; Russell, for numerous left-wing causes; Anscombe, for war-related and pro-life causes. Better historical heads than mine could no doubt come up with many other examples. More generally, examination of the historical context of most of the philosophical "great works" would show that their authors were responding to pressing intellectual (including social, political, and religious) needs of their time, whether or not their intended audience was average laypeople.

Second, there is an important question about what the discipline of philosophy is for. I think Jason thinks it pursues knowledge for its own sake; perhaps we aren't supposed to expect much in the way of applications. This is not how philosophy has always conceived of itself, as Pierre Hadot has shown; Wittgenstein also, for example, did not think of it this way. The view of philosophy as a pursuit of knowledge-for-its-own-sake is linked to the rise of the modern research university, just as "baroque specialization" is. The for-its-own-sake view of intellectual disciplines is well articulated in Weber's "Science as a Vocation" (1918); it is hard to find a clear statement of it before then.

If (my interpretation of) Jason is right--that philosophy (now) is a discipline that pursues knowledge for its own sake--that raises important questions about whether it ought to be required for undergraduates, and whether it should be publicly funded. There are many disciplines that pursue knowledge; only some of them are worth the time of every student; only some of them are worth garnishing the wages of the public for. Is there a case to be made for the value of philosophy, conceived of as pursued for its own sake? That is the big question that Jason's position raises in my mind.

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

Jason,

I wonder how true it is that 'The philosophers we still read from the past were not the public intellectuals of their time.' I think it is a rather modern development (i.e., with the professionalization of philosophy as an academic discipline) that finds philosophers first and foremost academic philosophers. I'm not necessarily (or entirely) bemoaning this state of affairs but simply noting how 'recent' this kind of philosophy is. European Enlightenment philosophers were often notoriously and unapologetically 'public intellectuals' (and earlier, cf. the Platonic philosopher who must be compelled to re-enter the Cave after his private vision of the Good...; not without reason was Socrates philosophizing in the agora). This was also the case in Chinese, Indian and Islamic philosophy, all famous for periodic public debates at court, etc. Is specialized, technical philosophy irredeemably untranslatable to broader publics, or is it the private prerogative of the tribe of academic philosophers? Even scientists who insist they should be free to pursue science for the sake of science, can be found testifying before budget and funding committees about work they otherwise think is beyond the pale for most of us (and for most purposes, that's true). If it is the latter (which for better and worse seems akin to cultic intellectual masturbation), we may need to re-think the public and liberal mission of the university. I don't think the philosopher's agenda should be necessarily wedded in toto to pressing social and political problems (hence its 'leisurely' quality: certainly Chomsky is eloquent testimony to the possible simultaneous practice of both kinds of philosophing). And yet Sartre's 1965 Japanese lectures, 'A Plea for Intellectuals,' and similar discussions of 'intellectual responsibility' (by Edward Said, for instance, and Chomsky himself, if I recall correctly) have much to recommend them. Furthermore, it seems ethically troubling to yoke the philosophical enterprise to the prestige of the university, particularly in a day and age where the university is bound to capitalist market imperatives and crude economistic values. In short, I think we needed a better defense of baroque specialization if its communicative borders are going to be fairly impenetrable and elitist in the extreme (in other words, I may not want to subsidize such stuff!).

[Brock]

Like your other commentators, I have to take issue with "The philosophers we still read from the past were not the public intellectuals of their time."

The first counter-example that comes to mind: David Hume.

[Richard]

Without pointing any fingers (not least because the following surprised me as much as it will others), a prominent (Jewish) medieval historian once told me that "public intellectual" has historically been used with derogatory intent, to allude to the Jewishness of those to whom the term is ascribed. I can't remember whether or not he suggested a less anti-semitic alternative, but he did ask me not to use the term.

[Jason Stanley]

Sorry folks, I was too unclear in my post. I didn't mean to deny that many great philosophers of the past have been public intellectuals. For most of these people, however, the work that made them famous philosophers through the centuries was not due to their role as public intellectuals. Russell's public intellectual work has nothing to do with his fame as a philosopher (similarly, Chomsky's work as a public intellectual has nothing to do with his distinction as a linguist).

Weakening the claim still further; even for those philosophers who hoped for broader impact (e.g. Descartes), I would claim that the philosophical impact of their work on subsequent generations of philosophers (and the evaluation of its quality) is independent of its original reception and intent.

[Patrick Kirts]

I'm not sure the fact of 'baroque specialization' in philosophy is something which can be compared and contrasted with the existence or non-existence of 'public intellectuals'. Isn't the fact of specialization just a consequence of there being so many scholars? Furthermore, isn't the more accessible work of most 'public intellectuals' always something over and above their technical, academic work. There are only ever a few public intellectuals who emerge out of a generation's scholarly community. I think the real issue here is that philosophers always have a nagging worry that they're devoting a significant amount of time to something that might not matter at all, and that specialization which isolates philosophers into many different subcommunities who rarely get a chance to explain themselves to one another (how would they have the time?) adds to that worry. But I think that every generation needs its philosophers, just as it needs its artists and scientists, because every generation has to deal with the fact that it is their turn to be alive. And of course, philosophy has made progress.

[Jo Wolff]

Heath White's comment poses the following question: how many of the great philosophers were even employed by Universities? The German tradition is different to the English-speaking one, but between the middle ages and the last century how many English-speaking University employees have contributed to the development of philosophy, and are still read today? I can think of Adam Smith, and then no one until Sidgwick and then G.E. Moore. But surely there must be others?

[Jeff Rubard]

This argument seems to lean on two confused conceptions, one of the public sphere and one of analytic philosophy. Firstly, reading the contours of contemporary publishing and newsmedia into the past is perhaps not the best guide to understanding the past's public intellectuals. For example, sentimentally agreeable populism aside there is really no historically sound reason to assume the "public sphere" as having its current dimensions; it seems safe to say that non-academic access to learned discourses was once as restricted as general access to academia is today for much of the modern era. Now, given this relatively "elite" character of the past "public", does it really make sense to make an individious distinction between Reinhold and Goethe as "academic" and "public intellectual" readers of Kant? Surely Reinhold's distinction as an academic philosopher has not done him too many favors in posterity as against Goethe's massive cultural influence.

Bringing the argument into the present, it seems relatively clear to me that Judith Butler's intent is to be a public intellectual, rather than a crypto-neo-Kantian methodologist of the *Geisteswissenschaften*. Perhaps she is not a very popular or "respected" public intellectual, but she writes on topics of relatively wide interest for an audience not individuated by disciplinary boundaries: and as such I suspect she has more Goethean than Reinholdian readers. Steven Pinker, for all his political and aesthetic differences with her, is in the same boat when it comes to reception: the fact that they have different readerships does not speak against the model of someone "explaining it all" for the educated layperson and managing to have a significant intellectual impact doing it.

