Sean Kelly (Harvard) and the Times Literary Supplement have kindly given permission to publish this quite interesting essay of Professor Kelly's from a few months ago about the renewed interest in phenomenology among many Anglophone philosophers: Download tls_kelly_husserl_published_version.doc. (The essay is, in part, a review of David Woodruff Smith's book on Husserl in the Routledge Philosophers series I edit, and which we have noted before.)
...and a different set of problems ensue. Philosophers will cringe when Gintis writes:
It is refreshing indeed to find a moral philosopher capable of expressing such elementary, yet widely ignored truths as "our moral beliefs are simultaneously relative to our evolutionary history and our cultural background, but at the same time objectively true" (p. 291). Why objectively true? Because our moral beliefs are just as much a material force in the world as our capacity to metabolize nutrients, and truth in this case means exists.
One hopes that this was not Professor Alexander's preferred explanation of the point.
Let me record, however, my high regard for Gintis, even if he seems a tad muddled about philosophical matters. Bowles and Gintis on Schooling in Capitalist America is still a brilliant piece of work. (There is a nice overview of the book here.)
A case study of the difficulties that ensue.
Bernard Kobes (Arizona State) calls my attention to the latest travesty about academic philosophy to stain the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education, this one by Russell Jacoby whose qualification for the task--brace yourselves--is that he is a "Professor in Residence" in the History Department at UCLA. This item is not quite as perniciously ignorant as work by Carlin Romano, or as lazily ignorant as Alan Wolfe writing about Mill, but it is ignorant and misleading nonetheless, and does now raise a real question about editorial oversight at the Chronicle: why are you folks letting people with no discernible knowledge of the subject write about academic philosophy?
Now, to be fair, Mr. Jacoby also wants to savage economics and psychology departments. Here's how he starts:
How is it that Freud is not taught in psychology departments, Marx is not taught in economics, and Hegel is hardly taught in philosophy? Instead these masters of Western thought are taught in fields far from their own. Nowadays Freud is found in literature departments, Marx in film studies, and Hegel in German. But have they migrated, or have they been expelled? Perhaps the home fields of Freud, Marx, and Hegel have turned arid. Perhaps those disciplines have come to prize a scientistic ethos that drives away unruly thinkers. Or maybe they simply progress by sloughing off the past.
This is a quite breathtaking opening, especially because Hegel, Marx, and Freud were, all three, committed to a scientific ethos--Marx and Freud precisely in the modern sense (picked out by the pejorative "scientistic") of trying to construct theories, respectively, of history and the mind that passed muster by the standards of the natural sciences. One of many reasons little sound scholarship on Hegel, Marx, or Freud emanates from the departments Mr. Jacoby singles out is that those fields too often lack anything resembling a commitment to Wissenschaft, to rigorous methods and standards of evidence.
There is a further irony here, which is that the phenomenon in question is not a recent one, something one might have expected an historian to know. Hegel is taught far more often in philosophy departments now than he was in Germany in the 1870s and 1880s, when the combination of the popularity of Schopenhauer's anti-Hegelian polemics, the rise of German Materialism, and the "back to Kant" turn in German philosophy left Hegel out in the cold. And surely Mr. Jacoby must realize that in the heyday of behaviorism in psychology in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Freud was not exactly a welcome presence in academic psychology departments where any reference to conscious beliefs and desires in the explanation of behavior was itself thought suspect.
So part of what is completely untenable about this framing of the issue is that it assumes, falsely, that these disciplines, including philosophy, are "static," that because a thinker at time T self-identifies with a discipline that necessarily any discipline bearing the same name at time T+100 must be the same. But as the story of Hegel's neglect in Germany just a generation or so after his death rather dramatically illustrates, the assumption has no merit.
Of course, I have yet to raise a question about the factual assumption underlying Mr. Jacoby's critique, namely, about what is actually taught. Here's what he tells us:
A completely unscientific survey of three randomly chosen universities confirms the exodus. A search through the philosophy-course descriptions at the University of Kansas yields a single 19th-century-survey lecture that mentions Hegel. Marx receives a passing citation in an economics class on income inequality. Freud scores zero in psychology. At the University of Arizona, Hegel again pops up in a survey course on 19th-century philosophy; Marx is shut out of economics; and, as usual, Freud has disappeared. And at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Hegel does not appear in philosophy courses, Marx does not turn up in economics, and Freud is bypassed in psychology.
I assume that most historians have more regard for the use of evidence than is evident in Mr. Jacoby's completely absurd sampling method, one made even more suspect by facts that are quite easy to confirm on-line but omitted by Mr. Jacoby. The Department of Philosophy at the University of Kansas, for example, has a full-time, tenure-stream young scholar who wrote his PhD thesis on Hegel, and who teaches and writes regularly (and intelligently) about both Hegel and Nietzsche. (Did it occur to Mr. Jacoby that the on-line course descriptions might be outdated?) This is all the more notable given that the Kansas department is relatively small. The University of Wisconsin at Madison also has a full-time, tenured member of the faculty (Ivan Soll), who has written one book on Hegel, and many articles on Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, among others. So much for Mr. Jacoby's report of his random sampling.
Here, off the top of my head, is a list of tenure-stream faculty who teach and write about Hegel in just the top 20 philosophy departments in the U.S. (I assume that will qualify as the "scientistic" mainstream for Mr. Jacoby's purposes): Beatrice Longuenesse at NYU; Robert Brandom at Pittsburgh; Allen Wood at Stanford; Frederick Neuhouser at Columbia; Karl Ameriks at Notre Dame; Michelle Kosch at Cornell; Michael Forster and Robert Pippin at Chicago; Kathleen Higgins at Texas; Michael Hardimon at UC San Diego. That's not to mention, of course, all the faculty at these departments who regularly teach and write about Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, among others.
Aquinas, Epicurus, Duns Scotus, Hobbes, Reid, and Spinoza--among other major historical figures--aren't nearly as well-represented as Hegel, I'm afraid. Where is Mr. Jacoby's anger about this fact?
And should one be angry about it? Hegel is but one figure in the history of philosophy, regarded by some as of seminal importance, by others (like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, for instance) as worthy mainly of ridicule. A typical philosophy department, even one with a PhD program, may have only fifteen or so faculty lines, with which it must cover the whole history of philosophy (ancient Greek and Roman, medieval, early modern, Kant and 19th-century philosophy, 20th-century analytic and Continental philosophy--and perhaps even the history of non-Western philosophical traditions) as well as areas of contemporary research in moral, political, and legal philosophy; philosophy of the sciences and mathematics; philosophy of language and mind; metaphysics and epistemology; and perhaps still others (logic, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, etc.).
Why, oh why, should the historical treatment of one figure, Hegel, take precedence over every other major historical figure or important contemporary topic? That's the actual question that Departments confront. And given the actual situation, it is rather striking that Hegel fares as well as he does compared to other figures in the history of philosophy.
Mr. Jacoby, however, has a real axe he wants to grind: namely, what he takes to be the anti-historical or a-historical nature of his target disciplines. (Imagine that: an historian is mad that other fields don't pay enough attention to his!) Here is his hugely ironic critique of psychology on this score:
[T]he ruthlessly anti- or nonhistorical orientation that informs contemporary academe encourages shelving past geniuses. This mind-set evidently affects psychology. The American Psychological Association's own task force on "learning goals" for undergraduate majors makes a nod toward teaching the history of psychology, but it relegates the subject to an optional subfield, equivalent to "group dynamics." "We are not advocating that separate courses in the history of psychology or group dynamics must be included in the undergraduate curriculum," the savants counsel, "but leave it to the ingenuity of departments to determine contexts in which students can learn those relevant skills and perspectives." The ingenious departments apparently have dumped Freud as antiquated. A study by the American Psychoanalytic Association of "teaching about psychoanalytic ideas in the undergraduate curricula of 150 highly ranked colleges and universities" concludes that Freudian ideas thrive outside of psychology departments....
