The End of Philosophy.
Contemporary philosophers have given up trying to address the public.Imagine that American colleges and universities decide to shut down all graduate and undergraduate departments of philosophy. The first reaction of philosophers would understandably be to lament our lost jobs. Beyond lamenting our personal fate, we are left to ponder the fate of the discipline of philosophy itself. Without graduate departments of philosophy, no new philosophers would be trained. Without philosophers, conferences and journals devoted to a discussion of philosophical topics would gradually disappear. Of course, some individuals might persist in asking certain kinds of questions and invoking certain names which would seem to situate them by a family resemblance in what hitherto had been known as "philosophy." But philosophy would inevitably become as marginal to our future cultural enterprise as astrology is to our present cultural enterprise. It is absurd, you are thinking, to speak of philosophy and astrology in the same breath. Why has this thought experiment led to such an unpleasant and pr ovocative speculation?
The answer is deceptively simple: my thought experiment has starkly exposed the uncomfortable truth that "philosophy" in its present incarnation is in fact "academic philosophy" -- the adjective "academic" has become so redundant we need to be reminded that there is no philosophy outside of the academy. Philosophy has become a hothouse flower which can survive only in the artificial environment provided by institutions of higher education and which would wither and die if were to be removed from it.
We are forced to ask how philosophy in America has become totally dependent on the academic enterprise for its continued survival. After all, it was not always so. In pre-Civil War America, philosophy was a minor and ancillary presence in institutions of higher education. Religious concerns like inculcating piety and forming Christian character shaped the curricula of these colleges.
No special expertise was needed to teach in such institutions. Advanced degrees were not necessary, and if desired, could be obtained easily. For example, in the early nineteenth century, you could get a masters degree from Harvard if you had a BA degree, if you could demonstrate good moral character --i.e., if you had not been in jail -- and if you paid a five dollar fee in advance. The work of the instructor was to teach and to supervise students: you were expected to be a jack-of-all-trades, able to teach Latin eloquence in the morning and surveying in the afternoon, as well as to control the frequently unruly and often violent behavior of your students. Research and publication were not encouraged -- in fact, at many institutions were regarded with suspicion. An 1857 Columbia College report blamed the low state of the college on three professors who had the temerity to waste their time writing books! The president of Columbia also became enraged when the librarian asked that college funds be used to purc hase books. After all, the library was open for only two hours in the afternoon. But this was decidedly better than the situation at Princeton, where the library was open only once a week for an hour. Library research was otiose because teaching consisted primarily of recitation and drill.
The lot of the college teacher was precarious -- his salary could be docked if physical improvements like whitewashing the college fence were deemed necessary -- and his social status marginal. In nineteenth-century America, "professor" could refer to a music hall pianist, to the master of a flea circus, or to a weight lifter in a carnival, as well as to a college instructor.
In this milieu, philosophy was more a handmaiden to religion than an independent academic discipline. Philosophical speculation was by and large carried on by nonacademic amateurs like Emerson. But after the Civil War, higher education and the role of philosophy in higher education were dramatically transformed. The Morill Act authorized government expenditure to create and support public institutions of higher education; the growth of industry demanded trained personnel; the maturation of professions like law and medicine required mechanisms of licensing. Underlying all of these changes was the struggle between science and religion for cultural dominance.
The result was the creation of a new kind of institution of higher education in America. Modeled on the German university -- which encouraged the discovery of knowledge and not merely its transmission -- Johns Hopkins University, under the leadership of Daniel Coit Gilman, became the first in America to emphasize research rather than undergraduate teaching. The best and most highly trained experts Gilman could hire guided this research. The era of the low-status generalist was passing into the era of the high-status specialist.