That is not to say this establishes a standard of excellence for all intellectual work. Presumably you are interested in doing analytic philosophy instead. Well, forgetting the public for a second, what demarcates analytic philosophy's statements about things from those of, say, occult metaphysics? I would have to say it is the common conceivability of its views, as opposed to the hermetic interpretation of sacred texts. It really doesn't seem too excessive to say the whole theoretical edifice of analytic philosophy depends on its being in principle understandable by the normal mind; everything from "intuitions" to theories of inference would be rendered nearly senseless if they were not measured against the benchmark of the ordinary life of the human mind.

In fact, mightn't it be the case that the relative irrelevance of analytic philosophy actually arises more from the specialization of the "common man" rather than the baroque character of its own distinctions? That is to say, isn't it probably the case that the fields of activity the "mythical man-month" is devoted to are actually significantly less universal than the latest developments in, say, the theory of counterfactuals, and that this is what creates the disconnect between philosophical theories and the public? Perhaps "realism" demands that one not underspecify the activity of others to overestimate the professionalism of oneself and one's peers; I don't, however, know that this is a dictate of reason.

[Robert Johnson]

Jason,
I both get your point and agree with it, though I think the term 'public intellectual' is often used to refer to intellectuals who are *not* in the academy. In any case, I want to emphasize one point and add another. First, no lay person --whether in or outside of the academy -- who ever picked up Plato's Parmenides, Hume's Treatise, Kant's Critiques, much less Kripke's Naming and Necessity, made much headway without quite a bit of help and philosophical training. No philosopher worth his or her salt has ever done research with an eye constantly on the untutored lay person's capacity to grasp the results. Nor should they. Second, one can and should, as a philosopher, weigh in on issues of public importance, and the philosopher's expertise and perspective is as valuable for these issues as the expertise of others in the academy. But philosophers don't often pursue research that is in service of issues, nor need they, to bring a needed perspective to them.

[Colin Farrelly]

Jason claims that “a university’s mission with regard to its philosophy department should be to support those who are attempting to formulate new positions and arguments, rather than those who seek contemporary relevance”. If Jason’s comments are meant to cover philosophers who engage in interdisciplinary work (rather than just public intellectuals) I think this statement posits a false dichotomy and is premised on a simplified (and mistaken) view of what such research actually is. Many philosophers in applied ethics, legal/political philosophy, philosophy of mind, etc. who write for a broader audience (i.e. not lay-people but scholars in other disciplines or to influence policy makers) would probably disagree with Jason’s insinuation that what they are doing is “simplifying” or “translating” philosophical arguments rather than advancing new positions and arguments. In many cases such interdisciplinary work is meant to be transformative, a plea for philosophers themselves to re-think the questions they ask, or the way they propose answering them, given the empirical considerations revealed through scientific advances or economic or political considerations, etc. So I think Jason has a much more insular view of what philosophy is, though perhaps we are talking about different sub-fields of philosophy. I don’t see how stressing the contemporary relevance of philosophy jeopardizes the primary aims of a university. The idea that universities should conceive of depts as insular guarantors of intellectual values and traditions sounds counterintuitive. Contrary to Jason, I think the real danger is that one risks jeopardizing the value of philosophy if one fails to show what its contemporary relevance is.

[Kenny Easwaran]

It has often seemed to me that although the academic world puts a lot more weight on research and publication (which are largely the sorts of things Jason seems to be suggesting here that they should) than on teaching and popularization, the latter actually should often go hand in hand with the former. We've got stereotypes of the brilliant professor who is awful in the classroom and can't constructively discuss his (the stereotype is generally male) work with people outside the discipline, but I don't know if this is necessarily terribly accurate. Maybe "accurate" isn't the word I'm looking for. It seems that the skills needed for passing ideas clearly to students and non-professionals, and for conveying interest in these ideas, would be largely the same (or at least quite broadly similar) to the skills needed in spreading one's new ideas to other specialists, and people in nearby specialties, which is an important part of contributing to the intellectual development of the discipline. If you've got great ideas, but it takes decades for others in your area to really understand what you're trying to say in your impenetrable doorstopper of a book, then you're still not making a huge contribution to the advancement of knowledge. On the other hand, if your ideas aren't necessarily as original, but you can synthesize them well and expose them with great clarity (to specialists or non-specialists) you may well have made an equally great contribution.

So perhaps all this is to say, not that being a "public intellectual" is in itself an important thing that analytic philosophy has lost, but rather that the skills needed for that (and for teaching!) are just as important for the advancement of knowledge, and they may be overlooked at times. (I of course don't actually know how hiring works, and whether these factors are taken appropriately into account, but it does sound like teaching skill is undervalued, and in the caricature, at times even negatively valued.)

[Kenny Easwaran]

This is perhaps just to say that I largely agree with what Colin Farrelly says at his 1:57 pm comment, and in some sense disagree with what Robert Johnson says in his 1:53 comment: No philosopher worth his or her salt has ever done research with an eye constantly on the untutored lay person's capacity to grasp the results. Nor should they.

If a philosopher can come up with great ideas, and make them accessible to the untutored lay person, then it seems to me that she has done more for the advancement of knowledge than if she can't. Of course, most ideas just can't be made terribly widely accessible immediately - one doesn't want to sacrifice depth for audience breadth. But it seems one should try to maximize breadth of audience while maintaining depth. If I can help mathematicians, statisticians, linguists, or psychologists with my work, and not just fellow philosophers, then I'm more likely to have a positive lasting impact than if I need someone else to translate my ideas for them first.

[Andrew Howat]

Re: several points about the initial post (sorry I haven't quoted them but you've all read it).

Without wishing to be naive about the importance of research and 'prestige', shouldn't a university's primary mission be to educate people? You know, improve mankind by opening minds, imparting knowledge and skills, that sort of thing? Second, why is it that new philosophical theories are better than old ones? Does advancing philosophy have to mean *new* ideas? Couldn't it mean uncovering the real substance and importance of the old ones? I mean, at least sometimes? Lastly, since when were all philosophers 'humanists'. I'm a philosopher, but I'm not even sure what this term means, something I guess I'll have to correct if I'm going to be labelled as one.

[Matt]

Thanks for this very interesting line of conversation. Jason is probably right that the best thing academic philosophers can do for themselves, their students, and the public in general is to think philosophically without striving for 'relevance' as an independent good. And he is no doubt right that the published results of such thinking will usually be hard for a general reader to understand. But there is another facet to the issue.

While it is impossible to speak without anachronism about the intended audience of past philosophers, there is one thing that Plato, Descartes, Hume, Mill, Nietzsche, Russell, and other great philosophers shared. They always wrote as simply as their subject matter allowed. The problem with baroque specialization is not that it's narrow. The problem is that it encourages baroque writing and, in turn, baroque thinking even when none is required.

If you never try to speak in everyday language to a general audience, then it is easy to start saying banal things about uninteresting issues without noticing it because you get enamored of your baroque vocabulary and find yourself being praised by colleagues who have adopted the same secret code. This does not guarantee that the general audience will care enough to pay attention, of course. But if they did, you ought to be able to make yourself clear.

