I'll preface by saying that I'm trying my darnedest to sympathize with, learn from, and interact with philosophers. I don't approach this article or those like it with any sense that philosophy is irrelevant for or in some sort of basic contradiction with theological work. It's also worth noting that many philosophers do not share the views of Stanley and feel quite at home in the current state of the conversation with their disciplinary neighbors in the humanities. No sweeping statements about "philosophers" are intended, then. What I'm taking issue with is one philosopher's characterization of the situation concerning philosophy amongst the disciplines.
Stanley starts off by retelling a story that was cycled through Leiter last year, about the fact that a recent ACLS fellowship program included no recipients trained in philosophy. Later on in the article he notes that only six philosophers have won the MacArthur Fellowship compared to 17 in American history... and he describes these philosopher winners as "an odd group". If Stanley wants to write off Rorty, Churchland, Cavell, and others in this way in order to make his point, then I don't know exactly where to begin. This seems to be simply a petty complaint against certain schools of thought within his discipline. In contrast, there are no theologians on the list of MacArthur fellows, and while I don't know where a list of the ACLS fellows can be found, I'd wager that there aren't any theologians on that list, either. I don't bring this up to announce my own "crisis of theology" (although we theologians do often give in to the temptation of touting our marginalization). The point is that it hardly seems objective to bring up two prestigious fellowships where there happens to be few or no winners from a certain discipline, and mock that up as if it's a sign of the times.
Stanley goes on,
Most American humanists are unclear about how the debates of philosophers are supposed to fit into the overall project of the humanities. We are ignored at dinner parties, and considered arrogant and perhaps uncouth. To add insult to injury, the name of our profession is liberally bestowed on those teaching in completely different departments.I'm not sure whether he's here referring to "philosophers of X" strewn throughout different humanities departments, or the actual "PhD" degree itself... either way, though, this strikes me as an unfortunate lack of clarity about what philosophy actually is. Peruse any number of philosophy department websites that attempt to offer a description:
"In a broad sense, philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other. As an academic discipline philosophy is much the same. Those who study philosophy are perpetually engaged in asking, answering, and arguing for their answers to life’s most basic questions." (Florida State)
"Philosophy, like all other fields, is unique. But the uniqueness of philosophy seems more impressive. Whereas historians, physicists, etc., generally agree about what constitutes their proper field of study, philosophers do not. Some philosophers have even maintained that there is no proper field of study for philosophers. This extreme position fortunately is not held by too many philosophers, but it illustrates perhaps the most distinctive feature of philosophy, namely that it leaves nothing unquestioned."(Bernard Gert, Dartmouth)
"For me, philosophy is defined by a goal and a method. Philosophy's goal is nothing less than a systematic world view. Other fields study particular kinds of things. Philosophy asks how it all fits together. [...] The method of conceptual analysis might sometimes seem picky, but unclarity or imprecision in our concepts is often what leads us into paradoxes and incoherence in our world views. That is why the philosophical goal of a coherent overall world view makes philosophers adopt the method of conceptual analysis." (Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Dartmouth)
Most of these attempts at description boil down to a general sense that philosophy questions everything. A lot. Very rigorously. But this is simply a standard of scholarly excellence, not a definition of a field of study. Given this sort of definition, it's no wonder-- and not a problem!-- that professors in other disciplines are awarded doctorates "of philosophy" and teach in the "philosophy of" various inquiries. Yet Stanley sees this as adding "insult to injury" rather than as a natural outworking of common conceptions of philosophy articulated by philosophers themselves. In light of some of these definitional options, I'm pleased that the University of Chicago philosophy department opts for a situating of themselves against various institutional frictions. This seems much more helpful, and avoids the grandiosity that inevitably leads to disappointment in others:
"There are three characteristic sorts of disciplinary divisions that tend to leave a philosophy department in a condition in which its whole becomes less than the sum of its parts: (1) between those who are concerned with the systemic study of issues in contemporary philosophy and those who are concerned with the interpretation of classic historical figures and texts, (2) between specialists in theoretical philosophy and specialists in practical philosophy, and (3) between those who take their problems, methods, and overall orientation from the analytic tradition and those who take theirs from the Continental tradition. The Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago is distinctive in its freedom from all three such forms of division within its philosophical community."
