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Philosophy and the Humanities in the United States Today (J. Stanley)

Jason Stanley

In my last few posts, I have been raising a contentious
issue. Consider the CVs of philosophers in the United States working in the
1970s and 1980s publishing on core metaphysical and epistemological issues of
the sort discussed by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, and
Kant, or issues in philosophical logic and philosophy of language of the sort
discussed by Aristotle, Abelard, Ockham, Frege, Husserl, Brentano, and Russell.
You will see that they had good success rates in national competitions for
humanities fellowships. And why not? After all, philosophy is a
distinctive human intellectual pursuit, and a core humanities subject. But if
you look at, say, the past ten years, you will find that philosophers working
on such issues have been particularly unsuccessful in similar competitions. The
philosophers who do achieve some success have been those working primarily in ethics related topics, historians of
philosophy, or philosophers who have related their work to art or literature. The latter are subjects which, since Plato’s time, have been traditionally opposing
kinds of humanities disciplines to philosophy. Yet the only way for a
philosopher working on skepticism or the nature of universals to obtain funding
from an American humanities institute is to link her work with literary
criticism, painting, or French cultural anthropology.

This is just an indication of a broader problem in the humanities in the United States. The problem is that we have a generation of humanities
academics in this country who have no sense at all of what the discipline of
philosophy is. They have no sense of what kinds of considerations have been
advanced for and against skepticism, no sense of the traditional
problem of universals, and no sense of the development of logic
beyond the syllogism. Not only do they have no conception of what is happening now
with such discussions, they have no understanding of the detailed intellectual
work done by the great philosophers of the past; they simply don’t know how to read philosophy. Spending two months
trying to figure out the argument in, say, Hume’s “Of Skepticism with Regard to
the Senses”, or Kant’s Second Analogy, is a completely foreign pursuit. Far
from being ashamed of this lack of
knowledge, they seem to revel in it. One might wonder how a successful academic who has
worked on T.S. Eliot could boast of their complete ignorance of (say)
Bradley’s regress problem, when Eliot wrote his dissertation on Bradley (under
the tutelage of Bertrand Russell, among others), but I have met in fact met
such a person.

Ignorance breeds contempt. When I meet a philosopher who
boasts of her ignorance of (say) Roman history, Wallace Stevens, or Emily
Dickinson, I’m embarrassed for her. I’m similarly embarrassed for the professor
of comparative literature who boasts of her ignorance of G.E. Moore or is proud that she has no idea
what contributions Gottlob Frege has made to philosophy. Of course, it’s
perfectly fine for a philosopher to confess that she doesn’t enjoy poetry, and it’s equally in order for a literary critic to confess that she doesn’t
enjoy the topics discussed in Aristotle’s metaphysics, or Frege’s Foundations
of Arithmetic. What would not be acceptable is for a philosopher who
doesn’t enjoy poetry to mount a campaign against poetry. But that is exactly
what is happening in the United States today; academics with no detailed knowledge or interest in the humanities
discipline of philosophy are using whatever resources are at their disposal to delegitimize
it. Just as it is embarrassing to be confronted by an American academic who scoffs
at the study of Shakespeare or Chinese history, it’s equally embarrassing to be
confronted by an American academic who scoffs at the study of vagueness,
skepticism, or the problem of intentionality. Ignorance or disinterest in a subject is not something one should seek to legitimize by eliminating the study of the subject matter.

UPDATE: I was away from the internet all day, and checked back in to see a number of very interesting comments. Please scroll down for input from a number of philosophers.

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29 responses to “Philosophy and the Humanities in the United States Today (J. Stanley)”

  1. morethan

    "…they have no sense of the development of logic beyond the syllogism".

    After more than a decade in academics, I can't say I've met any colleagues from other departments who knew about the development of logic up to the syllogism, either.

    Other than giving them too much credit, I think you're right about all this.

    Reply
  2. Kosta Calfas

    Jason,

    I think your point is well taken, and I think everyone shares your lament for a deficit in general philosophical knowledge; but to be fair, I see no evidence that "academics with no detailed knowledge or interest in the humanities discipline of philosophy are using whatever resources are at their disposal to delegitimize it." It seems to be the case, rather, that philosophers in the US tend to work with little concern to what their colleagues in the other humanities are doing and vice versa. In contrast to, for example, France, where sociologists(eg. Pierre Bourdieu), historians (e.g. Marc Bloch and the Analles School) and psychologists (Piaget, Lacan) either studied philosophy or had more than a passing familiarity and philosophers (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault) were well acquainted to ultra-philosophical humanistic pursuits of their time. For better or worse, there seems to be a division of intellectual labour in America, which breeds its own kinds of problems (e.g. the near-complete absence of philosophical ideas from intellectual or political discourse, and the conspicuous lack of synoptic philosophical projects of the greek or german variety which attempt to unify or order the disciplines). If you're proposing a programmatic change to the way philosophy is done in America, I'm sure you'll find nothing but supporters and well-wishers; me included. It will, however require some leading by example – so I guess there will be no more picking on comparative literature or english majors (yes, I know it's going to be hard.)