Otherwise technical vocabulary (which is the preferred language of baroque specialization) actually becomes a barrier to clear thinking. Just look at sociology at its worst to see what I mean. Philosophy in both its analytic and continental versions is susceptible to the same disease. And the only certain cure I know of is, once in a while, to explain to the rest of the world what you are doing and why it is worthwhile.

This may say more about my own limitations than anything else, but I believe that if you can't explain yourself to a general audience in everyday langauge then there is a very good chance you don't know what you are talking about. So while I agree that specialized research is the only research, there are better and worse ways to communicate the results to the world.

This may also help to explain why very clear writers (like Berkeley in the past and Nozick and Nagel today) have very few disciples while opaque writers (like Marx in the past and Strauss and Derrida today) have legions. It's easier to see the nature and limits of a philosophical position when its author does not permit himself or herself the luxury of speaking in the vocabulary of baroque specialization.

[Jason Stanley]

Jo Wolff writes:

"how many of the great philosophers were even employed by Universities? The German tradition is different to the English-speaking one, but between the middle ages and the last century how many English-speaking University employees have contributed to the development of philosophy, and are still read today?"

There are obvious sociological differences between Europe before the 19th century, and the Europe today. If one wanted to write philosophy, employment at a university was only one way to achieve one's ends. To take one example, the church now does not employ a lot of academic philosophers. As far as the English speaking world goes, there are many more universities, and many more posts in philosophy than there were in the past. I am certain, for example, that nowadays Hume would land somewhere halfway decent, though he would no doubt ruffle quite a few feathers along the way.

Perhaps I am misreading Prof. Wolff's intent. But if Prof. Wolff is suggesting that we should draw an induction from the past to conclude that the Twentieth century philosophers whose contributions will be most influential in future centuries will come from outside the academy, I think he is incorrect. There is a clear distinction between the employment opportunities for philosophers in the 20th century and philosophers in previous centuries. As a result, Moore, Russell, and Wittgenstein all were recognized within their lifetimes as distinguished philosophers, and seem to have lasted the test of time. I would bet on Anscombe, Carnap, David Lewis, Quine and Rawls lasting as well (among a number of other 20th century philosophers). Though my romantic side holds out hope that there is a Frege toiling away somewhere in obscurity, I suspect the age of great philosophers working outside the academy has been over for quite some time.

I should note that Gary Kemp made this point more succintly in a previous comments thread:

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2006/04/what_crisis_j_s.html#comments

So in the past, there were influential specialist philosophers outside the academy who wrote for other philosophers. Some of these philosophers wrote other material as well, such as histories of England. But none of this affects my point, which is that the philosophical work that turns out to matter to progress in the field is generally written for other philosophers (and, to weaken the claim to make it more plausible, even when it isn't written mainly for other philosophers, it is nevertheless only historically influential because of its influence on other philosophers, and not on the educated public). I never suggested that philosophers only existed in universities.

[Curious_Georgia]

Some of those who resist the notion of specialist, university philosophers favored by Jason instead call for some sort of 'return' to the good old days when all the philosophers were public intellectuals, speaking to the people in the agora.

This view is bogus. With the exception of the thinkers of the various Enlightenment periods (Hume, Smith, Rousseau, Voltaire, etc), most famous philosophers of the past were specialist scholars writing for other specialists.

Consider the following list of thinkers who did NOT write for the masses, even the moderately educated ones, but primarily for their colleagues:
Avicenna, Averroes, Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, Buridan, Suarez, Mersenne, Gassendi, arguably Hobbes, Cudworth, Arnauld, Malebranche, Spinoza (especially)... then, jumping forward over the Enlightenment... Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer and prety much everyone after that.

Those who believe that real philosophers are public intellectuals like Derrida or Sartre don't know their history. Instead, they mistake a primarily French Enlightenment phenomenon for a universal one - or at least, for an ideal.

[J.C.]

"Curious Georgia's" inclusion of Kant and his followers in her list of those who emphatically did not write for the masses [is] wrong. There is a long tradition in German philosophy of thinkers writing and lecturing for both specialists and intelligent laypeople. Kant did this to some extent, but it is perhaps most obviously the case with Fichte. Consider, for example, his "Addresses to the German Nation," and "A Crystal Clear Report to the General Public Concerning the Actual Essence of the Newest Philosophy." Those titles make it quite clear that "Curious Georgia" is mistaken. One might also consider that Habermas follows in this same tradition.

Nonetheless, Jason's point largely stands--these figures would not be considered great philosophers based on their popular works. However, it has been a long German tradition to think that there is a direct connection between specialized theorizing and "popularizing."

[Jo Wolff]

In reply to Jason's response, I am sure he is right that from now on we cannot expect much from those who are employed, say, by the United States Coastal Service, or the East India Company, rather than by the Universities. The question that has been concerning me lately is slightly different: is a standard academic career conducive to the production of the very highest quality philosophical work? Russell and Wittgenstein both had rather problematic relations with the academy. How many of Anscombe, Carnap, Lewis, Quine and Rawls ever chaired their department or even the graduate committee? (I think Lewis did, but I don't know about the others.)

I appreciate that this is something of a digression from Jason's original post, and this is not intended to be a direct reply. Perhaps the truth is that the number of philosophers who will still be read 50 years after their death is so small that no statistically significant conclusions can be drawn.

But to make one relevant observation: the works of John Stuart Mill that are most read now are On Liberty, Utilitarianism, and The Subjection of Women: all aimed at a public audience. His more strictly philosophical works - such as A System of Logic - would probably be completely forgotten if they had not been by the author of these other works.

[Toby]

Jason Stanley: "...even for those philosophers who hoped for broader impact (e.g. Descartes), I would claim that the philosophical impact of their work on subsequent generations of philosophers (and the evaluation of its quality) is independent of its original reception and intent."

Certainly philosophical interest in Descartes is distinct from interest in his broader impact on western culture in general. But what sort of independence is at issue here? If his broader impact were lacking entirely, would the philosophical impact of his work be not at all diminished? My knowledge of the relevant history is sketchy, but my inclination is to think otherwise.

In any case, questions of public intellectuals or the accessibility of philosophical writing to the laity are inessential to (what is for me) the central issue. A philosophical work can have consequences for the general populace without being read by the general populace. When I entertain worries about something like "Baroque Specialization", I'm not so terribly worried about whether the average layperson can read anything published in philosophy. I'm rather more worried about whether work done in philosophy could ever filter out beyond the philosophical realm and have some conceivable effect (if at all possible, a salutary one) on the lives of nonphilosophers, or even (one can dream) nonacademics.

I think some contemporary work in philosophy clearly fits that bill. How much of it? Could I ever produce something like that? Are these worries worth the worry? Maybe not. Maybe someone can convince me not to worry. But, for now, I worry.