The irony, of course, is that contemporary academic psychology shares the same "scientistic" commitments of Freud: namely, to discover truths about the mind that can pass muster by the evidential standards that have served us well in the natural sciences. Physics and Chemistry departments do not spend a lot of time on the "history" of their disciplines, and psychology departments, even if they were now dominated by Freudians, would not either. Perhaps the fact that psychology is a "soft" science (to put it nicely) should give them pause about such an approach; but, ironically, Freud would not have been an ally on this point.
After then attacking economics, Mr. Jacoby turns to philosophy:
Compared with economics, philosophy prizes the study of its past and generally offers courses on Greek, medieval, and modern thinkers. Frequently, however, those classes close with Kant, in the 18th century, and do not pick up again until the 20th century. The troubling 19th century, featuring Hegel (and Kierkegaard and Nietzsche), is omitted or glossed over. General catalogs sometimes list a Hegel course in philosophy, but it is rarely offered. Very few philosophy departments at major universities teach Hegel or Hegelian thought.
We've already noted that this is partly false (many of the leading philosophy departments in the country have Hegel specialists on their faculties) and partly misleading (lots of historical figures are taught irregularly, there is always a question of resources). But Mr. Jacoby continues:
Philosophy stands at the opposite pole from psychology in at least one respect. In most colleges and universities, it is one of the smaller majors, while psychology is one of the largest. Yet, much like psychology, philosophy has proved unwelcoming for thinkers paddling against the mainstream. Not only did sharp critics like Richard Rorty, frustrated by its narrowness, quit philosophy for comparative literature, but a whole series of professors have departed for other fields, leaving philosophy itself intellectually parched.
That is the argument of John McCumber, a scholar of Hegel and Heidegger who himself decamped from philosophy to German. His book Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era (Northwestern University Press, 2001) savages the contemporary American philosophical profession and its flight from history. He notes, for instance, that 10 years after the 1987 "breakthrough anthology" Feminism as Critique, not one of its contributors, from Seyla Benhabib to Iris Marion Young, still taught in a philosophy department. The pressures that force — or tempt — big names such as Rorty and Martha Nussbaum to quit philosophy, McCumber observes, exert equal force on those outside the public eye. He charges, for instance, that senior editors dispense with peer review and run the major philosophy journals like private fiefdoms, and that a few established professors select papers for the discipline's annual conferences. The authoritarianism and cronyism drive out mavericks.
Professor Kobes, in his note to me, put it well: "This is a grotesque distortion of the state of our discipline. It is simply not true that the major philosophy journals dispense with peer review and are run like private fiefdoms. And I suspect it is at least misleading to suggest that people like Martha Nussbaum 'quit philosophy' (sic) because the discipline is unwelcoming to people paddling against the mainstream." Indeed: I am quite sure Martha Nussbaum, when she joined the University of Chicago Law School a dozen years ago, was "quitting philosophy" as little as I am today. Benhabib didn't "quit" philosophy either: she simply found the grass greener in Political Science Departments, where the top departments were keen to hire her when top philosophy departments were not. The reason, I'm afraid, is pretty simple, but one would actually have to know something to know this: Benhabib's work on Hegel and the Frankfurt School just is not as good, philosophically, as the best work on these thinkers by Allen Wood, Michael Forster, Raymond Geuss, Michael Rosen, Frederick Beiser, Robert Pippin, and others.
And finally--alas--if Mr. Jacoby had asked around he would have learned rather quickly that no one (not even the leading scholars of Hegel and Heidegger) considers Professor McCumber an authority on, or even a reliable guide to, contemporary philosophy. (Professor McCumber does teach in the German Department at UCLA which may explain why he looms so large on Mr. Jacoby's horizon.) For example, only Journal of Philosophy could be reasonably charged with being run like a "private fiefdom[]," as our earlier discussion of the topic brought out. In fact, philosophy is notable for the large number of high-profile journals run meticulously and utilizing blind peer review. Maybe this is driving out "mavericks" (like Professor McCumber?), or maybe it is driving out mediocrities and poseurs? The evidence on offer is, alas, compatible with both possibilities. It would take a lot more argument, and knowledge, to establish Mr. Jacoby's preferred reading.
Mr. Jacoby, sadly, is not done smearing a field he obviously has little knowledge of, for he continues:
Philosophy nods toward its past, but its devotion to language analysis and logic-chopping pushes aside as murky its great 19th-century thinkers. Polishing philosophical eyeglasses proves futile if they are rarely used to see.
Some philosophers, no doubt, "chop logic," just as some historians apparently "shovel bullshit," but we would, in either instance, do well to refrain from judging the state of a discipline by its weakest exemplars. It is true that philosophy that utilizes formal logic is harder for intellectual tourists like Mr. Jacoby to read, but I am afraid this does not establish its value. "Language analysis" is also, as every reader of this blog knows, contested and in some quarters abandoned as central to philosophical methodology. But what contemporary philosophers have in common is not "language-analysis and logic-chopping," but rather what they share with almost every other philosopher in history, namely, an interest in understanding--in "polishing philosophical eyeglasses" in order "to see"--the nature of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, meaning, morality, goodness, art, etc. Hegel is "murkier" than Quine, and also murkier than Hume. But murkiness has never been an obstacle to philosophical importance, from Leibniz to Hegel to Husserl to Dummett.
There is a lot right and a lot wrong with academic philosophy in the
United States these days. But to even get at the field's virtues and
problems one has to actually know something about the discipline, about
what work is actually being done, what methods are used, what topics and thinkers are being genuinely neglected, and which ones flourishing even though they are unlikely to bear fruits. There are, without a doubt, departments that are parochial and narrow-minded, whose faculties are under-educated and under-informed, sometimes about the field's history, sometimes about its contemporary contours, sometimes, remarkably, both. For my money, I would rather see much more history of philosophy (though not, I confess, much more Hegel), and less intuition-pumping ethics and metaphysics, which may well align my sympathies with Mr. Jacoby's. But the question is why my preferences, or his, ought to be treated as a pertinent benchmark for the direction the field moves? If the SPEP folks had not tainted the word "pluralism" a generation ago by using it as the fig leaf for bad philosophy, one might even say that what some departments now need is more "pluralism." The truth is, however, that most departments do rather well in covering philosophy, a remarkably capacious discipline, with unclear boundaries, and a rich and variegated history that permits of many different tellings.
As Professor Kobes wrote to me: "The Chronicle is widely read by deans and other university decision
makers. I am not aware of it publishing on a regular basis any better
informed commentator on philosophy than Carlin Romano and Russell
Jacoby." The solution is clear: philosophers need to write clearly and understandably about their work, how it relates to the work philosophers have always done, how it contributes to interdisciplinary projects in linguistics, computer science, biology, psychology, etc., and then submit those articles to the Chronicle. I doubt very much that malice against philosophy explains the embarrassing run of ignorant pieces CH has been publishing. I suspect, instead, it is lack of anything else available to fill the pages. For obvious reasons, intellectual tourists like Mr. Jacoby and Mr. Romano will regularly volunteer their amateurish musings about philosophy to CH, since they aren't going to appear in any forum in which the editors know something about the subject. That makes it even more imperative for philosophers to present their work and their discipline to a non-specialist audience.