In his inaugural address as President of Harvard, Charles Eliot rejected the lockstep curriculum of the antebellum colleges and called for an elective system. He argued that no student could master all of the knowledge available in the proliferating number of courses offered by the Harvard faculty and that it would be wrong for Harvard to decide for the students which of the courses were most important to them. The cultural consensus which supported a religion-centered curriculum was gradually giving way to one, inspired by the specialized research of science, which encouraged each discipline to develop and explore its own subject matter. Students would wander through the bazaar and stop at the stands whose wares they wished to examine. Those students who stopped long enough and examined enough wares were eventually granted an advanced degree. Like other disciplines, philosophy, following the lead of science, became more professional, specialized, and technical. Increasingly, the jack-of-all-trades instructo r, so useful in antebellum colleges, was looked upon disdainfully as amateurish by the new, rigorously trained academic experts. Expertise demanded a narrow and technical training which could be supplied only by a departmental structure. The growth of academic departments was fostered first at the new research universities like Hopkins, but eventually became the norm at all institutions of higher education.
Departmentalization led to the exclusion of those who were not trained and credentialed by the departmental experts. Academic disciplines thus became self-enclosed and self-replicating: no one who was not expert in the discipline would be admitted into it, and the only way to become such an expert was to be certified by those already in it.
Over time, philosophy became such a discipline. But its path was thornier than that followed by most of the other disciplines. Philosophy had, especially in the nineteenth century, spun off many disciplines, like psychology and anthropology, which now occupy independent niches in the departmental structures of our colleges and universities. With these massive defections and with the need to emulate science and its methods, philosophy eventually suffered a severe identity crisis. As Daniel Wilson, in Science, Community, and the Transformation of American Philosophy, 1860-1930 puts it: "When the philosophers organized at the turn of the century it was a defensive move, an effort to prevent further defections by taking on the characteristics of the already professionalized disciplines. The philosophers wanted to restore the authority and legitimacy philosophy had once enjoyed and to partake of the strength and prestige that seemed to accrue to the more highly organized disciplines." It is instructive to remembe r that philosophers originally met as part of the American Psychological Association and later formed the American Philosophical Association in order to have their own professional association and attend their own conference. The American Philosophical Association, Wilson explains, "rose out of the twin desire to prevent further splintering of new disciplines from philosophy and to provide a professional framework and common forum in which the increasingly specialized philosophers could cooperate to mutual benefit."
With the advent of the research university and academic specialization, philosophy was driven to adopt an "if-you-can't-beat-them-join-them" attitude in order to survive. As an academic discipline philosophy found itself in the humbling position of defending its turf against the encroachment of disciplines which had previously been part of philosophy and of making its case in terms acceptable to the scientifically-oriented discourse which academics increasingly shared.
As a result, careerism became more and more the primary focus of academics, including philosophers. There is the unhappy case of Edwin Holt, a student of William James, who resigned from Harvard because of his disgust with what he called the academic "game of self-advertisement and charlatanry." In The Rise of American Philosophy, Bruce Kuklick confirms this unflattering picture of the post-Jamesian Harvard: "philosophy at Harvard attracted more and more narrow professionals who acquire a certain expertise in order to hold down a certain job but who do not seek this job because of a deep personal commitment." Kuklick harshly concludes that "by the third decade of the century the phrase "professional philosopher" embodied a verbal contradiction: newly minted doctors found that the love of wisdom was only a job." By the 1930s philosophy had become academic and professional. The amateur philosopher with no institutional affiliation had effectively disappeared, and philosophy had become a discipline nestled with in the departmental structure of colleges and universities.
Since philosophers are a contentious tribe, our shared identity became more a function of our academic and professional ties than of any substantive agreement on what philosophy might mean. More significantly, the role of philosophy itself was altered by its absorption into academic culture. Wilson again: "By taking on the characteristics and methods of the specialized disciplines, philosophers lost their traditional and broader functions of grounding all inquiry or of providing grand syntheses. Instead, they acquired the authority that now accrued to all recognized specialists in their particular fields." This echoes Kuklick's comment that "philosophy narrowed to a domain of more arcane interests, competence in which was subject to expert evaluation."