[Jason Stanley]

Jo,

As Colin Farrelly also pointed out, ethics is the one area is an exception to the claim I made (though works like second critique and Principia Ethica aren't exactly light reading for the masses). There are some great works in ethics (but not many) written for a public audience. Also, Colin is right that applied ethicists certainly engage a broader public. But these are salient exceptions to a much broader rule.

Toby and others have worried about whether "work in philosophy could ever filter out beyond the philosophical realm and have some conceivable effect...on the lives of nonphilosophers". I think the Fichte's "Die Rede an der Deutsche Nation" (an example from a previous comment) did manage to affect nonphilosophers, though not in a particularly salutory way. Anyway, I have some difficulty understanding the criterion. I wasn't a philosophy professor when I first read the Critique of Pure Reason. But it made me want to become one. So that's a case in which a work of non-ethical philosophy had a salutory (I hope) effect on a non-philosopher. Does that count?

In general, suppose we had a world in which the only philosophy produced was philosophy that had discernable salutory effects on the non-philosophical public. The closest possible such world does not contain the Critique of Pure Reason, The Foundations of Arithmetic, the Meditations, Hume's Treatise, etc. I think that's a world that is considerably poorer than our own.

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

I think Toby is right here and was something I was hinting at above by asking if technical (analytic, problem-solving, etc.) philosophy is irredeemably untranslatable to various publics. So the question is, indeed, do professional philosophers desire, envision, hope that their work may, someday, somewhere, have 'filtering,' 'spillover' or 'trickle-down' effects, or do they not give a damn (i.e., see it as the private prerogative of their professional tribe)? Or, to put it another way, does philosophy serve the common good? have a public purpose? or possess any sort of democratic obligations? (I suppose these are Deweyan questions.) This question is of course related to the one about the mission of the university.

[Jason Stanley]

Toby,

As to the point about difficult work that will later somehow have an effect outside philosophy -- we just don't know which work now done will have such an effect. Perhaps twenty years ago philosophical work on the nature of causation (such as that done by David Lewis) would have been thought to be paradigmatic of work that won't filter out. Yet philosophically minded computer scientists and mathematicians such as Judea Pearl and Joe Halpern have been greatly influenced by such work, and have used it in a variety of ways to influence non-philosophers (for example, Pearl gave a talk when I was at Michigan to the statistics department about the importance of causation for statistics). Many sciences make metaphysical assumptions that may be undermined by the work done by philosophers completely unaware of what is happening in those sciences.

Other examples are easy to come up with. Frege's logicist project was not done for technological applications. Yet the *Begriffsschrift* contains the first formal system, which led to the idea of mechanizing proofs, which led to the computer. Montague's work has had an enormous impact on the study of natural language meaning, and has impacted not only linguistics, but also natural language processing.

Many areas of philosophy (not just ethics, and even and perhaps especially the most technical and specialized areas of M&E) have salutory impacts outside philosophy; maybe now as much as ever. But that has nothing to do with the justification for philosophy departments. The purpose of a philosophy department should be to create really good philosophy, that will lead to more good philosophy.

[Jonathan]

Doesn't contingency rather than ascendant merit explain who will be widely read in the future?

[Steven Gross]

Hi Jo,

You ask: "How many of Anscombe, Carnap, Lewis, Quine and Rawls ever chaired their department or even the graduate committee? (I think Lewis did, but I don't know about the others.)" I don't know the full answer to your question. But I believe Rawls did serve one stint as department chair and also put in significant service on university committees. (I might be misremembering, but I believe that, in particular, he played a significant role in the aftermath of the 1969 student strike.) In addition, as is well-known, he was for many an extremely important teacher, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels. This last is worth mentioning for its relevance more generally to the topic of this thread: teaching is another significant way academics can have an effect on the public.

[Jo Wolff]

My last comment, I promise, and this time in (partial) support of Jason's original post. Tony Wilson, founder of Factory Records tells a story which, he says, illustrates the attitude of the true artist, and so perhaps also the true philosopher. Sid Vicious was once asked how the man in the street was meant to be able to relate to the music of the Sex Pistols. He is said to have replied: 'I've met the man in the street. He's a c**t'.

[Heath White]

Jason’s stronger claim is that “philosophical work that turns out to matter to progress in the field is generally written for other philosophers” and I think it’s been demonstrated that, before the 20th c anyway, this is false, not least because “philosopher” doesn’t really pick out a clear set of people before the 20th c. His weaker claim is that “even when it isn't written mainly for other philosophers, it is nevertheless only historically influential because of its influence on other philosophers, and not on the educated public”—if he means “historically influential in the field of philosophy” then this is well-nigh a tautology: of course what’s influential in philosophy depends on what influences philosophers.

Part of what's going on, I think, is this. Since WW2, the modern research orientation of philosophy has modeled the discipline after the sciences: there are research departments, featuring lighter teaching loads, where articles in professional journals are generated. The assumption is that philosophy, like physics, is a discipline where knowledge is generated in a more or less cumulative fashion. There are lots of reasons to like this situation—less grading, more fun work, we can say our discipline is “continuous with science” and so on. And it creates a lot of good philosophy too, which would not be created without it.

But there is, or ought to be, a real question about whether or how much contemporary analytic philosophy is like a science, and whether it generates cumulative knowledge. For starters, there are rather few widespread areas of agreement in philosophy. More tellingly, philosophy textbooks are not much like science textbooks; intro philosophy courses are not much like intro science courses. We do not seem to teach philosophy as if we had a body of knowledge to impart. This disconnect between the self-conception of philosophy as a research discipline generating knowledge, and the teaching practice of raising questions without clear-cut answers, at least deserves some soul-searching on our part, because it has all the marks of confusion or self-deception.

[Martin Lin]

Toby writes, "I'm rather more worried about whether work done in philosophy could ever filter out beyond the philosophical realm and have some conceivable effect (if at all possible, a salutary one) on the lives of nonphilosophers, or even (one can dream) nonacademics.

I think some contemporary work in philosophy clearly fits that bill. How much of it? Could I ever produce something like that? Are these worries worth the worry? Maybe not. Maybe someone can convince me not to worry. But, for now, I worry."

Don't worry! Such spill over would be essential to the value of philosophical research only if it had no intrinsic value. But I have little difficuly believing that knowing the answers to quesions such as "What is the basic structure of reality?" and "What are the basic principles of morality?" would be intrinsically valuable. Who cares about spill over! The truth is the thing.

[Kenny Easwaran]

Jason says, "Many areas of philosophy ... have salutory impacts outside philosophy; maybe now as much as ever. But that has nothing to do with the justification for philosophy departments. The purpose of a philosophy department should be to create really good philosophy, that will lead to more good philosophy."