...and apparently has no idea what it is, though this does not prevent the author from writing a good deal "about" it and offering lots of opinions. Someone patient should enter the comments over there to try to set this individual straight.
(Thanks to Matthew Silverstein for the pointer.)
UPDATE: Robert Skipper (Cincinnati) has spoken (in the comments, above): "Experimental philosophy is an embarrassment to the discipline. It’s not at all clear that, done right, experimental philosophy would move philosophy forward. It’s utterly clear that most of the philosophers doing it have no idea how to do even the most rudimentary social psychological (or anthropological) study." So there you have it, no need for anyone else to comment. Also sprach Skipper!
(Thanks to an anonymous X-philosopher for the tip about Professor Skipper's insight.)
ANOTHER: Having gone away for a few days, I now see that various juvenile jackasses have cluttered up the comments thread, though there is some substantive discussion. Alas. If anyone knows who R.A. or any of the others are, let me know. At least Professor Skipper signs his name to his asinine remarks.
John Hyman (Oxford), in a quite positive review of Michael Forster's book Wittgenstein on the Arbitrariness of Grammar (Princeton University Press, 2004), makes an observation that is striking for those of us who are not Wittgenstein scholars but occasionally read the literature in that area: after noting that Forster's book is "lucid, subtle, and intellectual scrupulous," Hyman also observes that it "is unusual in being both sympathetic to Wittgenstein's ideas and critical of them." (This is, by the way, true of all of Forster's work that I have read, for example, on Hegel and on Herder. Forster, of course, is best-known for his seminal work on German philosophy from the late 18th- through the 19th-century [e.g., here, here, here, and here], where he is clearly one of the three or four leading scholars working on figures in this period in the Anglophone world.)
I would be curious to hear from readers whether there is other work that fits this bill, i.e., that is "both sympathetic to Wittgenstein's ideas and critical of them." I'm particularly interested to hear about books or articles in this vein that have been recommended, with success, to graduate students. Thanks.
...in their writing, that is. A reader comments:
As a TA, I always emphasize the importance of writing clearly. This isn't a matter of who I think is right, or even who I enjoy reading because I find their ideas fruitful or interesting; it's a matter of who writes well. Who would others suggest as good philosophers I should tell students to emulate? (Perhaps "hold up as an ideal" is better than "emulate". I'm not sure anyone should be trying to write like (say) Lewis, but I think it's good to read him with an eye on his style.) I have my own favourites, but it would be interesting to know who others would pick.
Interesting question. It's easy to say whom students should not emulate: John McDowell, Christopher Peacocke, Martin Heidegger, the charlatan Jacques Derrida, among others. Some engaging stylists, like Quine or (very differently) Nietzsche, are not philosophers one would encourage students to emulate either, because they are unlikely to do it well needless to say. My own picks for philosophers students should strive to emulate: Jaegwon Kim, Philip Kitcher, Thomas Nagel, H.L.A. Hart, Michael Forster, G.A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, among others. Comments are open; non-anonymous comments strongly preferred, as usual.
I found this to be an interesting review, especially for those with interests in both German and Anglophone philosophy. (The reviewer, alas, refers to 'analytic' philosophy, which, of course, does not exist!)
Jonathan Barnes (Paris), Myles Burnyeat (emeritus, Oxford), Raymond Geuss (Cambridge), and Barry Stroud (Berkeley) answer the questions here. The questions and answers vary quite a bit in their interest and depth (Geuss is appropriately short and dismissive of some of the questions). A few excerpts.
Geuss, in response to a question about whether it is a loss that few philosophers now write in the form of dialogues, poems, aphorisms or the like any longer:
Academic philosophers should not give themselves too much importance. People are not going to stop expressing philosophical views in letters, or dialogues, or aphorisms just because this will not get them employment in a department of philosophy.
Stroud on whether only those with training can do philosophy:
I think of philosophy as a difficult intellectual endeavour. You have to learn how to do it, and it takes a lot of practice. Only those who know how to do it are really engaged in philosophy. It is possible to do serious philosophy outside an academic institution (many of the great philosophers of the past did it). But nowadays it is virtually impossible to earn a living and support oneself outside an academic institution while doing philosophy.
Barnes embarrasses himself mightily with this bizarre proclamation:
[M]ost philosophers who belong to the so-called analytical tradition are pretty poor philosophers. (Most academics who do anything are pretty poor at doing it; and philosophy, or so it seems to me, is a subject in which it is peculiarly difficult to do decent stuff. A modestly competent historian may produce a modestly good history book; a modestly competent philosopher has no reason to publish his modest thoughts.) But there's a big difference between the analyticals and the continentals: what distinguishes the continental tradition is that all its members are pretty hopeless at philosophy. Myself, I've read scarcely a hundred continental pages. I can't see how any rational being could bear to read more; and the only question which the continental tradition raises is sociological or psychological: How are so many apparently intelligent young people charmed into taking the twaddle seriously?
Having read "a hundred continental pages" (whatever exactly that means), Barnes dismisses as worthless two hundred years of philosophy since Kant on the European Continent, including multiple traditions (Idealism, Marxism, existentialism, phenomenology, etc.) encompassing tens of thousands of pages of canonical texts! Barnes, at least, claims elsewhere in the interview not to be a philosopher, but an historian of philosophy, which means that this disgraceful display of parochial ignorance can not be attributed to "analytic philosophy."
With regard to the question that provokes Barnes's outburst--regarding the "analytic/Continental divide," Geuss has a better and more apt answer:
Whether "analytic"/"continental" is an illuminating or well-formed dichotomy is less important than the general recognition that for as long as there have been philosophers, they have always disagreed with one another radically on a wide variety of important issues. In this they differ from scientists or mathematicians. Lack of consensus, if not active intellectual hostility, is the natural state for any body of philosophers. This seems to be a fact of life about the way humans respond to certain basic features of the human condition, and it seems more reasonable to accept this and try to understand why it is the case and what its implications might be than to try to fit philosophy into a mould derived from religion (the universal consensus of all orthodox believers) or from a certain conception of "strict science" (all biologists agree that the whale is a mammal, not a fish).
Which is to say that the best way to approach embarrassing displays of ignorance like Jonathan Barnes's would be through psychology, not philosophy!
Their blog is here. It deserves a wide readership; the issues it raises are not peculiar to the UK, though, ironically, because there is no meaningful private sector in higher education in Britain it is proving far easier for the government there to enforce the 'business model' on all universities. In the U.S., at least, the elite private universities can actually exploit their market position (in the market for prestige and certification) to uphold non-business models of learning, and by doing so they create some pressures for the elite public sector of higher education to do the same.