Back to Stanley. There are some interesting sections of the piece that opine about philosophy's role in both establishing modernity and writing itself out of the narrative once modernity had arrived. There's also a response to typical maligning of logical positivism as what has ruined philosophy more recently. I'll pass over these for the historian of philosophy to consider. In the midst of all this he discusses the fact that philosophical work is foreign to many humanists because they are interested in other cultural productions:
"Like the fiction writer or the artist, and unlike her fellow humanists, the philosopher is focused on creating her own body of work, ideally a novel attempt at a solution to the on-going philosophical problems. But unlike the fiction writer or the artist, there is hardly an audience anymore for philosophy outside of the academy. Few bankers care to hear about the latest views on rational agency or vagueness. Humanists are used to studying cultural works created outside the academy for audiences outside the academy. Philosophical work is cultural creation formed inside the academy for an audience that is now largely inside the academy."
Stanley seems not to be able to make up his mind. If "fellow humanists" are apparently receiving prestigious ACLS and MacArthur fellowships left and right for work written in the academy for the academy (unlike the "fiction writer or the artist" about whom they write... although Stanley earlier seems to contradict this distinction: "many humanists are members of the communities they seek to understand"), then why is it a problem that the philosopher's only audience is the academy? Who cares whether bankers read philosophy? Is Stanley trying to imply that they do, in contrast, read anthropology or literary criticism? Or are we now engaged in a double-front war whereby the crisis of philosophy is both 1) not being respected as a humanities discipline and 2) not being read by anyone except professional scholars in humanities disciplines? But apparently philosophy is not being read by humanist scholars, as Stanley clearly says elsewhere, "The activity of philosophy is also foreign to many American humanists" ... "philosophy has become estranged from the humanities" ... "A typical humanist might be somewhat interested in the philosophical views of a certain group, but is probably more interested in the identity that results." For a discipline that prides itself on clarity and rigor, it's difficult to make heads or tails of all this.
And are we really to believe that humanists do not incorporate the work of philosophers on a large scale? Certainly other humanists aren't philosophers, and so Stanley shouldn't expect them to keep up with the philosophical literature to the extent that he does. But it's highly debatable whether he's correct about the fact that we aren't reading philosophy. On the other hand, Stanley readily volunteers, "The great philosophical works have always been difficult technical tomes, pursuing arcane arguments in the service of grand metaphysical and epistemological conclusions. None are easy reading for laypersons, and few base their arguments on anthropology or sociology." Why, then, should he expect sociologists or anthropologists to be impressed by his call for more incorporation of philosophy into the wider humanities disciplines? And while it is often true that theologians read philosophers through overly apologetic intentions, what's striking is that we actually read them, and quite a bit. Many philosophers also read theology, to be sure, but Stanley seems uninterested in incorporating these voices into his idea of what a philosophical discipline should be.
He also often shoots down all of those philosophers who are often read by other humanities scholars (e.g., Zizek, Nietzsche) as if they were philosophical aberrations. It's not my place to dispute with Stanley concerning the normativities of philosophical inquiry and who counts as an oddball... I'll leave that for philosophers to decide. But one would think that, in arguing for increased attention to the work of philosophers, he wouldn't so brazenly shoot himself in the foot by disowning every single example of non-philosophers reading philosophers that he sees fit to acknowledge. It's embarrassingly awkward how disputes between philosophers are projected onto an interdisciplinary question here, so that other humanities scholars are in effect exhorted not simply to show more respect to philosophy, but rather to show respect for the right kind of philosophy, which of course they need the right kind of philosophers to point out to them.