I think the first sentence is approximately what I was trying to say in my earlier comments. I'm a bit surprised by the other two sentences though. I guess it's not clear to me exactly why the purpose of a philosophy department or the justification for philosophy departments should just be production of good philosophy. It seems plausible that this might be true from the purely self-interested perspective of an individual philosopher, but for instance, from the perspective of the university, or the funding public as a whole, this is much less clear. Why should a university spend any money on a philosophy department, rather than pouring it all into biological research? To me it seems that the clear reason is that philosophy (just like other academic disciplines, and perhaps paradigmatically the sciences) often does have salutory impacts outside philosophy. If it weren't for this, then we'd just have to hope that those in charge of the funding (who generally don't get as much pleasure out of philosophy for its own sake as we do) don't notice and pull the plug!

[Adam Potthast]

"Specialist" is being opposed to far too many things in this discussion: public intellectuals, people who make philosophy "relevant", teachers, translators, and so on. But a couple of points from someone without a robust department of specialists around him:

- It's remarkable that philosophy doesn't seem poised to learn the painful lesson science is learning right now. Science, I take it has become much more specialized than philosophy over the years and great advances have come from it. However it now finds itself beset on many sides by creationists, ignorant journalists, people who believe in psychics, global-warming deniers, postmodernists, and so on. It seems clear to me that this is the result of specialization trying to rest on its laurels, and not connecting to average people. Science now seems to understand that in order to survive such that specialization must prosper it *has* to connect and argue in terms that many people understand. We see the same thing happening in many schools with philosophy departments. Unable to explain to other non-specialists why some narrow topics are relevant, schools will choose to develop disciplines that can both achieve good research and connect. I would say philosophy's existence as a discipline in many schools will eventually depend on it.

Someone like Pinker may spend a lot of time saying things that lots of linguists know, but people read him, administrators read him, and this helps linguistics and (to a lesser degree) cognitive science get good funding.

- Certain computer scientists may find certain results in the causation literature useful. It's a relief that they would read it. But far more often people from other fields, long starved of contact with philosophers writing for each other, don't know to look to the philosophical literature for certain questions. Even if they do know to look, specialization and terminology keeps them at arm's length. Far more often, then they simply recreate the wheels philosophers have argued about for years and then take all the credit (as perhaps they should). This happens all the time in medical ethics, specialized ethics of all types, psychology, sociology, literary theory, political science, and even cosmology. So instead of having the rich reputation of a discipline that everyone draws from and lives in from time to time, philosophy is marginalized, seen as "mental masturbation", and even threatened at many universities and colleges.

I'm not sure that it's true that the great philosophers were specialists writing for other specialists, but there are interests and there are interests. Certainly we want to churn out philosophers who are as recognizable as Kant and Plato. But many philosophy deparments should also see an interest in keeping philosophy programs that aren't in the top 50 (or don't even have graduate programs) alive. And that requires connecting.

[Brian Weatherson]

However it now finds itself beset on many sides by creationists, ignorant journalists, people who believe in psychics, global-warming deniers, postmodernists, and so on. It seems clear to me that this is the result of specialization trying to rest on its laurels, and not connecting to average people.

I think it's pretty hard to see why this is the result of specialisation given that it's a uniquely American phenomenon. Science is just as specialised in Europe as in America, with perhaps even fewer popularising scientists, but don't have these things. Or, perhaps more accurately, they don't in any way *threaten* science. (I'm not denying there are psychics throughout Europe, I'm just denying that they pose any threat to science.)

Perhaps this kind of specialisation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for these anti-science results to follow. But I don't really see why this should be so. As I see it, the social conditions that allow for creationist nonsense etc to take hold would be sufficient whether or not biology had become specialised.

[Jason Stanley]

Heath,

I'm afraid I simply think you're wrong. It's quite easy, as the comments thread has shown, to distinguish what works have been written for specialist philosophers (whether they were in universities or not) from what works were written for the literate aristocracy. As I think I learned in my modern philosophy classes, if it was written in Latin, it was for the former group, and if it was written in French, for the latter (I leave it to the reader to draw her own conclusions about Lacan and Derrida ;-)). So the *Meditations* is for the specialist, and the Discourse is for the unwashed masses. And hey, which do you think we now regard as the greater work?

The claim is therefore far from being tautologous. For example, Jo Wolff is right that there are some exceptions -- several works by Mill written for the literate intelligensia are rightly regarded as philosophical classics. But these are the proverbial exceptions that prove the rule.

The comments of "Curious Georgia" seem to me to be exactly right. Sure, Fichte wrote some nationalist propaganda for the masses, but that's not why he's back in vogue in ethics today.

[Jason Stanley]

Kenny,

You write:

"I guess it's not clear to me exactly why the purpose of a philosophy department or the justification for philosophy departments should just be production of good philosophy. It seems plausible that this might be true from the purely self-interested perspective of an individual philosopher, but for instance, from the perspective of the university, or the funding public as a whole, this is much less clear. Why should a university spend any money on a philosophy department, rather than pouring it all into biological research? To me it seems that the clear reason is that philosophy (just like other academic disciplines, and perhaps paradigmatically the sciences) often does have salutory impacts outside philosophy."

Umm..what salutory impact has Kant's Critique of Pure Reason had outside philosophy? Descartes' Meditations? Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic? Russell's Philosophy of Logical Atomism? Anscombe's Intention? One can certainly trace ways in which these works have affected broader intellectual culture. But these are precisely the ways in which good philosophy has always affected broader intellectual culture. Good philosophy is part of culture, and when it is done right, it fits into the broader intellectual sphere in its own distinctive manner. We don't perhaps quite understand that manner, and it's hard to articulate. But it's hard to articulate for foundational physics as well, or for great literature. A world without it would be poorer, even if the resources were redirected towards better food production.

[Mark Kalderon]

Jason, I suspect you concede too much to Kenny when you speak of philosophy affecting broader intellectual culture. Kenny seems to want an instrumental justification for spending tapayer's money on philosophy and you offer such a justification. But surely, the justification for philosophy departments is that philosophy is intrinsically valuable and hence good for those who engage with it in the right sort of way. It is easy to exagerate the difference with justifying public funding of science and mathematics. These disciplines have technological applications that produce economic benefits. To be sure. But an instrumetnal justification of these disciplines would fall short of the mark. Much of higher mathematics lacks any practical application as does much of theoretical physics. The calculator and teflon pan did not justify the moon landing. Why isn't it enough that philosophy is iintrinsically valuable? We publicly fund opera because it is good, not because of its intrumental effects. How is philosophy any different? And why should it be?

[Varol Akman]

"So, a university’s mission with regard to its philosophy department should be to support those who are attempting to formulate new positions and arguments, rather than those who seek contemporary relevance."

Jason, I think this is a fine and concise suggestion, and a meaningful dichotomy [sic]. My only worry would be this: the former approach is risky -- briefly, maybe nothing of great impact will come out as a result of it -- whereas the latter is admittedly safe. Any comments to overcome this divide? Any suggestions to locate points of agreement between the two approaches?

[Steven Gross]

"So the *Meditations* is for the specialist, and the Discourse is for the unwashed masses."