Raymond Geuss (Cambridge University) and the late Richard Rorty were colleagues in the Princeton Department in the late 1970s. Geuss has some characteristically interesting, amusing and iconoclastic remarks about Rorty here, which illuminate both Rorty and Geuss. (Thanks to Rob Sica for the pointer.) An excerpt:
[One day] Dick happened to mention that he had just finished reading Gadamer's Truth and Method. My heart sank at this news because the way he reported it seemed to me to indicate, correctly as it turned out, that he had been positively impressed by this book. I had a premonition, which also turned out to be correct, that it would not be possible for me to disabuse him of his admiration for the work of a man, whom I knew rather well as a former colleague at Heidelberg and whom I held to be a reactionary, distended wind-bag. Over the years, I did my best to set Dick right about Gadamer, even resorting to the rather low blow of describing to him the talk Gadamer had given at the German Embassy in occupied Paris in 1942, in which Gadamer discussed the positive role Herder could play in sweeping away the remnants of such corrupt and degenerate phenomena as individualism, liberalism, and democracy from the New Europe arising under National Socialism. All this had no effect on Dick. His response to this story was that Gadamer had probably wanted to finance a trip to Paris—a perfectly understandable, indeed self-evidently laudable aspiration—and, under the circumstances, getting himself invited to the German Embassy was the only way to do this. As I persisted in pointing out that this in itself might “under the circumstances” not exactly constitute an exculpation, I came up against that familiar shrug of the shoulders which could look as if it meant that Dick had turned his receiving apparatus off. In this case, the shrug also made me feel that I was being hysterically aggressive in pursuing a harmless old gent for what was, after all, no more than a youthful indiscretion. In retrospect, I am not sure but that I don't now think Dick was right about this last point, but that was not my reaction at the time....
On another [occasion]...Dick described to me a new undergraduate course he wanted to give. It was to be called “An Alternative History of Modern Philosophy” and would sketch a continuous conversation from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the twentieth century without once naming any of the standard canonical figures. This would be a history of philosophy without any reference to Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, or J. S. Mill. I don't recall in all detail how the alternative story was to run, but I do remember very vividly that it was to start from Petrus Ramus. Dick had an extremely low opinion of Descartes as a philosopher, thinking of him as no more than a minor disciple of Petrus Ramus. I also remember that some of the high points were to be Paracelsus, the Cambridge Platonists, Thomas Reid, Fichte, and Hegel. I think the course was to end with Dewey, although I may be making that up.... [BL comment: Rorty, in fact, taught a course, which I had with him in the Spring of 1982, called "From Kant to 1900," which covered Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and William James; when Geuss re-joined the Princeton faculty, he had the course eliminated from the books saying [I still recall this], "This course can not be taught." Of course, Rorty had a message to convey, which is why he could get away with it--it was an excellent course for undergraduates, but I can see why Geuss, who did not share Rorty's agenda, would not think it teachable.]
Dick had two different worries about his planned new course. The first was that, if the Committee on Instruction knew what he was up to, “They” would never permit it. Dick spoke of the Committee on Instruction as if it was a kind of academic Thought Police. One must, as it were, he said, consider the University as a complex machine with two interlocking parts, a Generator that was devoted to producing excellence in relatively abstract areas of research, primarily scientific research, and then a Transformer which turned the prestige acquired through this excellence into a force of repression, directed at legitimizing the deepest possible cultural and political conservatism. The combination of excellence and a strictly-enforced, backward-looking cultural ethos made the University an almost irresistible magnet for the extensive funding from the alumni, large corporations, and the government that fuelled the Generator. The Committee on Instruction was the transmission belt between the two parts of the machine. “That is the way a great university protects itself from change,” Dick would say to me, as a kind of refrain during the late 1970s, meaning by “change,” I presume, in the first instance, cultural change. I naïvely objected that Dick's description couldn't possibly be correct because such a structure couldn't possibly maintain itself: it was like a confidence trick or a perpetual motion machine; reality would eventually break through at some point. Dick, however, was, at that time, significantly more disillusioned, or perhaps more realistic, than I was....
Dick's second worry about this planned course was that he did not quite see how he could tell his story without mentioning Kant at all, and even to mention Kant would be to violate the rationale of the enterprise. Since I had at least as negative an opinion of Kant as Dick had of Descartes, I encouraged him to move directly from Jacobi to Fichte, bypassing Kant altogether. He didn't seem very taken with this idea, although it was not clear to me why not. I suppose anyone who knew Dick knew his sometimes uncanny capacity simply to allow a train of thought that was moving in a direction he found uncongenial to peter out without it ever being completely clear why no further step in the conversation was made. This was not merely a gift or skill he had, but a personality trait that was integral to an aspect of Dick's philosophical make-up which I have already mentioned: his deeply rooted anti-Cartesianism. Once one has set the origin of a system of Cartesian coordinates, and specified the axes, one can continue to count off in any direction ad libitum....
Dick was deeply tolerant and amazingly generous both in action and in spirit. When I was appointed at Princeton, he had, I think, some hopes of acquiring a colleague with whom he could discuss the more metaphysical parts of the German philosophical tradition that were near the center of his attention at that time. It must have been at least a mild disappointment to him that I had little interest in any kind of metaphysics and spent my time studying philosophers like Adorno who were of no interest to him and thinking about “social theory”—at that time a purported academic discipline that has now disappeared as completely as Davidson's [a now defunct market in Princeton, mentioned earlier in a part of the essay not excerpted here]. Characteristically, Dick used to say to people that my first book, The Idea of a Critical Theory, showed the uselessness of the concept of “ideology,” whereas I thought it showed the reverse. We could also find no common ground in aesthetics because of my own obsession with the philosophy of music. Dick seemed not only, as I have mentioned, to be deeply unmusical, like Freud, but he sometimes seemed even slightly irritated by the very existence of music and certainly by the thought that someone could take it sufficiently seriously to try to think about it in a sustained and systematic way. Finally, I think it puzzled him that I cleverly avoided ever giving any instruction in the university on Heidegger. None of this in the least diminished the unstinting intellectual and academic support he gave me in the most diverse contexts over decades, which went far beyond anything I can have been thought to deserve.
As the years went by, and we both left Princeton, I am afraid the incipient intellectual and emotional gulf between us got wider, especially after what I saw as Dick's turn toward ultra-nationalism with the publication of Achieving Our Country. Dick had always been and remained to the end of his life a “liberal” (in the American sense, i.e., a “Social-Democrat”): a defender of civil liberties and of the extension of a full set of civic rights to all, a vocal supporter of the labor unions and of programs to improve the conditions of the poor, an enemy of racism, arbitrary authority, and social exclusion. On the other hand, I found that he also enjoyed a spot of jokey leftist-baiting when he thought I was adopting knee-jerk positions which he held to be ill-founded. That was all fair enough. I tried not to rise to the bait, and usually succeeded, but this did not contribute to making our relations easier or more comfortable for me. The high (or low, depending on one's perspective) point of this sort of thing occurred some time in the 1980s when Dick sent me a postcard from Israel telling me he had just been talking with the Israeli official responsible for organizing assassinations of Arab mayors on the West Bank. He closed by saying he thought this was just what the situation required....