    Best,

    Kosta Calfas

    Reply
  3. Errol Lord

    Prof. Stanley,

    As a student of philosophy at a major research university, I (perhaps) feel this type of ignorance even more. I have applied for several research scholarships and have received nothing. My faculty advisors tell me things like, "you should expect to not get anything because your research isn't 'applied'," or, "if you're not working on a project that is going to either produce some kind of technology or further our understanding of some literary figure, don't expect to get any money from the university." I am both saddened and angered by this open contempt for philosophy. Nonetheless, I somewhat expect such behaviour from the low-level administrators that decide upon my types of scholarships. It is even more shocking that 'high-level' academics who decide upon the major humanities research grants would show such contempt and ignorance. It makes me sad for my future career as an academic philosopher.

    Best,

    Errol

    Reply
  4. Adam Potthast

    To echo some of what Kosta says, if one is upset about being misunderstood and underappreciated, it's going to take some work on professional philosophy's part to straighten the mess out. The rest of academia isn't going to feel sorry that they've been misrepresenting philosophy and come to its senses. That means teaching undergraduates to appreciate analytic philosophy instead of ignoring them or belittling them as "not suited for philosophy". It also means being willing to explain what one is doing to colleagues in a way that isn't necessarily publishable in Mind. Look, I'm part of this tradition. Not only do we as analytic philosophers need to be better communicators, but we also need to be willing to communicate.

    Analytic philosophy has chosen to go in the direction of other specialized disciplines, craving increasingly lower course loads, more time off, and a job isn't "great" unless it includes almost exclusively graduate teaching. This might work if we'd done a long period of PR over the last century to explain why the necessary aposteriori is a big deal. But that didn't happen and now the job, the duty (because the survival of our way of doing philosophy hangs on every person who must explain "vagueness" to a dean). But most professional philosophers think that their duty stops after they've published technically complex articles and taught the next generation of grad students and that it's mean or misunderstanding to ask them to do more. If we want people to have the luxury of doing what people working on philosophy in the top programs do, we've got to do better at communicating why it's important. Because it is important. So far, ethics seems to be able to do that, as does political philosophy, and history of philosophy to some extent.

    It sucks that we have to do it. Someone should have done it before us so we don't have to — putting Frege and Quine's actual arguments nearer to the front of undergraduate experience. But no one did. And now we can either wallow in the misery that it wasn't done, or get off the horse and walk the trail. It will filter up, but it takes time and effort, a lot less contempt, occasional humility, and established analytic philosophers (who will then write three top journal articles a year rather than four) to step up to the plate.

    Reply
  5. Brian Weatherson

    I wonder how much this is a distinctively American problem.

    In both Britain and Australia philosophers have been very successful in getting grants, including very large grants. Consider, for example, the Federation Fellowships that Huw Price, David Chalmers and Paul Griffiths were awarded, or the large grant that went to Arche at St Andrews, or the large Leverhulme grants that philosophers across Britain have received.

    I don't know whether that's because philosophers there are held in higher esteem qua humanities scholars, or because they aren't being considered as such. But I will note (something that surprised me) that the Leverhulme grants to Jon Williamson (on probabilistic networks) and Crispin Wright (to translate Frege) were listed as humanities grants.

    Reply
  6. Jason

    Paranoid Hypothesis: Postmodernism is even more pervasive in American humanities departments now than in the past, and postmodernists dislike philosophy as practiced by philosophers. So when a philosophy project in M and E comes up for grant review, the postmodernists on the review board reject it.

    More Likely Hypothesis: Adam is right. Philosophy has marginalized itself as a discipline over the past 100 years. It's our fault. (Or, it's our advisors' and their advisors' fault, but we inherit the responsibility of resolving it.)

    Reply
  7. Jason Stanley

    Kosta,

    I am certainly not "proposing a programmatic change to the way philosophy is done in America"! The way philosophy is done in America is similar to the way it has been done for centuries. Of course there are differences. For example, there are many branches of philosophy now that have less to do with Christianity than before (though of course there are many that still do), and philosophers have also made progress on many questions. The advent of scientific discoveries changes both the sorts of questions and the sorts of answers that are available. It's harder to unify and order the disciplines now than in Aristotle's time, since there is far more specialized knowledge (and I'm certain that our colleagues in neighboring humanities disciplines would be even more reluctant to fund such projects, since many of the disciplines are scientific ones). But most of the topics at the center of discussion in American philosophy are ones that have been at the center of discussion of philosophy for centuries. Many of the great philosophers of recent american philosophy have had grand synoptic projects (e.g. David Lewis, most obviously). Claims that philosophy in America is radically distinct from philosophy as it always has been are either trivially true (because each generation and culture approaches the fundamental philosophical questions in its own distinctive way), or obviously false claims propounded by people ignorant of both the history of philosophy and its present.

    Reply
  8. the hanged man

    Is that entirely fair? Shouldn't we account for things like the number of movements in 20th century philosophy that explicitly aimed at taking philosophy from being a core humanities discipline and making it a science? Or what about the difference between analytic philosophers and other humanists in positions taken in the "culture wars" and the "science wars"? I'm not trying to condemn either side, here, but it just seems like there are forces in philosophy that have also been making the relationship with the rest of the humanities uncomfortable.