Though the Discourse was published with the Optics, Meteorology, and Geometry attached (supposedly exemplifying the method). While it seems he hoped that the Meditations might be accepted as a textbook for teaching 17-year-olds (the *washed* masses, perhaps).

[Martin Lin]

Steven, your remarks could be misleading in two respects. First, the 17-year-olds you mention were not 12th graders in public high school but students of philosophy at the Sorbonne. Not only wasn't the Sorbonne a high school, it wasn't even (nor is it now) a liberal arts college. Those students were there for professional training. Secondly, textbooks in those days weren't for students, but for teachers. So the intended audience was the professional philosophy professor. In other words, Descartes wrote the Meditations for specialists.

[Steven Gross]

Thanks Martin. Yes, I assumed our specialist audience would know that this was the Sorbonne (hence my jokey remark about the washed masses). And, yes, these were textbooks, as I said, *for teaching* -- I should have made that clearer, though; thanks for making sure my remarks wouldn't mislead. That said, I think it just under-describes things to say of the Meditations and the Discourse that one was and one wasn't for specialists, which was my (admittedly implicit) point. In particular, Descartes seemed to hope that the Mediations would be used by specialists to propogate certain views to literate non-specialists (the students). (I don't claim that this was his only hope for the Meditations.) Again, teaching is a way academics effect the larger public--albeit in different ways now than then.

[Paul Gowder]

Aren't there numerous heavy-hitters in philosophy even today who are stepping into the public intellectual role? Off the top of my head, Dennett and Nussbaum are the first-off obvious examples. Searle's written some popularly accessible stuff, esp. in philosophy of mind. To the extent that Amartya Sen counts as a philosopher by virtue of his appointment in Harvard's philosophy department, he could be put in that category too. Rorty surely has had all kinds of cross-disciplinary influence. Nagel probably counts as a public intellectual. Etc. etc.

[J.C.]

Curious Georgia writes:
"Consider the following list of thinkers who did NOT write for the masses, even the moderately educated ones, but primarily for their colleagues...Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer and prety much everyone after that."

Then Jason writes:
"The comments of 'Curious Georgia' seem to me to be exactly right. Sure, Fichte wrote some nationalist propaganda for the masses, but that's not why he's back in vogue in ethics today."

"Curious Georgia" makes a straightforward factual error in the passage quoted above; all of those thinkers, to some extent, did exactly what she says they did not do. I have already noted some Fichte pieces. For Kant, one might consider works like "What is Enlightenment?" Hegel published texts like "The English Reform Bill" in newspapers for the (intelligent) public. Julian Young writes (in the book in Brian's series, p. 15) of Schopenhauer that "his 'Aphorisms' became an ornament essential to every middle-class coffee table." After that, we have Habermas, who along with painfully technical works, has published pieces in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Furthermore, these works were not usually ancillary to their more technical philosophical concerns--I will admit, though, that Fichte's Reden are a bad example. Each of these thinkers has (to a greater extent in some places than others) attempted to distill parts of his developed theories for a broader audience. The better example is Fichte's The Vocation of Man, which is partly an attempt to present the ideas contained in the Wissenschaftslehre to a broader audience.

There is a clear sense in which Jason is right to say that those thinkers became more popular amongst philosophers for their technical works than their popular works. Since the popular works refer to the more technical works, it is the technical works that set the stage and are really necessary for developing the thoughts contained in the thinker's entire oeuvre. I don't think it is exactly right, however, to say that the reason someone like Kant or Fichte is read now is solely due to his most technical works. Students are often more likely to become interested in them because of the more popular works, and this then leads to deeper scholarship (how many people, I wonder, first became interested in Kant because of "What is Enlightenment?"). Also, the more popular works sometimes do present things in a way that is helpful even to the more advanced scholar (Husserl, for instance, often lectured on The Vocation of Man). While I don't think it should necessarily be the aim of all philosophers, I think it is generally a good thing to try to present your views to educated non-specialists, if you can do it well. At the very least, it makes the job of teaching philosophy to undergrads easier...

[Kenny Easwaran]

Jason says, "Umm..what salutory impact has Kant's Critique of Pure Reason had outside philosophy? Descartes' Meditations? Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic? Russell's Philosophy of Logical Atomism? Anscombe's Intention?"

I can't say too much about the others, but the work of Frege and Russell was essential for the work of Turing and others on computation, eventually leading to computers. And for the rest, it seems that these works have been so influential in philosophy, that if any contemporary philosophical works have important influence elsewhere, then these are having their impact too. But it looks like we actually agree about this:

"One can certainly trace ways in which these works have affected broader intellectual culture. But these are precisely the ways in which good philosophy has always affected broader intellectual culture."

We have been emphasizing different aspects (me the eventual connections to application, and you the extreme distance from these applications), but we're not clearly saying anything different here. And maybe Mark Kalderon was suggesting this.

"Jason, I suspect you concede too much to Kenny when you speak of philosophy affecting broader intellectual culture. Kenny seems to want an instrumental justification for spending tapayer's money on philosophy and you offer such a justification. But surely, the justification for philosophy departments is that philosophy is intrinsically valuable and hence good for those who engage with it in the right sort of way. ... These disciplines have technological applications that produce economic benefits. To be sure. But an instrumetnal justification of these disciplines would fall short of the mark. ... We publicly fund opera because it is good, not because of its intrumental effects. How is philosophy any different? And why should it be?"

I don't think philosophy is any different. My thought is just that we fund all these things because of their instrumental effects, not intrinsic goodness. This is because we have some grip on how to debate effects, but not very much on intrinsic goodness. Though maybe this just reflects my poor grasp on ethics, political philosophy, and all the issues surrounding normativity.

But at any rate, I hope that the instrumental justification wouldn't (generally) fall short of the mark - sure, there are many individual ideas that turn out to be unapplicable. But this is no worse than the many individual ideas that turn out to be wrong. We need to fund them all because the benefits from the few that turn out to be instrumentally useful are so great.

And for opera too, it seems there are instrumental justifications - the great subsidies and donations to opera companies (and the like) allow students like me to attend affordably, and keeps alive a variety of art forms. Just as it's good to have many different academic disciplines flourish in a university, because you don't know where the next great idea (that makes people's lives better) will come from, it also seems good to have many different art forms flourish in a society, because you don't know where the next great thing (that people enjoy) will come from.