Achieving Our Country, though, represented a step too far for me. The very idea that the United States was “special” has always seemed to me patently absurd, and the idea that in its present, any of its past, or any of its likely future configurations it was in any way exemplary, a form of gross narcissistic self-deception which was not transformed into something laudable by virtue of being embedded in a highly sophisticated theory which purported to show that ethnocentrism was in a philosophically deep sense unavoidable. I remain very grateful to my Catholic upbringing and education for giving me relative immunity to nationalism. In the 1950s, the nuns who taught me from age five to twelve were virtually all Irish or Irish-American with sentimental attachment to certain elements of Celtic folklore, but they made sure to inculcate into us that the only serious human society was the Church which was an explicitly international organization. The mass, in the international language, Latin, was the same everywhere; the religious orders were international. This absence of national limitation was something very much to be cherished. “Catholica” in the phrase “[credo in] unam, sanctam, catholicam, et apostolicam ecclesiam” should, we were told, be written with a lower-case, not an upper-case, initial because it was not in the first instance part of the proper name of the church, but an adjective meaning “universal,” and this universality was one of the most important “marks of the true Church.” The Head of the Church, to be sure, and Vicar of Christ on earth, was in fact (at that time) always an Italian, but that was for contingent and insignificant reasons. The reason most commonly cited by these nuns was that, as Bishop of Rome, the Pope had to live in the “Eternal City,” but only an Italian could stand to live in Rome: it was hot, noisy, and overcrowded, and the people there ate spaghetti for dinner everyday rather than proper food, i.e., potatoes, so it would be too great a sacrifice to expect someone who had not grown up in Italy to tolerate life there. I clearly remember being unconvinced by this argument, thinking it set inappropriately low standards of self-sacrifice for the higher clergy; a genuinely saintly character should be able to put up even with pasta for lunch and dinner every day. I have since myself adopted this diet for long periods of time without thinking it gave me any claim on the Papacy. In any case, it was obvious even to a child of six or seven that none of these sisters had ever been within a thousand kilometers of Rome....
Hegel says at some point that a great man causes others to write commentaries about him and his work. I have probably spent more time thinking about Dick than about anyone else outside my narrow circle of intimates. His philosophical position contains much of great interest and importance, along with, as one would expect, some things I cannot bring myself to agree with, but that position is clearly and plausibly put. His writings have a human richness and substance which are not present in most contemporary philosophy. As a person, however, he remained a complete mystery to me. I rarely had the sense I understood why he did anything he did. I don't usually find most people that unfathomable. Perhaps it is simply that I cared enough to want genuinely to understand him, because I admired him, more than I cared about understanding other people, and so was not satisfied in his case with the superficial “explanations” of people's behavior which we normally accept.
As a person, Dick was thoroughly lovable, and as a philosopher both extraordinarily perceptive, and, at times, intensely irritating. The one thing he was not—not ever—was predictable or boring. I won't see his like again in my lifetime. I hope he would have been pleased to know that he would be remembered as this kind of person and this kind of philosopher.
In just the first 24 hours, there have been more than 650 signatures to the petition calling on the University of Florida President to reconsider the decision to close the PhD program in philosophy at the University of Florida. It would be wonderful if there were 650 more in the next 24 hours! Please take a moment to sign (and include some identifying info as you do so, e.g., Prof of Philosophy at .... or undergraduate at....). (I hope some of the journalists who cover higher education and read this blog will run a story about the effort to save the PhD program at Florida. 650 signatures in support of the Florida program in just one day is, I hope, newsworthy!)
Many signatories have posted excellent comments as well. Here are a few samples.
From John Protevi, Associate Professor of French Studies at Lousiana State University:
Philosophy is the oldest and most rigorous of all the humanities disciplines, stretching back to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Philosophy has been taught in European universities since at least the 13th century in the schools at Paris and Oxford. It is today a lively and important discipline in its own right, and also as a pivot, linking many of the sciences. Because of its positive effects on the intellectual growth of students, it is increasingly popular as an undergraduate major. The University of Florida can only damage its reputation if it follows through on this shortsighted proposal.
From Stephen Darwall, John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (who is moving next year to Yale University):
Dear President Machen, Years ago (I like to think not so many), you and I worked on some projects together when you were Provost at Michigan. Since you left Michigan, you have devoted your life to the effort to make good universities great. Do you really think a university can be great without a good philosophy department? And do you think a philosophy department at a research university can be good without a Ph.D. program? Florida faces great exigency and must cut its budget. While you were at Michigan, the University also faced great exigency, as it has again recently. Was cutting the Philosophy Ph.D. program something you would have long contemplated as Provost of Michigan? I doubt it. I like to think that the proposed cut to Florida's Philosophy Ph.D. program has yet to come before your attention with sufficient vividness, since the document with the proposed cuts is large and complex. And I like to think that when it does you will see the wisdom of retaining the program.
From C. Kenneth Waters, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities:
Great universities across the world have first rate philosophy departments, and that is no accident. I am sorry to see that the flagship public university of one of America's most prominent states does not recognize the value of philosophy.
From Daniel Garber, Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department at Princeton University:
This is a short-sighted move, one that sets back the cause of liberal education in one of the country's important state universities.
From Otavio Bueno, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami:
UF has an excellent philosophy department. Keeping the department's Ph.D program will be an asset for the university -- and for the profession.
From David McNaughton, Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University:
Even though I am on the faculty at FSU, and thus likely to benefit from this extraordinary decision, as a Past President of the Florida Philosophical Association, and as someone who cares about the profession, I am appalled.
From Peter Carruthers, Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department at the University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Florida cannot possibly aspire to be a serious research university without a PhD Program in Philosophy.
From Craig Duncan, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Ithaca College:
Others have spoken of the importance of philosophy to the humanities. Let me emphasize its practical importance too. In today's dynamic economy, career changes are the norm. Given this fact, it is important that students be trained in highly portable skills such as critical thinking, lucid writing, and accurate reading. Philosophy is a first-rate opportunity to hone these skills. Harming the quality of your philosophy department harms your undergraduates' education.
From Janice Dowell, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln:
I have taught philosophy at state universities for over ten years. I have served as an undergraduate advisor for five of those years. I urge you to reconsider the termination of Florida's graduate program in philosphy. Good philosphy departments, such as Florida's, make a contribution to undergraduate education that far exceeds their size. Philosophy departments tend to be small and their faculty relatively low-paid. In short, good philosophy departements are relatively cheap. Yet philosophy majors consistently far out-perform just about any other major--in engineering, the sciences, or the humanities--on standardized tests for graduate programs, an excellent neutral measure of undergraduate learning. (Just check any source of information for the comparative scores of undergraduate majors on the GREs or LSATs. Year after year, philosophy majors dominate these lists.) The emphasis here, though, is GOOD philosophy departments. A university's ability to attract strong philosophers depends in part on the strength of their graduate program. Florida currently has a strong program and a strong department. It would be a real blow to undergraduate education at Florida to decimate the philosophy department by terminating its philosophy program. If this action is taken, I predict that the best faculty leave for better positions within a few years. It would be very difficult for a department to recover from this. And the reinstatement of the graduate program will be a necessary condition on recovery.
From Radu Bogdan, a philosophy professor at Tulane University and Bilkent University in Turkey:
Some time ago, I was considering applying for a job at UF, given the strength of the philosophy graduate program and its prestige. Philosophers make a great difference to a university, being the most interdisciplinary and connecting various fields. Both at Tulane and now visiting in Turkey, I set up and run cognitive science programs -- one of the most exciting developments in recent education -- and it is my experience that philosophers are the best link across disciplines in cognitive science. In eliminating the PhD at your university, you would weaken not only philosophy but also future developments in cognitive science, also various areas of applied ethics (business, ecology, medical, etc.) where philosophers are also essential. I hope you would reconsider.
From Alistair Norcross, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder:
Eliminating the Ph.D program in Philosophy at the University of Florida would be a terrible move. If that happens, the "flag" would have to be transferred to FSU
From Barry Loewer, Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department at Rutgers University, New Brunswick:
It is a grave error for the University of Florida to close its PhD program in pilosophy. Over the years it has been an excellent program. A vibrant philosophy PhD program is needed for vibrant undergraduate programs in philosophy and the humanities and sciences in general. Closing the program will make the university much less appealing to undergraduates. It will lead to many of the faculty leaving. It will be embarrassing to Florida that its flagship university doesn't have a doctoral program in Philosophy and re-instituting the program will be enormously more expensive than maintaining the current program.