    Reply
  9. LS

    I want to second what Adam writes above. But also qualify it in some way. I, as an historian of philosophy, am used to having to justify my research interests and to explain why what I'm interested in is interesting, and that's to other philosophers. It makes it easier to write grant proposals (which are often read by a committee of humanities people) that explain why the project should be funded. (And I have been succesful in getting grants.) Many analytic philosophers (and Jason, I don't think you are one of them) are not particularly good at explaining why their philosophical interests are important, rather than obscure or arcane. They take, say, the importance of metaphysics to be self-evident. It is important, but I also think it is worth taking the time to articulate why anyone who isn't already interested should care. If as a profession we all worked a bit harder on the 'why should I care?' philosophers would have a better rep.
    Two stories: (1) Have a look at how the sports French press covered the Zidane episode at the end of the World Cup, and at Zidane's interview with Canal +. It is a meditation on the nature of responsibility and blameworthiness. I cannot imagine a US sports hero saying anything near so interesting. (2) Bar conversation a week ago with a Kiwi there to watch the NZ-Aus rugby match. I was basically interrogated about what philosophy was, and what use it was — why anyone would take a course in philosophy. The tone was not antagonistic but curious. And at the end of the conversation the guy thought philosophy was valuable for teaching students how to think. I think philosophy is more than that, but its a good start.

    Reply
  10. Christopher Gauker

    Maybe the problem is not so much an animus against analytic philosophy as that when it comes to work in core problem areas, people don't think they can tell the difference between good and bad, between lasting value and passing fad. Or even if they have their own opinions, they don't think they can sell their judgments to the rest of the committee. Think of some people who you think might deserve these awards. For any one of them, half the profession would think it was a big mistake. Some of you have said that the situation is different now than in the past or different in the US than in other countries, and that, I admit, does count against my hypothesis, but maybe those are more clubbish places and times.

    Reply
  11. John Capps

    I think Jason hit the nail on the head in his comments to an earlier post: he noted John Lach's observation that philosophers often cut each other down and in doing so undermine the profession's status in the eyes of other academics. (BTW, Lach's letter to the APA is at: http://www.politicaltheory.info/essays/lachs.htm)

    But isn't something like that going on here? There's an unfortunate tendency to dismiss applied philosophy (etc.) as not being "real" philosophy, or not what "real" philosophers do, or as somehow not really representing what philosophy is about. Meanwhile, what counts as "real" philosophy is often written for a small specialized audience. But these attitudes only harm philosophy by diminishing its relevance for those outside the field.

    In fact, these attitudes may be a reaction to what Lachs observed: if one can narrow down one's prospective audience then one also limits the number of critics. Unfortunately, that means one also limits the breadth of one's audience outside philosophy. And, let's face it, many (not all) philosophers who have managed to reach a wider audience are mocked by other philosophers (Rorty is the classic example) while those who write for a hyper-specialized subset of philosophers can be widely respected by other philosophers, even by those who don't read their articles.

    I agree with earlier commentators who've suggested that professional philosophy is partly to blame for its own marginalization. I have colleagues outside philosophy who deeply appreciate what philosophy has to offer – but with our teaching loads and other responsibilities simply don't have time to immerse themselves in philosophy, especially philosophy that doesn't attempt to be applied or cross-disciplinary. And, frankly, I don't blame them.

    Reply
  12. Ralph Wedgwood

    "Art [and] literature … are subjects which, since Plato’s time, have been traditionally opposing kinds of humanities disciplines to philosophy."

    This sweeping historical claim seems overblown to me. It's true that Plato has some harsh things to say in the Republic about "mimetic art". But this may or may not include all kinds of art (e.g., music, abstract decorative art, architecture and poems in praise of the gods may not count as "mimetic art" as Plato understands it). Anyway, practically no philosophers followed Plato on this. And Plato surely wasn't conceiving of mimetic art as a "humanities discipline". At least in the West, the invention of an intellectual discipline that was concerned with the study of literature was basically due to the "Poetics" of Aristotle.

    During most of the history of philosophy, there hardly existed an established intellectual discipline concerned with studying art and literature. To the extent that it existed, it was usually closely connected with philosophy. (Think of how deeply Schiller's writings on aesthetics and literary theory were influenced by Kant.) It was not until the 20th century that a large discipline devoted to the academic study of literature sprang up, and it was only then that it started to harbour the enemies of philosophy.

    By the way, our enemies in the humanities aren't just limited to post-modern literary theorists and their ilk. Historians, even of a quite traditional stamp, are often quick to accuse analytic philosophers of being "ahistorical". Sad, but true…

    Reply
  13. Lisa

    A quick point. In spite of the hundreds or thousands of poems I've read, I don't believe I read or understand poetry in the way that those who study literature do. I think many professors of English are able to see things in Dickinson that I'm not able to see, that they have a technical language and tools to think about literature that I don't have. (And I'm not thinking about postmodernism here, I'm thinking about the classical tools used to analyze literature). I double-majored English and Philosophy. I love poetry. But I can't really claim I know how to READ poetry in a way that far outstrips the ability of most English professors to read philosophy.

    As for art history or music, I'm fairly hopeless. I know as much as your average man on the street.