I mentioned in the first paragraph that Leiter will probably re-post this article and, lo and behold, he has. There are also some comments on the IHE site already. I'm unimpressed, and I hope I've made a good case for being unimpressed without appeal to presumptions about what the work of philosophers is about or should be. Speaking merely as someone involved in another humanities discipline and engaging in what I'd consider a healthy amount of interdisciplinary conversation, Jason Stanley's piece strikes me as wavering between disciplinary self-pity and an inability to put himself in the shoes of others- to apply an objective standard from various perspectives in order to hear how he sounds to others. I agree that engagement with philosophers is important for the humanities, and this is precisely why I think it's valuable to critique ill-conceived evaluations of the "crisis"... in philosophy, theology, or any other community of inquiry.
UPDATE: Jason Stanley has been replying to some comments on the article, both at IHE and on a number of philosophy blogs. Over at Feminist Philosophers he shares some more details about his thoughts and the longer version of the piece that was not published. He is also apparently considering writing a longer version of the article and publishing it in another venue.
It seems like much of the discussion has centered around how Stanley characterizes philosophical traditions, a well-worn topic in discussions about philosophy.
ReplyDeleteThe potentially interesting part is whether or not there is a "crisis" of any sort. Frankly I don't see it. For one thing, no matter what one thinks of logical positivism, since those days the various sub-disciplines of philosophy have flourished. They have flourished both as a purely internal matter (e.g. the resurrection of metaphysics, the diversity of metaethics, etc.) and in an interdisciplinary way (e.g. overlap between philosophy of mind and cognitive science).
Furthermore there are great strides in the popularization of philosophy, mostly done in philosophy of religion, but evident in the endless series of "Philosophy and..." books.
But then as you say it's not always clear what exactly Stanley thinks the crisis is.
I'm not inclined to defend some of the true statements Stanley made, since I think the the piece as a whole would undermine the justification for some of the true bits. That said, Stanley is a very good philosopher, and his clarifications that Evan linked to make me inclined to be generally sympathetic with what he listed as the major points of his article.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, his point, which I have heard before, about the the norm being incredibly demanding, rigorous, intricate texts and arguments is both correct and often ignored. I get the sense that many do, quite wrongly, think of normal philosophy as if it's represented by thinkers like Nietzsche.
Stanley seems not to understand, however, why most of what analytic philosophers are doing, even if it has intrinsic merit, does not connect directly, much less easily, with non-philosophers' interests and concerns.
I do wonder, though, Evan, who the "we" is who is reading philosophy. Even if you ignore Stanley's tendency to equate "philosophy" with the specialized work in Anglophone departments, I have not been struck by a substantial and serious philosophical literacy outside of philosophy departments (often not even within them!), certainly not in Theology departments, where you would be historically justified to expect such literacy.
I don't deny that people in theology/reigious studies talk a lot about philosophers, like Kant or whoever, but I'm rarely convinced they have serious studied even a tithe of the major texts of Western philosophy, or taken seriously the problems those texts deal with, and, if they have read some, it's usually not in a philosophical way - e.g. you can read a philosophy book as if it's just another book; but that's not how such books are read by philosophers, and the difference is enormous, particularly in the kind of thinking "philosophical reading" fosters.
I mean Anglophone folks, of course (Germans theologians, for example, tend to have a profound knowledge of the history of philosophy).
Inded, the very fact that a journal like F & P is not much consulted by theologians points to a shift away from certain practices and concepts of theology. It's not an accident that many of the people who write on the scholastics are philosophers or philosophically trained; it's for the quite obvious reason that what Aquinas is doing and the level at which he is doing is now associated with the kind and level of thinking we call "philosophy."
I think that is association is unfortunate but also undeniable. What Aquinas does is much closer to what most articles in F & P do than what articles in IJST do.