This strikes me as very poor judgment. Sometimes, sacrifices have to be made to make certain savings. But in this case, the savings are likely to be small, and the cost in loss of prestige and academic standing will be extremely high. For, what talented person is going to want to be hired or pursue an advanced degree at UF -- in any field of the humanities -- with this as the track record of the University? As a faculty member at one of the UF's international partner universities, I would add that this is the sort of move that will likely raise questions about whether to continue that partnership.
From Kevin Fink in Ohio:
This decision comes just weeks after I was admitted to the PhD program in philosophy. I am extremely disappointed. This is something I never would have expected from such a highly respected research institution. Further, I can hardly imagine that the cost to the reputation of the university is worth what little money can be saved by this cut.
From Elizabeth Palmer:
I completed an undergraduate degree in philosophy at the Univeristy of Florida and am now attending Indiana University's PhD program in philosophy. I cannot express how disgusted and disappointed I am with your decision to end the PhD program in philosophy at UF. The UF department is quite strong - they are ranked in the top 50 of all graduate philosophy programs. Although I understand the budget constraints Florida is facing, it is ludicrous to eliminate a program clearly performing so well. At this moment, I'm ashamed to be a UF alumna. I hope you reconsider your decision.
From Jennifer Arellano, an undergraduate majoring in philosophy at Florida:
As a philosophy undergrad at UF, I am outraged that [President] Bernie Machen would cut such a vital discipline from UF's PhD. curriculum. I have firsthand witnessed the proficiency of UF's philosophy department, the growing student interest, and the passion and drive of its philosophy students and professors. I came specifically to UF with one goal in mind - to earn my undergraduate degree in philosophy. If this department suffers any more setbacks due to Machen's insensitivity, inconsideration, and general insolence towards a first-class undergraduate education, I will hold him personally responsible for disrupting the quality of my education. The department is already small in size, and with some professors already leaving, how can we afford to lose any more faculty? At the expense of increasing student interest in the major? At the expense of the respectability of Florida's supposed flagship institution? I'm pretty sure Berkeley still offers PhD's in philosophy.
From Jason Braswell in Illinois:
As a former philosophy major at the University of Florida, I strongly disagree with the decision to cut the PhD program. Studying philosophy was one of the best decisions I've ever made, and it's sad that such an important subject is being marginalized.
From Charles Wolvertron in Virginia:
As someone who "discovered" philosophy late in life after a career in engineering, I think a claim of being relatively unbiased is justifiable. It is now my opinion that a course in philosophy should be a graduation requirement for every student. Eliminating a key part of your philosophy program is a step in the wrong direction and sends a message opposite to the one that needs sending.
From David Holt in Florida:
As a tax paying resident of Florida, who understands the skills in critical thinking that the study of philosophy provides, I urge you not to eliminate the Ph.D program at the University of Florida. I studied philosophy as an undergraduate and graduate student some 30 years ago and know the sound foundation it provided for earning a living in business.
From Alice Allen in Florida:
Dear Dr. Machen, From a fellow Vanderbilt alumnus... Please reconsider and keep the PhD program in Philosophy. I know several of their students and have known others over the years. These young scholars are EXCEPTIONAL. I know times are tight and understand your need to cut somewhere. But a top Liberal Arts university needs a Philosophy Ph.D. program. Respectfully submitted, Alice Allen B.A., Vanderbilt, 1965 M.A, M.S., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1967, 1969 Mother of a 2006 Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Florida with double major in English and Philosophy.
Here, finally, is an article from a Gainesville paper about the initial response to the proposed cuts.
A young philosopher at a top research university writes: "The thing that always astonishes me is that they [bloggers, journalists etc.] put on this air of pained affront if an academic gets short with them - 'I don't expect this tone from an educator' and all that jazz. Jesus, they should have been in a room with Jerry 'I just have one question; was your paper a joke?' Fodor, or Kim 'but there's no fucking evidence for that!' Sterelny. Or most of the economists I know. Where do so many people get this idea that academic discourse is conducted by people wondering if they could regretfully venture to take issue with distinguished colleagues who are respectfully suggesting an emendation?"
Where, indeed?
UPDATE: Philosopher Tad Brennan at Cornell writes with an explanation:
Journalists are surprised that academics can be short with them because they last met academics in the classroom, and most professors are kind and generous when dealing with students. Serious academics save their scathing put-downs for colleagues and equals--I doubt that those quotes from Fodor and Sterelny document interactions with students.
Instead of feeling pained and affronted, the bloggers and journalists should take it as a compliment: 'hey, those academics are treating me like an equal!' That can help to salve the bruises, anyhow. And it also shows why a sharp-tongued critique directed at a non-student is no betrayal of the "tone" appropriate to an "educator". If you are my student, then I have an obligation to be your educator; if not, not.
That certainly describes my own sentiments (and practices) exactly.
ONE MORE: This is also amusingly apt (and timely), referring as it does both to Professor Sterelny and Professor Sarkar's latest takedown of the creationists. As the author notes: "anyone who thinks...bloggers should be treated with respect by academics, simply doesn't know shit about academe, and particularly philosophy."
A reader writes:
I enjoy your blog at leiterreports. This sounds strange, but would you consider doing a blog on 'reading philosophy'? Reading philosophy isn't like reading done in other fields. The big issue that would be interesting, I think, to get feedback from others on is: how long does it typically take you to read a philosophy journal article, and what kinds of philosophers take the most time to understand. It would be interesting to have some kind of crude scale.
In a general sense, I just often find it frustrating, being a philosopher, to be able to speed-read other literature, only to have to spend hours upon hours to make my way through philosophical literature.
The Department at Victoria University at Wellington compiles a quite interesting set of reflections by contemporary and 20th-century figures in answer to this question. My favorite is the one from John Campbell, now at Berkeley:
Philosophy is thinking in slow motion. It breaks down, describes and assesses moves we ordinarily make at great speed - to do with our natural motivations and beliefs. It then becomes evident that alternatives are possible.
My least favorite, since it makes philosophy out to be hopelessly conservative in its ambitions, is from David Lewis:
One comes to philosophy already endowed with a stock of opinions. It is not the business of philosophy either to undermine or to justify these pre-existing opinions, to any great extent, but only to try to discover ways of expanding them into an orderly system. It succeeds to the extent that (1) it is systematic, and (2) it respects those of our pre-philosophical opinions to which we are firmly attached. In so far as it does both better than any alternative we have thought of, we give it credence.
Thomas Nagel's account is bound to be highly contentious in certain circles:
Philosophy is different from science and from mathematics. Unlike science it doesnÍt rely on experiments or observation, but only on thought. And unlike mathematics it has no formal methods of proof. It is done just by asking questions, arguing, trying out ideas and thinking of possible arguments against them, and wondering how our concepts really work.
Those unhappy with Nagel, will be happier, I suspect, with Quine's take:
I see philosophy not as f groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat - a boat which f we can rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it. There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy. All scientific findings, all scientific conjectures that are at present plausible, are therefore in my view as welcome for use in philosophy as elsewhere.
Sources, and more quotes, are at the Victoria site.