    Like most philosophers I know, when it comes to a serious knowledge of things that other people take as central to the humanities–art, music, what have you–I have to shrug my shoulders and take a pass. If I'm going to dabble, I try to learn about history and economics. I don't court ignorance, I just accept that ignorance is an almost unavoidable thing in life. My ignorance of many significant disciplines in the humanities probably matches the ignorance other people have about philosophy. I know some stuff about what they do; I can't do what they do. I'd be surprised if this wasn't true for most of us.

    I don't disagree with you that philosophers might be unfairly disadvantaged when applying for humanities fellowships. Philosophers have tried to straddle the gap between the humanities and science and this is to their credit. It might play some role in alienating other scholars in the humanities, as stupid as that is. I'm not sure that a program to make everyone with a B.A. in humanities conversant with Bradley is going to ensure the sympathy with philosophy that we want. People get old and forget what they learned. We probably have to work harder to make them see why what we do matters.

    Maybe another thing worth doing would be to challenge their narrow view of what the humanities are–by showing them what the humanities should be or what they really have been. For centuries, as you said.

    As for how philosophy was done, it kind of amazes me to read journal articles from the turn of the century. A lot of those philosophers seemed to be doing things very differently than the way we do them now.

    Reply
  14. Jason Stanley

    lol…Geez, Ralph, it's called "poetic license". Even we philosophers are allowed it, albeit only on blogs.

    I think the situation in Britain is very different than the situation in the States…to accuse analytic philosophers of being ahistorical is one thing; to block their access to humanities funding sources is quite another. As Brian Weatherson pointed out on an earlier comment, there is just no issue with philosophers receiving funding from major humanities funding sources in other regions with vibrant academic systems. No other country I know of has such an influential group of humanities scholars who question philosophy's status as a humanities discipline. Perhaps this is because in other countries, few humanities scholars are as ignorant of traditional philosophy as humanities scholars in the States perhaps are. Perhaps this is because Americans don't receive exposure to philosophy in secondary school, as for example many Germans do…so it remains a kind of alien form of thought, even for some people who eventually become literature professors.

    Reply
  15. Michael Cholbi

    A couple of thoughts:

    1. One possible explanation of these phenomena is that philosophy, unlike many other disciplines, is hard to take a causal interest in. There are simply not that many outlets (outside of reading philosophical works themselves, which can be very daunting) to create or sustain a non-philosopher's level of interest in philosophy. History, the arts, and the sciences have their museums and their cable channels, and literature has, well, literature as a way to learn more about a discipline and develop an interest in it. But philosophy doesn't have much of a place in middlebrow or general intellectual culture, which makes it hard for anyone not actively engaged in the academic study of philosophy to learn much about it. (I of course recognize the exceptions to this claim, such as the Philosophy Talk radio show, etc.)

    2. It's often observed that philosophy is a discipline that lacks its own distinctive subject matter, borrowing from or abutting many other humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. I think this leads to genuine confusion about the nature of philosophy, both among academic and non-academic outsiders. With non-academics, I've observed that their conception of philosophy is strongly influenced by their exposure to very small fragments of it, which they suppose (not surprisingly) to exhaust the field. So philosophy *is* whatever sticks in their mind from their Intro class: ethics, logic, the study of figures long dead, whatever. With other academics, I have had many experiences in which I describe an important claim or argument in philosophy and receive a response like "I didn't even know philosophers thought about those questions!" Philosophy's lacking its own clear subject matter also tends to breed resentment among other academics, who perceive philosophy as waiting to pounce and encroach upon the intellectual territory of their own disciplines.

    Reply
  16. Gary

    Interesting post, Jason, but I worry that there's a bit of a double standard here. I'm also not entirely sure what claim(s) you're making. You certainly seem to be claiming that it is not acceptable to know nothing about the other humanities disciplines, whereas it *is* acceptable, in the other humanities disciplines, to know nothing about philosophy. But do you mean that this is just your view? Or do you take this to also be the view of most American analytic philosopers?

    Are you also saying that such lack of knowledge of and interest in philosophy is, *in fact*, common in the humanities? And that the corresponding lack of knowledge of and interest in the broader humanities is, *in fact*, *not* common in philosophy?

    I guess I'd echo the worries of the earlier commenters who express doubts that philosophers are free of guilt in the creation of this problem.

    Most analytic philosophers think, of course, that analytic philosophy is *important*. But the same people often seem to hold that many of the other humanities disciplines are *not* important. Put it this way: if it was the philosophers who were mostly in charge of handing out the research grants, I bet that comp. lit. and history would be as ignored as analytic philosophy is now. Jason, maybe this isn't true of you; maybe you'd be even-handed about the distribution. Then I'd repeat my query about whether you intend to be giving your own views, or those of American analytic philosophers in general. If the latter, I'm not sure you're on safe ground.

    Reply
  17. Kosta Calfas

    Jason,

    I can't speak for how philosophy was done in america "centuries ago" I wasn't there, and as for how it's done now I clearly have a different impression than you do. Working as a philosopher in America, you obviously have greater knowledge than I about the inner workings of the discipline in your own country. What I, however, first wish to address is your restatement of a common fallacious (or at least highly problematic) argument commonly repeated that:

    "It's harder to unify and order the disciplines now than in Aristotle's time, since there is far more specialized knowledge (and I'm certain that our colleagues in neighboring humanities disciplines would be even more reluctant to fund such projects, since many of the disciplines are scientific ones)."