The fact that theologians may not know much philosophy is not necessarily bad, of course - such a judgement would depend on a prior concept of what theology is and what kind of training and background knowledge one ought to have to engage in it. I'm just expressing some skepticism about your claim, and I'm happy to be corrected.
The questions of whether theologians read philosophy, or read it well, or are literate in the history of philosophy, or read it "in a philosophical way", etc. etc., are distinct, so I think there is some difficulty in offering a clear answer to your skepticism. Especially when, for the most part, any answer and any possible reply to an answer will probably involve a lot of anecdotal reference to theologians who do or do not interact with philosophical work. It may well be that you aren't satisfied with the sophistication of typical theological readings of philosophy, and you may be justified in that. But it strikes me as difficult to really get anywhere on such a disagreement. I'm sure we could both point out many atrocious interactions with philosophy and many really great examples of it... I don't know how far doing so would get us in getting a general idea of the situation, however. And if you're willing to say from the beginning that there may be a lack of philosophical literacy within philosophy departments, then I suppose I don't see what the point is in bringing up the interdisciplinary dilemma. How can we even begin talking about other humanists working with philosophers if philosophers don't even work with philosophers? How would one even make sense of such a situation? This comes out in Stanley's attempt to clarify where exactly the mainstream of philosophy is. If such a point is a matter of so much dispute amongst philosophers (and my sense is that this is the case, from responses to Stanley that I've read), then it seems that philosophy is probably to blame for a certain amount of vagueness before other humanists are to blame for failing to have any sort of precise knowledge of the discipline. That is, it seems unfair (or at least unproductive) to expect us to know anything about philosophers that philosophers themselves don't know in any established way.
ReplyDeleteThis is my real concern with Stanley's piece; it's difficult to know where to begin with regard to standards of interaction. As I said in the post above, it can't be that he expects theologians (here standing in for the general "humanities" scholar he speaks of) to be as familiar with the literature of a discipline not their own as he is. But we're presumably looking for at least a general literacy here, and a threshold of interaction with philosophy in theological work. And I don't see how someone can deny that this is indeed going on. Certainly if one were to compare the typical interaction of theologians with philosophy to the typical interaction of philosophers with theology, theologians would come out much more literate than philosophers. They may have canned narratives of the post-Kantian or post-Cartesian situation that aren't very sophisticated, but apart from the philosophy of religion folks, I doubt (though I may be wrong) that philosophers generally fare any better in placing something as straightforward as Barth's Römerbrief in any sort of meaningful context. On the whole, philosophy seems pretty broadly embedded in the work that theologians do, while the same sort of penetration isn't the case in philosophy apart from those philosophers who publish in a handful of journals that are interested in the atonement and the trinity... or, on the other hand, those "continental" (or whatever) philosophers who are actually discussing St. Paul, or the death of God, or political theology in a serious manner. And these people Stanley are the ones that excludes from the philosophical norm. If that's the case, then I'm not in a position to question the professional philosopher. But insisting on such a mainstream seems to be damning for philosophy itself rather than the surrounding disciplines.
The question of whether Thomas would publish in IJST or F&P is interesting, but I don't know how much it matters for the current situation. More to the point is whether Thomas would read the journals that Stanley publishes in, like Philosophical Studies or Analysis or Mind and Language. And he probably would... probably even more so than today's average theologian (and that's because he's probably more of a philosophical theologian than today's average theologian). But is today's average theologian more likely to pick up F&P or another more general philosophy journal than Jason Stanley is to read F&P or IJST? I'd imagine so.
ReplyDeleteApart from all theologians becoming an Oliver Crisp or a Kevin Hector, I just don't see Stanley becoming satisfied with philosophy's place within the discipline of theology (again, a particular instance of his wider concern about the humanities). And on the other hand, apart from all philosophers becoming a Crisp or a Hector, I don't see myself becoming very sympathetic to Stanley's declaration of a "crisis" of philosophy, at least along the lines that he's articulating here.