I thought this was a provocative way of demarcating two naturalistic tendencies in philosophy, from a review by Joseph Rouse (Wesleyan):
Within the broadly secular practice of contemporary philosophy, two alternative oppositional stances have replaced anti-supernaturalism in defining a naturalistic orientation, leading to at least two divergent strands of philosophical naturalism. One approach, sometimes characterized as "scientific naturalism" (De Caro and MacArthur 2004), and more often described as "ontological naturalism" in this volume, now might be said to define itself in opposition to humanism rather than theism. Here lies the motivation for some naturalists' hostility to folk psychology, freedom, transcendental reason, the irreducibility of consciousness or first-person standpoints, and above all, any conception of normativity as sui generis. Human beings live in a world indifferent or even hostile to our interests, desires, values, or perspectival priorities, and the sciences provide our primary access to this anthropo-peripheral world to which we must accommodate ourselves. This anti-humanist strain of naturalism aspires to a hard-headed, resolute commitment to a thoroughly scientific self-understanding that can free us from the residual strands of self-aggrandizing illusion or wishful thinking that still confer disproportionate significance upon our all-too-human preoccupations.
A different, more inclusive conception of naturalism emphasizes a tolerant continuity of philosophy with the natural sciences. Naturalism has long defined itself in opposition to conceptions of philosophy as autonomous from the natural sciences. Yet here there has been considerable evolution. When Frege and Husserl inveighed against psychologism in logic and naturalism in philosophy at the turn of the 20th Century, the naturalists they had in mind often sought to dispense with philosophy altogether; in Germany, the stakes were heightened by the struggles between philosophers and experimental psychologists for university chairs in philosophy. A century later, naturalism has become an unequivocally philosophical stance toward philosophical issues, which appropriates the resources and/or the authority of natural science for philosophical ends. If you want to find out about naturalism, you still need to read philosophy journals rather than just the scientific literature. Within anglophone philosophy, naturalism has thus succeeded empiricism as the primary expression of a scientific orientation within philosophy, by loosening empiricist opposition to metaphysics, causality, and alethic modalities, and replacing formal logic and a priori analysis with cognitive science or evolutionary biology as the preferred basis for philosophical understanding of thought and action.
Differences between these two ways of defining a naturalistic orientation can be expressed in multiple ways. The anti-humanist strain of naturalism is often radically revisionist, confining philosophical inquiry within the austere constraints of a physicalist ontology, a third-person standpoint, or the domains governed by natural laws. Many familiar ways of thinking and talking must be reduced, revised, or eliminated to fit these constraints. More inclusive versions of naturalism are not broadly revisionist in this way, while still providing considerable resources for criticism of specific positions and arguments. Another way to distinguish the two strains is by considering where the naturalist looks for philosophical guidance. For many anti-humanist conceptions, nature (as represented in scientific theories) provides the touchstone for philosophical work; for the more tolerant approaches, scientific practices in all their diversity provide the relevant philosophical resources, with no prior commitment to hierarchies among the sciences in their ontological commitments or explanatory resources.
A follow-up to the successful thread on epistemology awhile back: what are the hot topics in ethics these days? Moral psychology, both empirical and from the armchair, seems especially lively. The nature of reasons too. What else? The more detail the better, and feel free to post links to on-line resources (papers, blog discussions, etc.). Signed comments strongly preferred, and, as always, post only once, comments may take awhile to appear.
A reader writes:
I'm currently a graduate student in political theory (in a political science department) but I've become very interested in a much wider range of philosophical areas. Not too long ago I stumbled onto your blog, of which I've become a regular reader, and I noticed you recently gave some advice to someone regarding where to begin with Nietzsche. I was wondering if you know of, and could recommend, several good places to begin regarding the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language, and to a lesser degree epistemology and metaphysics. Ideally I'd like to find some books that give a good overview of the history, as well as the contemporary debates (although I don't know if my ideal is unrealistic). Any direction, advice, or recommendations you could provide would be much appreciated.
I thought it better to let some of the many experts who are readers offer suggestions, which would no doubt benefit this student as well as others. Non-anonymous comments strongly preferred, as usual; please post only once, comments may take awhile to appear.
That was the question put to ten philosophers in the 10th anniversary issue of The Philosophers' Magazine (which, alas, is not on-line). Here are some of the answers that struck me as most interesting.
Simon Blackburn (Cambridge University & University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill):
The return of a highly scholastic metaphysics means it's worse: there is a return of "intuition" masquerading as the a priori and a highly suspect self-image that metaphysics is just like science, except without the need toleave the armchair, which is about parallel to entering Formula 1 races without an engine. I suspect that political and moral philosophy are better.
While Professor Blackburn thinks the glass is half empty, Jerry Fodor (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) thinks it half full:
It's better in one respect: Philosophical inquiry is increasingly informed by discussion with adjacent subjects (psychology, biology, cognitive science, physics, and so forth). In consequence, a priorism is less widely prevalent than it was at the height of the "analytical" philosophy movement. That's surely a good thing.
Jaakko Hintikka (Boston University), by contrast, seems to be looking at a wholly different glass:
Intellectually, philosophy is now in the same or worse state of stagnation as in 1997. With a few exceptions, the paradigm of philosophical thinking and writing is no longer like that of a scientist inquiring into the deepest secrets of nature or of the human mind, but an interpreter of the great works of literature or perhaps of a religious teacher interpreting the sacred texts. The truth of what is commented on is either irrelevant or taken for granted. For instance, in the immense secondary literature on Wittgenstein, I have never found anything that would help me to understand better the subject matter Wittgenstein was inquiring into. The main reason for the Byzantine state of affairs is the lack of fresh new ideas that would open up specific problems for philosophers--especially young philosophers--to tackle.
Alasdair MacIntyre (University of Notre Dame), meanwhile, presumably plans to stop writing:
If the philosophy published between 1907 and 1967 were to vanish without a trace, it would be an intellectual catastrophe. If the philosophy published between 1967 and 1997 were to vanish without trace, it would be a very serious loss. If the philosophy published between 1997 and 2007 were to vanish similarly, it would matter a little, but not that much.
Colin McGinn (University of Miami) is less gloomy than Professor MacIntyre, but still a bit nostalgic:
Better in some respects, worse in others. It seems more democratic now, less centralised; but philosophy is not as exciting these days as it used to be. I'd even say that a kind of graduate student mentality has taken over: being an expert in "the literature" is too highly prized, while originality is looked on with suspicion. Also, it's just got more nerdy. The people are less amusing, shallower, more one-dimensional (I'm speaking generally).
Martha Nussbaum (University of Chicago) starts by noting (she is alone among respondents to mention this) that "the job market for young philosophers is considerably worse," meaning that "talented young people are increasingly deterred from choosing philosophy as a career." She continues:
As for the people who are still in the profession, I think that the basic quality of work in moral and political philosophy is pretty high, but I wonder where the people of large insight and imagination are in the younger generation, people with the sort of humanistic breadth exemplified by [Bernard] Williams. I sometimes think that we are becoming smaller, and that it would be a good thing if people who wrote on moral and political philosophy read more novels and poems, and spent more time encountering real human beings in different parts of the world.
John Searle (University of California, Berkeley) sounds a note of optimism, pointing to "the increasing 'globalisation' of philosophy," noting that one can "go to just about any major university in the world and lecture in English to audiences who are sophisticated, informed, and enthusiastic about philosophy." Peter Singer (Princeton University & University of Melbourne) is similarly upbeat (and even more succinct):
In better shape. At least so it seems to me--there appear to be more philosophers being widely read, beyond the profession, and a broader public interest in philosophy than there was 10 years ago.