    The argument can be restated as "Synoptic philosophical projects are only tenable where there is no more than X ammount of information (or information of a specificity of X), since history has progressed, and therefore X has been exceeded, synoptic philosophical projects are no longer viable."

    This argument begs alot of questions, but since this is a blog, I'll only briefly deal with three; all either so contentious such that they demand proof almost upon utterance (perhaps even philosophical treatises unto themselves), or demonstrably false:
    1) That we have more information (or are more "specialized") now than in Aristotle's time
    2) That history is progressive
    3) That synoptic philosophical projects become untenable after a certain level of information specificity is reached.

    It is indeterminate (though I suspect false) that they had "less specialized information" in Aristotle's time than in ours. They had differing kinds of knowledge and specialization than we do today (indeed there are no more specialized chariot makers). Some of it still viable ( the Nichomachean Ethics), some demonstrably less useful (Aristotle's physics, psychology and biology) and some just plain incommeasurable (his metaphysics)

    Second, the issue of whether in fact history has "progressed" and what exactly that means. This, of course, if we take seriously as a topic of concern will, I suspect, be of great interest to historians. Polybius famously adapted Plato's metaphysics (as he understood it) to a theory of historical change to argue for circularity in governmental regime change. Hegel has arguments for more progressive vision of history, but again, that idea of history was not separable from underlying metaphysical commitments. I It might be that the very questions begged, as in this case, are the very ones which have traditionally brought philosophy into repore with other humanistic pursuits.

    Finally, the third question as to whether synoptic projects are only tenable when there is a certain lack of specificity, or deficit of information. One might get this impression by assuming the synopsis must take on the qualitative complexity or quantitative grandness of its component disciplines and their collective knowledge. Therefore, it would be impractical, unwieldly and most ominously, breed resentment amongst sub-disciplines. But this assumption is as untrue for philosophy as it is for physics where theories of consillience have continued to be the order of the day since Aristotle. It might anger some chemists that theoretical physics supervenes on their discipline, as it might anger some psychologists, historians or anthropologists that philosophical questions supervene on theirs; but so what? That's about parochialism and personality, not about truth. I suspect if you took the pains to explain your views, synoptic though they may be, truthful claims made in good faith would prevail (although we are talking about the nation where the term "truthiness" was coined, so this is a leap of faith here).

    Returning to the topic at hand, if you pick up a work of British, French, German, Russian or American psychology or sociology published from the turn of the twentieth century until the end of the second world war, you'd be hard pressed not to find a citation or two to James' Principles of Psychology. You could also look to Dewey's similar scope of influence in the education, politics and psychology of his time. Again Jason, I'm on the outside looking in, but I get the impression, and I know I'm not alone, that something changed in American philosophy during the postwar period that made philosophy and all humanities more insular. As for the MacArthur Fellows; if you look at the recipients that are philosophers, almost without exception, all of them have had considerable success addressing their ideas to non-philosophers (Churchland in neuroscience and psychology, Rorty in sociology, comp. lit., and politics and Cavell in fine arts and film studies, Scanlon in politics and law). Maybe I'm a bit more optimistic about this list, but to me this list says that the other humanities and sciences want philosophers to address their concerns and interract with them. I would, therefore, encourage a ritual of raproachement wherein you and other American philosophers go out and hug a historian, sociologist or anthropologist today (You're at Rutgers right? I hear Lionel Tiger likes to cuddle!). You could call it "hug-a-humanist day" and in mid embrace you can tell them all about how their current research relates or is aided by your recent foray into contextualism or vagueness (p.s. if you hug them tight enough, they can't run!).

    I hope my posts haven't come off anti-american, nothing could be further from the truth. I just think there may be great dissonance between how american philosophers perceive themselves versus how they are perceived by the rest of the intellectual community and the public at large. Oh, and regarding David Lewis' synoptic projects; I must confess I am less familar with Lewis work than I should be. Perhaps you'll indulge my ignorance and do a precis of synoptic philosophical projects in the American analytic tradition in future postings. Thanks again for raising such an interesting topic.

    Best as always,

    Kosta

    Reply
  18. Jo Wolff

    Jason,

    I would guess that a higher proportion of humanities scholars in the US have studied philosophy than in the UK: undergraduate programmes in the UK still very often involve complete concentration on one or, more rarely, two disciplines right from the start, whereas I presume that in the US very many people majoring in other subjects will have taken a course or two in philosophy. It couldn't possibly be, could it, that early actual exposure to philosophy is the source of later antagonism? Decision makers now in their 50s would have taken intro courses in the late '60s. What was typically taught in Philosophy 101 then, I wonder? I can imagine a few things that would have some people stratching their heads wondering whether this sort of thing should be encouraged.

    In the UK, at least as far as the Arts and Humanities Research Council is concerned, the total pot of funding available is proportional to the number of 'research active' academics in the discipline, and so every subject area gets its proportional share. Actually, rumour has it that it is rather more favourable to philosophy than this would suggest: philosophy is in a group with law and religious studies, and as the lawyers tend to make fewer applications for grants the other subjects in the panel get the benefit. This, I stress again, is a rumour.