[Juan Kerr]

Jason touches something that we all wrestle with as professional philosophers. Unfortunately I cannot be as sanguine as seems to be about the consequences of philosophy's professionalization and institutionalization since the mid-nineteenth century.
Here's my two cents
1)Jason's claim that the most important philosophical work is work that consists of 'contributions that will be least accessible to the educated layperson or even the educated academic' itself describes one specific historical construction of philosophical task: that which involves work on isolable, specialist problems that are best tackled piecemeal - ideally in a 16-page paper (suitable for blind review).
2)The incompatibility between working as a public intellectual and working as a professional philosopher is a result of philosophy's getting into bed with science from about the mid-nineteenth century, and the idea that the route to relevance lay in greater specialization.
In other words,the fact that what we write, as professionals, is simply inaccessible to non-philosophers, is a result of a historical legacy that is, in broader terms, the neutralization of critical thought and intellectual labor in general (and this, of course, has non-philosophical causes).
Philosophers, I am suggesting, should really wear their specialization as a mark of shame, not, as Jason is suggesting, as the essence of their professional dignity.
This is why I disagree with Jason's (again, rather sanguine) idea that philosophy does best by keeping its head down and making 'progress' in its specialist problems. Philosophy, in my opinion, is at its best when it challenges the self-understanding bequeathed to it by history. Jason wants philosophy to learn to love its confinement. I am suggesting that it needs to rattle the walls of its cage.

[Nathan]

A few comments on the discussion so far.

1. I agree with the claim that the primary mission of philosophers should be to produce great philosophical work, but there seems to be an implicit rejection in some of the posts of the claim that philosophers have even a secondary duty to try to make their work accessible to a broader audience. Why don't academics along with everyone else have an obligation to spend some of their time using their professional knowledge for the public good? I know that I for one wouldn't be in graduate school in philosophy if I didn't think that I might discover something worth sharing with a broader audience.

2. Jason keeps saying that we shouldn't be concerned with what the literate masses can understand, but merely with great philosphy. This seems to assume that great philosophy is in principle beyond the understanding of the literate masses, or at least could be. I'm not sure I see the justification for this assumption. Perhaps this is true of certain highly formal aspects of philosophy akin to mathematics, but when we are talking about fundamental questions in epistemology or ethics why think that the best work will be beyond the comprehension of a well-educated person. This relates to my third point.

3. I think that Jason and Mark both misunderstand Kenny's post. I don't think that Kenny was saying that to justify funding philosophy departments you must make an instrumental claim. Appealing to the inherent value of the discipline may be fine, though I would point out in response to Mark that it is not exactly uncontroversial in political philosophy that public funding for the arts on this ground is acceptable (think the Rawls of A Theory of Justice for one example). But lots of people find lots of different things to be inherently valuable: astrology, stamp collecting, and so on. Why should philosophy be more deserving of funding than any of these other pursuits? The obvious answer seems to be something like that philosophy touches on concerns that are shared by us all, and contributes in important ways to our self-understanding. But if great philosophy is to be forever beyond the reach or especially the interest of non-specialists and we aren't to include them in our game, then what is the evidence that we are any better than stamp collectors? I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I take it that that is one pointed way of formulating the worry that Kenny was expressing.

[Zim]

Is anyone else sensing the irony here? Jason, every essay you write for this blog contributes to your status as a public intellectual. You like this stuff too much to be sincerely deriding it. Debates about the value of philosophy, its relation to other disciplines, and its potential impact on the masses are accessible to a wide audience, and they don't have much philosophical content. (I guess there are arguments in these posts, but they're wonderfully unsophisticated.) Still, when when the sun appears to drop low in the evening sky, and thinking about the tough stuff has grown counter-productive, a blog addressing politics, law, and the relation philosophy bears to the rest of creation is a fine diversion. I do agree with Jason that one's value as a philosopher is entirely consistuted by the quality of one's philosophy. But the calculation of one's total value should include one's contributions to students, other disciplines, the masses, one's parents, etc. So keep writing this stuff Jason. We don't accept your argument that it's worthless! (And stop coming up with excuses for remaining in the ivory tower. Go teach ethics in Sing-Sing. Is that enough Jewish guilt for you?)

[Mark van Roojen]

I guess I don't see how some specialization could be avoided and that is making it hard for me to see what the criticism of specialized work could be. I think we would like our work to be as accessible as possible. But, I also think it is inevitable that as we work out more it will be more work to follow the things we have to say. So while it is worth fighting against making one's work too hard to understand, it need not be a flaw in the work if it takes effort to understand due to the fact that the next things to be said are a bit harder to understand than the last expressed.

Even though the beginnings of philosophy start close to common sense, philosophy is hard. So it often proceeds by breaking hard problems into smaller not quite so hard problems. Some specialization proceeds from that. Relatedly, philosophy has a long history. Most of the obvious objections to the simplest versions of various ideas have been thought of. Most of the obvious objections to these ideas have also been thought of. The simple positive ideas have had to be refined into more complicated views; the simpler objections complicated to handle them. There should be little surprise that it is harder for a newcomer to the issues to make progress without learning a bit about the existing ideas and the dialectic they have led to. While one desideratum is to write for as general an audience as one can, anyone with a genuine interest in the issues is going to have to do some work to understand what those trying to make progress are saying. Nonspecialist will have to work some to read things not in their areas of specialization.

This is not to say that being broad in one's philosophical interests is not also a worthy goal. A lot of interesting ideas come from cross-fertilization. I don't think we have yet become a field where competent people with one specialization cannot read or understand works by those in other specializations.

And it is also not to say that there is a lot of value in trying to make difficult ideas as accessible as possible. I would assume that most of us try our best to write for as general an audience as possible given the constraints of writing something of reasonable length and something that does not try the patience of the more knowledgeable audience.

I don't actually see why there needs to be a deep division here. We have two desiderata that we have to balance against one another, and people will naturally do the sort of work that they are best at. Each author will balance the desiderata in a way that fits with their own skills and interests. There has been a lot of good work leading people into philosophy written by specialists with good communication skills. And, at least in my experience, some of the most focused philosophers were also excellent classroom teachers. What better justification of philosophy can there be than to show what it's like to do it well?

If the worry it how to explain to those with no interest in philosophy why they ought to pay our salaries, that's a different question than one about the intrinsic value (or disvalue) of specialization. I think that one can be answered too, but that is not really an issue about what is worth doing.

[Tom Hurka]

The claim that good philosophy, or philosophical knowledge or philosophical activity, has intrinsic value doesn't settle the issue, because it doesn't settle IN WHOM such knowledge or activity has value.

One view is that what matters is just that there be high-level philosophical activity somewhere in the world, regardless of how many people engage in it. Nagel proposed this type of view about perfectionist values in general in "The Fragmentation of Value": it matters e.g. that some people understand abstruse theories in science or mathematics but doesn't matter if their understanding isn't more widely shared. This view obviously supports Jason's specialization view: there should be some people working out fancy new theories of vagueness even if no one else gives a damn.

But another view, whose structure is closer to that of utilitarianism, says that if philosophical activity is good in some people then it's good in everyone, so it's best if as many people as possible engage in it. This view can favour the opposite strategy: energy and resources should be diverted away from abstruse research on new theories and toward facilitating the spread of lower-level philosophical understanding among a larger number of people. The justification is not that philosophy is instrumental to something else, like the development of computers. The starting assumption is the same one about the intrinsic value of philosophical knowledge and activity. But given a different view about where or in which people that value should be promoted, the conclusion is completely different.