So what do philosophers think? Do you share the diagnoses of the philosophers quoted above? It would be especially interesting to know whether younger philosophers are as gloomy as many of those senior scholars quoted above (McGinn, at 57, and Nussbaum, at 60 are the youngest philosophers quoted).
Post only once; signed comments are more likely to appear; as always, comments are reviewed for substance and relevance.
Thom Brooks (Newcastle) has the details.
From the illuminating review by Michael Liston (Wisconsin/Milwaukee) of the new book by Penelope Maddy (UC Irvine) Second Philosophy: A Naturalistic Method (OUP, 2007):
[This book] presents the best exploration and defense of naturalism I know of. A primary lesson is that we ought not to build philosophical theories on anything as shaky as intuitions that things must be thus-and-so. Too often our intuitions -- whether inherited from our academic training, the workings of our language, or our natural make-up -- are no more than virtually irresistible impulses to think in certain ways. Liberal doses of concrete case studies are probably our best strategy of resistance.
From an interview conducted by Stanford faculty and students with Beatrice Longuenesse, the scholar of Kant and German Idealism, who now teaches at NYU:
I have never been all that convinced by the so-called division between “two” traditions. As a student, one of my first ground-breaking experiences was reading Kant and becoming interested in Kant’s philosophy of science and transcendental philosophy. This experience was probably a major factor in my skepticism about the relevance of such a division: Kant is obviously a common ancestor to both “traditions.”
But of course your question does not concern the Kantian legacy, but more broadly the different styles of philosophy and what they might have to bring to one another. I think the strong point of the “continental” tradition is a greater attention to history: both to the ways in which philosophy itself has a tradition, and to the ways in which philosophical arguments can be influenced by factors beyond the philosopher’s rational control or even awareness. The strong point of the “analytic” tradition is its attention to logic, conceptual clarity, and argument. I suppose one could name many philosophical issues about which the two approaches could learn from one another. The area in which they most strikingly converge today, I think, is precisely the one I am currently interested in (so maybe I am being partial here!): problems concerning consciousness and self-consciousness, self-reference, personal identity.
I'm curious what people, especially philosophers of mind, think about this, especially the last claim about where "analytic" and "Continental" traditions converge. (What Longuenesse has in mind presumably has more to do with German Idealism, and perhaps some of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, than with Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Habermas, Foucault, etc.)
Once again, an excerpt from an interview in Normative Ethics: 5 Questions, this time with Jeff McMahan (Rutgers):
I am highly optimistic about the prospects for progress in normative ethics. It is evident to me that great progress has already been made since I entered the field in the early 1980s. Unlike many other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, which in recent years were seduced by bad French philosophy into a lot of silly "post-modern" theorizing that hs exposed them to derision and reduced them to irrelevance, analytic philosophy is flourishing. Part of the reason why analytic philosophy generally is in such a healthy state is that, as Jerry Fodor observed in a recent book review, philosophers no longer tend to have philosophies. We no longer devote our lives to developing comprehensive philosophical or ethical systems. We are individually narrower and more specialized, which enables us to focus more carefully and minutely on the problems we study, and as a consequence to produce work that is more rigorous and detailed. The result is that philosophy has become more of a collective endeavor than it was in the past, in the sense that different people are focusing selectively on problems that are elements or aspects of larger problems. When the results of individual efforts are combined, we may achieve a collective product that exceeds in depth, intricacy, and sophistication what any individual could have produced by working on the larger problem in isolation.
I agree that some parts of the humanities have been "seduced by bad French philosophy" that has "exposed them to derision and reduced them to irrelevance"; I agree that "philosophers no longer tend to have philosophies"; and I agree that "philosophy has become more of a collective endeavor." But I disagree with everything else here, especially in the case of normative ethics (what would be the evidence, e.g., for its "relevance"?). I am curious, though, what other philosophers think about McMahan's assessment. (I would also be happy to hear from those who disagree with the claims of McMahan with which I agree as well.) Signed comments are preferred; post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.
I've been reading around in the latest in the fascinating 5 Questions series, this one on Normative Ethics. Here is Peter Singer (Princeton/Melbourne) on "neglected topics and/or contributions":
As for neglected contributions, while the work of R.M. Hare is not entirely neglected, it is not now paid the attention it deserves. Compare the attention Rawls has received over the last 30 years – and yet Hare is, to my mind, a more rigorous philosopher. Mind you, I wouldn’t want to see as much written about Hare as has been written about Rawls during those decades. That’s excessive by any standards. So much discussion of any one philosopher becomes boring.
Going back further, I regret the fact that Mill’s Utilitarianism is much more widely read than Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics, despite the fact that Utilitarianism is a hastily-written work, full of doubtful arguments. The Methods of Ethics, which Sidgwick painstakingly revised 7 times over a thirty year period, is simply the best book on ethics ever written. It’s difficult to think of any major issues in normative ethics that are not already touched upon there, and often it is hard to improve on what Sidgwick says. If students find it too long to read, then they should at least be referred to the last two chapters of Book III, all of Book IV, and the Concluding Chapter. But more people read Mill, no doubt in large part because Mill was the more concise and elegant writer.
I wonder what philosophers think about Professor Singer's answer?
...and he argues that what I called McGinn's prima facie plausible criticisms of Honderich's book do not, in fact, survive scrutiny. He also documents, towards the end of the rejoinder (and in a separate page of excerpts), some of the personal history that might explain the fierce tone of the review, the subject of our earlier discussion. Now that this whole matter has migrated into cyberspace, will Professor McGinn, himself now a blogger, issue a rejoinder to the rejoinder to what may now be the most famous or infamous review of a philosophical book in recent memory?
So what are the "hot" topics/problems in epistemology these days? Contextualism? Disagreement? What else? The more detail the better, and feel free to post links to on-line resources (papers, blog discussions, etc.). If this generates a good response, I'll probably run similar threads on other areas of philosophy in the coming weeks and months. Remember to post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.
In the current issue of The New Yorker, the historian Anthony Grafton (Princeton) writes about the history of the effects of technological developments on books, concentrating, in particular, on the present. The following passage caught my attention in particular:
Now even the most traditional-minded scholar generally begins by consulting a search engine. As a cheerful editor at Cambridge University Press recently told me, “Conservatively, ninety-five per cent of all scholarly inquiries start at Google.” Google’s famous search algorithm emulates the principle of scholarly citation—counting up and evaluating earlier links in order to steer users toward the sources that others have already found helpful. In a sense, the system resembles nothing more than trillions of old-fashioned footnotes.
Putting aside Grafton's slightly Panglossian view of how Google works, I'm wondering whether the point about research is true of philosophers? Do you, philosophical readers, generally "begin[] by consulting a search engine"? And if it is true, what does that mean for the dissemination of scholarship? For example, if you google "Nietzsche's moral philosophy," the first entry is my essay on "Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy" from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and if you google "legal realism," the first entry is from Wikipedia, the second my SSRN paper on "American Legal Realism." Someone searching for "Donald Davidson" gets the SEP entry first, followed by the Wikipedia entry. The SEP essay also comes up first in a search for "mental causation."
To the extent, then, that philosophers, or philosophy students, start their research with Google, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is going to play a quite big role in shaping the reception of ideas and also, one suspects, in determining what secondary literature becomes part of the "canon" on a particular topic. Fortunately, SEP is generally of high quality. The same can not be said of Wikipedia, of course, as we have had occasion to note previously.
But the real question is this, and I'd be interested to hear from undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty: are philosophers using Google for research? are you? if you're using it, how do you use it?
I can report my own practice. I don't use Google for research, though I do often