    Reply
  19. Daniel Garber

    I’ve been reading through the recent postings in response to Jason Stanley’s original posting, complaining that philosophers and philosophy is not well understood by practitioners of other disciplines in the humanities. I honestly don’t know whether Jason is right in thinking that philosophers don’t fare as well in fellowship competitions as they should; he may be right. But I think that I detect a bit of paranoia in some of the discussion.
    When analytic philosophers are accused of being hermetic, isolated, out of touch with the “big” problems in philosophy, out of touch with the larger public, one response that I often hear is that philosophy has become a technical discipline, like physics or math, with its own vocabulary and its own store of technical problems. And so, one shouldn’t expect it to be intelligible to the average person on the street. If so, then one shouldn’t be surprised that people in other humanistic disciplines don’t know what is going on in contemporary analytic philosophy and consequently don’t care: you can’t have it both ways. This has gone with a certain kind of isolation that some departments have fostered within their universities and colleges. We, philosophers, are really different from the other branches of the humanities, if we belong there at all. We really don’t have much in common with them. (Read: “We are really better than they are.”) Furthermore, there is a lot of ignorance on our side as well. There is a lot of complaint about what they don’t know about us. But what do we really know about what goes on in English, or Comp Lit, or History Departments these days? How much of what we believe about other humanities departments is based on myth or hearsay? As a result, philosophy departments often resist doing things that bring departments together: sponsoring common lectures, conferences, participation in humanities institutes, teaching joint courses, etc.
    From the notes recently posted, though, I assume that people think that it is bad that others don’t understand us, and that they don’t value what we do. Let me make one small suggestion: work within your universities to end the isolation. Participate in the common humanities events, even if you don’t see the immediate philosophical pay-off. Go to talks in other departments, and try to engage in discussion. Get to know people in other areas, talk with them about their work, and talk with them about yours: show them why it is interesting and why they should care. Invite them in participate in events in your own philosophy departments. In short, show them that you are interested in what they are doing, and that what you are doing may be of interest to them as well. We philosophers might learn something too.

    Reply
  20. Ken Taylor

    Jason:

    I agree with the main thrust of your remarks. I'd put it even more strongly, though. It's not just that many humanists are ignorant of philosophy as currently practiced in the US. They have deeply held views about what philosophy ought to be. They see us not being what they take it we ought to be and hold us in contempt for what they believe we are. I've seen this up close as a member of the selection committee for our Humanities Center External Fellowships and as a member of a Ford Foundation Fellowship committee for three years.

    I do think, though, that philosophy itself is partly (and only partly) to blame. The reason that many humanists have a view about what philosophy ought to be is because there is a kind of unmet demand for philosophy among humanist — or at least they perceive that analytic philosophy is not responsive to their demand for philosophy. The unmet demand is generated by the fact that the broader humanities have been feverishly rethinking, for quite a while now, many of their fundamental categories and concepts in terms of race, gender, identity, and culture. Many humanist take these to be quite fundamental concepts and categories and they take it that they play "heretofore" underappreciated roles in the dynamics of history, social and cultural change, and on and on. This has being going on for a long time in humanistic circles, of course. Until relatively recently analytic philosophers have mostly been pretty silent on these issues, for better or worse, with a few notable exceptions. Our main pre-occupations were elsewhere. That has certainly changed a fair bit. But even so, we don't take these issues to be nearly so central or fundamental as many humanists do. Indeed, even many analytic philosophers who work in these areas and on these concepts tend not to share the views held by many humanists about these matters.

    It's a complicated situation to which I don't pretend to do justice here, but I think the long and short of it is that philosophy remains something of an outlier in its governing concerns. Other humanists have noticed that fact. And they have noticed that areas ripe for philosophy were for awhile pretty much off the radar screen of analytic philosophers. Now don't get me wrong, I think they have mostly misunderstood and misinterpreted their own preoccupations, And I think they have failed to appreciate the resources available within analytic philosophy.

    Still, they did notice a fact. We haven't been nearly as gripped by issues about race and gender and the sources of cultural and social change as other humanistis have been. Not that we have been entirely unconcerned. But that's what I meant when I said there is an unmet demand for philosophy among humanists.

    Partly because analytic philosophy didn't readily and quickly step up and meet that demand, certain, let's say, substitutes stepped into the breech — you know the folks I mean. The situation was made worse by certain fallen away analytic philosophers who "confirmed" the worst prejudices of many of the humanists. I won't name names, but I think you know who I mean here too.

    I see signs that things are changing, albeit slowly and in small steps.

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  21. Robert P

    I am not sure I feel sorry for analytic philsophers for not getting many humanities fellowships (until maybe I am rejected for one). I think if the situation was reversed, that is, if analytic philosophers were in charge of distributing fellowships, not many would go to literature or poetry, etc. Many of the analytic philosophers that I have met thought that literature and poetry were a waste of time. Others thought that ethics was pointless and some did not have a high opinion of the study of the history of philosophy.