(Obviously there can be a mixed view, giving some weight to the existence of the highest-level philosophical activity somewhere in the species and some to the spread of that activity. And someone can propose a trickle-down theory according to which the best way to promote the spread of philosophical understanding among to many is to fund abstruse research by people at Rutgers. But that's about as plausible as trickle-down theories in other domains.)

[Martin Lin]

Kenny, why does the public subsidize your consumption of opera? Because you might enjoy it? There are lots of things you might enjoy: Hollywood blockbusters, pornography, monster truck rallies. Think how much more affordable consumption of these things would be if they were subsidized by the public! The reason we treat opera differently is that we think it is a good thing for you to enjoy. That is, it is intrinsically valuable. Pace Nathan, I don't think this is because opera touches us all. (It doesn't touch me at all.) And I don't think that philosophy, or any other discipline, is valuable because it touches on concerns shared by us all. Does the question, “Do merelogical fusions have their parts essentially?” touch on a concern shared by all? It’s intrinsically valuable because it is worth knowing the truth concerning important questions. (Don’t ask me for an explication of ‘important’.)

Moreover, I think that the impossibility of knowing where the next art form that will be widely enjoyed will come from is a poor justification for public subsidies for opera. I don't think that spending millions of dollars of public money a year on opera on the very remote chance that suddenly masses of people will start to enjoy it is a very wise bet.

[Jason Stanley]

Kenny,

You write:

"I can't say too much about the others, but the work of Frege and Russell was essential for the work of Turing and others on computation, eventually leading to computers."

In a previous comment I noted the importance of Frege's *Begriffsschrift* for the development of computers; a similar point could be made about *Principia Mathematica*. But I mentioned Frege's *Foundations of Arithmetic* and Russell's *Philosophy of Logical Atomism* because they are great philosophical works by these authors that did not obviously have such an impact. Indeed, in the case of Russell's *Philosophy of Logical Atomism*, it is obvious that it didn't have any kind of practical impact, unless you count its effect on David Armstrong's work.

[Martin Lin]

Tom, good points. Even if philosophical inquiry has intrinsic value, we have to balance high level achievement that will not be widely shared against lower levels of achievement that can be widely shared. But it seems to me that the balance we currently enjoy is just about optimal. Professional philosophers have two jobs: (1) conduct research at as high a level as they can and (2) teach undergraduates. (Actually I think an argument can be made that we try to teach too many undergraduates.) So we all have to specialize and we all have to reach a general audience. But our research activity is nearly all devoted to developing new positions and arguments at as high a level as we can. It is mainly in our teaching activity that we are rewarded for making some of this stuff accessible. Surely, the view that you describe as close to utilitarianism in which we devote all of our resources toward making low level philosophy more widely accessible is unattractive. (Not least of all because such a project would be doomed to failure.) But this also shows that we are not relying on a trickle-down effect in order to promote philosophical understanding among the many. We actually go into the classroom (even at Rutgers from time to time, or so I'm told) and actively try to teach the many. That's not a trickle-down effect.

[Ken Taylor]

I tried weighing in on this discussion earlier, but something seems to have gone awry on my end. Some of the points I made in a longish post have been made by others. I won't try to repeat them exactly. (I lack the time right now to write on my own blog, so what am I doing chiming in on somebody else's?)

Anyway, I think you have to distinguish two non-philosophical "publics." The lay public and the public of fellow intellectuals who are not philosophers. I agree that probably not a great deal of philosophical progress will come from work aimed at a lay public -- though I don't think its true that no philosophical progress can come from such work. But I do think work that is deeply engaged with areas outside of philosophy and at least in part addressed to practiioneers of work in those areas, can be one important source of philosophical progress. I doubt you disagree with that Jason, do you? I'm thinking of highly scientifically informed philosophy of science, highly mathematically informed logic, highly linguistically informed philosophy of language, and highly psychologically informed philosophy of mind. I suppose these count as instances of abstruse specialization in one way, but they are deeply engaged with work that is not philosophy.

Even on the "squishier" sides of philosophy, I think that engagement with things non philosophical can be instrumental to philosophical progress. One of the best things about philosophy in the 21st century, I think, is that we no longer concede to the po-mo, lit crit types exclusive concern with things like gender, race, the formation of identity, etc. Some amazing good work has been done by analytic philosophers on these issues recently.

Because analytic philosophy has become much more deeply engaged with this last sort of issue in -- issues that the broader humanities noticed us shunning somewhat for awhile -- I think philosophy gets to re-assert with new vigor a claim to be a vital part of the broader humanities. And I think this is to the good of all. It is especially good for broad "humanistic inquiry" that philosophy should be re-engaged, because, to be frank, we're much better at it than the lit-crit, po-mo, BS'ers.

Finally, I think Jason underestimates what really good public intellectual sort of philosophy can potentially achieve. Philosophy has, I think, at least two indispensible and important roles with respect to broader culture. What I'll call a news-delivering role and what I'll call a re-imagining role. The news delivering role has to do with the critical assessment of social and cultural formations in light of other things that we think we know (from science, from philosophy, from anywhere.). Philosophers have always tried to deliver the news when it has been clear that certain cultural formations are not rationally sustainable. But just as we sometimes deliver the news, we also sometimes function as the leading edge in the re-imagination of cultural possibilities.

Delivering the news and re-imagining cultural possibilities are not work for abstruse specialist, at least not in their role as specialist. But I suggest that some work of the news delivering variety of the re-imagining variety can be work of a very high order and might even bring about a kind of philosophical progress.

In fact I think some of the great works in the history of philosophy -- things like Descartes meditations, to take just one example -- were at least in part intended to both deliver the news and to re-imagine new foundations and they were addressed to a broad intellectual public and not simply to specialists.

Of course, whatever can be done well, can also be done badly.

I think there is lots of space in the public intellectual sphere for philosophers of extreme talent to possibly have an impact and make a contribution. And I don't think you'd necessarily be slumming if you tried to occupy some corner of that space.

[Devon]

I am a doctoral student in philosophy. My girlfriend took a philosophy course in college of which she remembers very little. After discussing philosophy with her time and time again she is slowly, very slowly coming around to seeing it as useful and necessary in daily life. More importantly, she has been traumatized (by my philosophical bantering) by thinking philosophically. She is certainly not an idiot. She received a masters from Harvard. My point is perhaps we ought not hold out hope (a la Ken) for the lay person. Forget about specialist concerns trickling down to the masses, I think basic philosphical thinking by means of concepts is quite difficult for most people. Be that as it may, as much as i have ran my mouth about philosophy (Quine, Nietzsche, Kant, normative ethics, et cetera), my girlfriend recently became more intrigued by philosophical thinking when she picked up "Therapy for the Sane" by the "philosophical counselor" L. Marinoff. Perhaps the hard work of philosophical specialization is beyond the lay person unless it is filtered through philosophical counselors like Marinoff and self-described life strategists like Dr. Phil.