The measure of success of a philosopher more and more depended upon status within the profession -- that is, how well he, or the occasional she, climbed the academic ladder. The philosopher John Elf Boodin pulled no punches when he wrote in 1930 that "the chief end of academic philosophy is to furnish a living for professors of philosophy." Philosophy was well on its way to becoming academic philosophy.
Even as John Dewey and some others performed the role of public philosophers, philosophy was becoming more and more remote from the concerns of the public -- in Wilson's words, "becoming as esoteric and as unfathomable to the educated public as nuclear physics or molecular biology." Philosophers eventually spoke only to each other, and philosophy came to mean what academic philosophers said that it meant. As Richard Rorty smugly remarks, "Philosophy is just whatever we philosophy professors do."
From the 1930s into the 1960s, American philosophers, especially in the departments of the more prestigious colleges and universities, did analytic philosophy. This dalliance was a predictable result of the professionalization of philosophy and its preoccupation with carving out an area of specialized competence in order to define and justify its place in higher education. By the 1960s, the dominance of analytic philosophy was being challenged. I recall the intense debates between the analytic philosophers who wanted to maintain their control of the American Philosophical Association and the anti-analysts who grouped themselves under the pluralist banner. Eventually, the analysts were vanquished by the pluralists, whose legacy of eclecticism and diversity is still with us today.
In an article published a few years ago, "American Philosophy Today," Nicholas Rescher surveys the state of post-pluralist philosophy and confirms that the earlier tendencies noted by Kuklick and Wilson have indeed come to fruition. There is so little doctrinal agreement among philosophers, Rescher concludes, that "theory diversity and doctrinal dissonance are the order of the day." What philosophers share is simply their participation in the academic culture: "Such unity as American philosophy affords," Rescher writes, "is that of an academic industry, not that of a single doctrinal orientation or school."
In our era of hyperspecialization, there is little hope that substantive agreement about philosophy will ever be reached. Rescher puts it bluntly: "After World War II it became impossible for American philosophers to keep up with what their colleagues were writing." And if philosophers have become increasingly indifferent to what their colleagues are doing, it should come as no surprise that the public has become increasingly indifferent to what all philosophers are doing. For example, until 1977 the annual supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica included a section on philosophy. After 1977 it disappeared without explanation.
The interest philosophers have taken in developing courses and writing articles on emerging problems in medicine, law, business, and other such areas is due less to any intrinsic link to philosophy than to what Rescher calls "the practical and accommodationist turn of academic philosophers -- who have been very flexible in bending with the wind. When society demands relevancy to social concerns, a new specialty of "applied philosophers" springs forth to provide it." This application of philosophy to areas of concern to the public is undertaken more at the initiative of philosophers themselves than at the instigation of the public. It allows us to justify our departmental lines and answer pesky outsiders who want to know what we do to earn our salaries.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that contemporary philosophers have given up trying to address the public in the manner of James or Dewey, and are content, as Rescher observes, to remain "confined to the precincts of higher education," and "exert no influence -- outside the academy." Even within the academy, philosophy exerts little influence: academics are preoccupied with cultivating their own gardens and wander into philosophy occasionally and opportunistically. As Rescher also observes "professors of government may read John Rawls, professors of literature Richard Rorty, professors of linguistics W. V. Quine." But then again, they might not.
In his remarks on the state of philosophy in America, Rorty goes further and admits that "the rest of the academy has (reasonably enough) become puzzled about what 'philosophical expertise' might be." This puzzlement is reinforced by what Rorty sees as the "increasingly short half-lives of philosophical problems and progress," and by what Rescher sees as "a matter of trends and fashions that go their own way." Rorty confesses that "when I am asked (as alas, I often am) what I take contemporary philosophy's 'mission' or 'task' to be, I get tongue tied," and he concedes that philosophy is "a somewhat peripheral academic discipline." So this is what philosophy has become as we enter a new century and millennium: a marginal academic discipline sustained by the life support system of higher education.