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  22. Jason Stanley

    I guess a common theme of all of these comments has been 'how much is the relative isolation of philosophy in the humanities a function of the activities of philosophers vs. a function of the prejudices of our fellow humanists?' I really liked Lisa Rivera's comment, and it seemed to reflect my sentiments. I regard literary criticism as incredibly difficult; despite my deep appreciation for literature and (especially) poetry, reading a scholar of some work one likes and feels one knows well can make you realize how mastering a language of criticism can get you much further or deeper. I would like to see humanists not in philosophy have that kind of understanding of the difficulty of philosophy (though I am certainly *not* recommending that anyone, even the trained philosopher, should read *Appearance and Reality*!).

    On the other hand, this suggests that I am advocating the stance, rightly criticized by Dan Garber, that we should simply pat our fellow humanists on the shoulder and tell them to trust us. Of course, we should seek to forge ties, where they are appropriate. I think philosophy of language can certainly fruitfully be brought to bear on some of the metainterpretive issues (for lack of a better expression) discussed in high church literary theory; e.g. I think that an understanding of the meaning-skeptical tradition in analytic philosophy is helpful in reading *Of Grammatology* (as is acquaintance with objections to meaning holism), and I used to do this in my phil language classes at Cornell (though I haven't done it in years, and I assume high-church literary criticism has moved way beyond Derrida). But that's a different post (perhaps one I should write, tentatively titled 'why analytic philosophy is helpful to literary criticism after all'). But philosophy of language is I think unusual, in that it does have more obvious links to other humanities (even Zizek discusses Kripke at times, as I dimly recall from my Zizek reading years). Many issues discussed by philosophers (such as e.g. the nature of universals) don't have such links. My purpose in the last three posts has been to argue that even these latter questions need no extrinsic justification to be regarded as classic questions in the humanities. Just as philosophers personally uninterested in Shakespeare recognize that one needs no extrinsic justification for the project of studying what Shakespeare meant, and why he said what he did in the way he did, literary critics uninterested in the problem of universals or the nature of logic should recognize that one needs no extrinsic justification for the project of uncovering the nature of universals, or deciding whether second-order logic is logic.

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  23. Daniel

    I wonder how philosophical aesthetics affects the relationship between philosophy as a whole and the other humanities. I'm not a philosopher, just an undergrad, but naively it seems like aesthetics is a place where there's a lot of potential for the kind of cross-disciplinary collaboration that Daniel Garber suggests. The flip-side is that aesthetics seems particularly vulnerable to the perception of "intellectual encroachment" that Michael Cholbi mentions, precisely because it shares (in some broad sense) a subject of study with the other humanities. I guess a related issue is whether any collaboration between aesthetics and the other humanities would actually draw philosophy as a whole closer to the other humanities, or if people see aesthetics as an already marginal and peculiar sub-discipline. I'd be curious to hear what people think about the state of play on any of these issues.

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  24. Dennis Des Chene

    Grist for the mill (and confirmation of Ken Taylor’s remarks): the Jefferson Lectures sponsored by the NEH. In the 2004 lecture, by Helen Vendler, and the 2005 lecture, by Donald Kagan, you will find both hostility to and ignorance of philosophy. See http://tlonuqbar.typepad.com/phfn/2005/05/history_old_hat.html and http://tlonuqbar.typepad.com/phfn/2004/05/vendler_on_the_.html for details. I suspect that in both cases the hostility is to the kind of philosophy, less common these days, that treated history as bunk and that made æsthetics a poor relation. We are paying for the sins of the fathers (and a few mothers).

    Concerning the theme of this thread, I must admit that when I read some analytic philosophy (and some history of philosophy too) I ask myself what anyone who wasn’t wholly immersed in the debate would find in it. The standard defense against that sort of jibe, as Garber notes, is to say that epistemology or whatever is a specialized discipline that, like physics or mathematics, has good reason to employ its own jargon and that has, as a pursuit, value in its own right; it need not justify its existence to outsiders.

    That’s all well and good. But physics and mathematics have striking, stable results and notable applications to back up their claims of value. What does metaphysics have to offer? Physicists, moreover, have done a very good job of popularizing even the more esoteric reaches of their science—think of Stephen Weinberg’s or Brian Greene’s books. Is there any popularization of metaphysics as it is done now, or of epistemology, that compares to them? Would we value such a work if someone troubled to write it?

    It would be nice if people spontaneously agreed that figuring out whether second-order logic is logic is a good thing, worth investing in. But that’s not how it works, not even for the study of Shakespeare. That people more readily assent in the case of Shakespeare is owing first of all to the appeal of the plays and poems themselves (more accessible than the refined pleasures of logic), and second to two hundred or so years of promotion (vide Polthast). If instead of Shakespeare you said Colley Cibber, the case would have to be made. In philosophy only ethics has a “spontaneous” appeal akin to that of Shakespeare’s drama. That is one reason why Wash U has a Center for Human Values (funded partly by the medical school) but no Center for Possible Worlds.

    Some of the difficulty, I think, arises from the Janus-like character of philosophy. Parts of it align themselves with the sciences; but its home, and its money, is in the humanities. As emulators of science we haven’t much to offer, no cancer cures, no spectacular shots of the moons of Saturn. As humanists, we once had our place; we offered a secular guide to life. From the time of Montaigne, let’s say, who drew of course on the ancients, till now (if you include Heidegger, Sartre, and Žižek among philosophers), its purpose has been to propose, and to justify, practical decisions, a purpose it shares with the study of literature and the study of history, considered extrinsically. Nowadays, however, some philosophers, even some who work in value theory, studiously avoid offering advice, because (I take it) they think of themselves as engaging in “pure” inquiry (an attitude whose history would be worth tracing—you find it in twentieth-century mathematics, too, for example).

    There is, to be sure, an intrinsic value to knowing the past, understanding Chaucer, or working out a consistent theory of identity-through-time—a value, however, that requires a process of induction to appreciate. The question at hand—why don’t philosophers get a bigger share of humanities money?—is one of extrinsic justification, of deciding which among many competing pursuits, all intrinsically valuable by their own lights, are to be funded. The justification will be extrinsic because the panels that make the decisions, being representative of the humanities as a whole, are made up mostly of people from other disciplines. One may hope to give those outsiders some glimpse of the beauties seen from within. But by and large the argument must be based on the equivalent of “could lead to a cure for cancer” or the all-round appeal of Shakespeare. In metaphysics or epistemology, it is admittedly more difficult to come up with such equivalents (but no more difficult than it is for the Anglo-Saxonist or the Byzantine historian). Nevertheless that is what must be done. Reciprocity arguments are not going to do the job.

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  25. Jacob T. Levy

    "The philosophers who do achieve some success have been those working primarily in ethics related topics, historians of philosophy, or philosophers who have related their work to art or literature. The latter are subjects which, since Plato’s time, have been traditionally opposing kinds of humanities disciplines to philosophy."

    Ethics? A "traditionally opposing kind of humanities discipline to philosophy?" That philosophy isn't part of the modern philosophy core hardly means that it has traditionally been within philosophy rather than "opposed" to it.

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  26. Jason Stanley

    Jacob,

    Umm, by "latter" I meant by art and humanities, of course.

    Dennis,

    Good post. But historians have very good track records with these kinds of fellowships (vastly better than philosophers), and most of their projects have no more all-around appeal than metaphysics. I don't think they give elaborate extrinsic justifications for their projects. The problem I think is that too many humanists in the States are simply unaware of what philosophy is, and defend their ignorance with hostility (and appeals to Rorty for justification of their ignorance).

    For popular works on metaphysics with similar profiles to works like Judith Herrin's *Women in Purple*, or John Julius Norwich's trilogy on Byzantium, check out Earl Conee and Ted Sider's recent *Riddles of Existence*. I've spoken before on this blog about some of the successes of metaphysics (though it's not one of my areas). Briefly, again — work on causation done by philosophers such as David Lewis is starting to have an effect across a number of disciplines; check out Judea Pearl and Joe Halpern's recent work. Appeal to causation has become reputable again throughout the human sciences — more and more social scientists are familiar with causal decision theory, etc. That's just one example, there are others.

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  27. Adam

    I am a historian–who hopes one day to snatch a Guggenheim right out of the hands of an analytic philosopher–and I am finding the discussion fascinating.

    One comment: I think Jason is wrong in thinking that "[historians don't] give elaborate extrinsic justifications for their projects."
    The particular way history is divided into sub-fields means that historians are constantly justifying their projects–to one another–in a process that begins on the first day of the first-year proseminar in graduate school and continues through the entire career. This is probably good practice for writing successful fellowship applications.

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  28. Thom Brooks

    I have found these posts both interesting and informative, but can't help but point out a worry with them all: is "analytic philosophy" no more than metaphysics & epistemology, mind & language?

    We are told in all posts that there is a division between the "analytic philosophers" and those who do the following:

    1. Philosophy of art & literature
    2. History of philosophy
    3. Ethics/political philosophy

    By this score, Ralph's fears are realized: analytic philosophy is not about hsitory of philosophy (apparently). In addition, if any of us do political philosophy, we're strangely *not* analytic philosophers.

    I think rather than adhere to this fairly crazy understanding of what analytic philosophy is, we would be better off talking about "analytic philosophers working in mind and language" instead. It is crazy to say you can't be an analytic philosopher and work in the history of our field or in ethics, etc.

    In any event, the problems of "analytic philosophers working in mind and language" earning grants may be a simple one (although it would be interesting to see some data on this). From the previous posts, it seems fairly clear that all successful applicants had projects that were interdisciplinary in some sense. It is certainly true that more interdisciplinary grant applications in the UK seem to be assessed more positively than not. Perhaps analytic metaphysicians don't do this? I don't know. Again, we'd need to see the data…

    One final thought: it is most certainly the case that we probably all could "sell" (for want of a better word) our discipline better. Philosophy in general had a different feel and character in journals, such as Mind and the Int'l Journal of Ethics, before the first World War than our journals now. I miss this primarily because I am interested in British Idealism, however, I don't see how the field has been damaged by the clear changes in direction that come with every new generation.

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  29. Jacob T. Levy

    Ah. Got it, sorry. I had thought that "latter" referred to all the Guggenheim-friendly items in that sentence, as contrasted with the "such issues" as "metaphysical and epistemological issues" and "issues in philosophical logic and philosophy of language" discussed in the paragraph up until that point.

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