In other disciplines, there is a distinction which can be drawn between the academic treatment of a subject and the production of the material which constitutes the subject of the discipline. Novelists and poets would still produce literature even if there were no departments of literature; chemists would still do research in chemistry even if there were no departments of chemistry. But in philosophy the academic treatment of the subject has become the only subject matter of philosophy. Unlike literature or chemistry, there is no philosophy outside departments of philosophy.
One might suggest that we look back to previous periods when the epithet "philosopher" could be earned not by finishing a Ph.D. program, but by being recognized as a lover of wisdom. In our era of professional philosophy, few would be tempted to follow this suggestion. Not only can we not go home again, we would not want to if we could. So where does that leave us?
Let me conclude by returning to my thought experiment to explore briefly what options would be open to us if departments of philosophy were abolished. One possibility is that philosophers might be taken on by other departments to do odd jobs and clean up messes. This is unlikely because disciplines zealously protect their turf, even messy turf, and regard interlopers with suspicion and downright hostility. Such is the legacy of specialization and the departmental system. But even if philosophers were taken on by other departments, they would be absorbed by them and would lose their disciplinary distinctiveness. It is with irony and hubris that I note that the academic culture which sustained our discipline during the twentieth century could contribute to our demise.
We would not fare any better if we tried to interest the public in our plight. As we have seen, philosophy has severed its ties with our public culture and has retreated into the comfortable domestic arrangements of academe, talking to and writing for other philosophers at conferences and in journals. Like other academics, we have developed a style of communication which assumes prior knowledge of the discipline because we believe -- correctly -- that only our fellow philosophers will be interested in what we say or write. Need I add that this style is ill-adapted to communicating with the public? Unfortunately, it is the only one most of us are familiar with.
Public indifference to philosophy manifests itself even in the culture wars. Rarely are we invoked in controversies over political correctness; nor do we figure in anecdotes about some outrage at a college or university. In the culture wars, we occupy a resoundingly quiet sector. Furthermore, even our "big names" are little known outside our discipline. Richard Rorty has received the imprimatur of the New York Times, which featured him in a Sunday Magazine article. But even with that boost, his name and others which might occur to you are certainly not as well known to the public as the James of the Pragmatism Lectures and the Dewey writing in the New Republic. Or to make the point in another way, I doubt very much if any contemporary American philosopher will be mentioned on "Jeopardy."
The conclusion is as clear and unescapable as it is painful and disturbing: outside the academy there is and can be no philosophy. While Rescher, Rorty, and others may be confident that philosophy will keep its place in our system of higher education into the next century, my thought experiment and my sketch of the academization of philosophy reveal the extent of the dependence of philosophy and the dangers inherent in it. I am not happy to leave our fate and the fate of our discipline in the hands of college administrators or educational policy experts who could, however unlikely the possibility seems to us today, decide to make my thought experiment into a plan to be implemented.
I suggest that we philosophers acquaint ourselves with recent work which traces the academization of the intellectual life in American culture. It is argued that public intellectuals--those who are able to address our larger cultural concerns in ways accessible to the public -- are a disappearing, if not an extinct, species, and that the intellectual atmosphere which produced and sustained nonacademic thinkers and writers has all but evaporated. Rorty's eloquent plea that philosophy become part of the larger cultural conversation sounds hollow and unconvincing when we realize that "cultural" has come to mean "academic" because our culture no longer supports anything remotely resembling a vibrant intellectual public square. I cannot utter any saving words which might change all of this because I do not know them. The only thing that I do know is that unless we take seriously the implications of the academization of our intellectual life in general and the academization of philosophy in particular, this centur y will confront us with many surprises, not the least pleasant of which might be the demise of our discipline, announced not by a bang, or even by a whimper, but by a memo to the faculty.
JAMES GILES is book review editor for Cross Currents.
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| Author: | GILES, JAMES |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Cross Currents |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Mar 22, 2000 |
| Words: | 3253 |
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