A more general crisis of competency?* Sure, I could see that. As you say, there's plenty of illiteracy to go around these days. But not of some devastating exclusion of philosophy in particular by humanities disciplines in general.
*This, perhaps, brings us back to my discussion of the "definition" of philosophy that really only strikes me as a standard of scholarly excellence more generally rather than a description of any particular field of study. In this sense, I'm happy to acknowledge a crisis of sorts. But that's very different from what Stanley seems to be talking about.
Evan,
ReplyDeleteYou raise some good and important issues, which I'll respond to later.
I'll just note that I didn't say anything about crisis, and I don't buy Stanley on that point at all, at least not as he developed it in the article. If you noticed his three-point summary, none of them speak to a "crisis," so I think he just had a rough time and ended up with something he didn't intend on writing. There may be a crisis, but I agree completely with you that Stanley does not provide evidence for this.
It's also worth noting that Stanley himself never uses the word "crisis" in the piece, so it may simply be an editor's choice of title rather than his own. Nevertheless, it's difficult to pin down exactly what he's trying to say. Certainly the article speaks much more about philosophy as being ostracized by the other humanities disciplines, although you don't get that impression from his discussion of the matter at Feminist Philosophers. There, he makes his conception of the continuity of a philosophical mainstream much more prominent, and hardly mentions the situation of philosophy as it relates to various humanities disciplines. Again, it's his lack of clarity as much as anything else that makes a response difficult.
ReplyDeleteI have to concur with your response to Sam, Evan. And this is coming from someone who has received a longish email from Sam dedicated to informing me that interacting with me on his blog is not worth the investment, because I'm not well versed enough in philosophy.
ReplyDeleteI'm not - I've only started to try to engage it in any great detail, and I'd like to learn more. That sort of thing is fine for Sam to criticize - to point out that I or others (I'm not even in the humanities) could read more philosophy than we currently do. That's one thing. What I'm more concerned about is Sam's assumption that profitably reading philosophy means the same thing to everyone else that it does to him. Persumably, as a philosopher, Sam requires a more sweeping understanding of philosophy for his own projects. He requires a deeper understanding of how philosophers interact with a long history of predecessors. That's fine, because the object of his study is really philosophy itself. But that's not the only way that philosophy can be read well. Many others - Evan, perhaps - and myself to a certain extent - engage philosophy not as an object of study, but as a tool for looking into other issues.
For example, I'm an economist. We've done a pretty good job outlining how market economies optimize production and distribution in situations where there are clearly defined property rights. One of the questions that I'm interested in is what happens when a good or service is poorly defined in terms of its property relations. Given an identification of something as a commodity, we can optimize the production and distribution of that commodity with markets. But economists don't talk or know much about the process of commodification itself. Can the very process of commodifying something diminish welfare or value? Can the identification of property diminish welfare and value? We know that CONDITIONAL ON commodification, markets can do impressive things, but I'm interested in an unconditioned review of the issue.
ReplyDeleteSo I've been looking through some philosophy - Herbert Marcuse, stuff on subject-object distinctions, not to mention literature on rights which I'll need to engage to think clearly about property rights. I've only started to read, but contrary to whatever you think I think I'm reading it quite well. I'm reading it well because I'm using it as a tool.
You look at Marcuse and might say "Daniel is not reading Marcuse well because he really doesn't understand his place in the broader context of dialectical materialism". Well no, I don't. But I'm only interested in Marcuse for his insights on the issue of commodification, and I'm only really interested in the context that's necessary to make those insights of his meaningful.
So I guess in the end what I'm trying to say is that you might be interpreting other people as "reading philosophy badly" because you're implicitly assuming - perhaps without even realizing it - that everybody's project should bear some resemblance to yours, and that if it doesn't, the whole foray into philosophy is impoverished by the fact that it's not the same as your project. I suspect this feeds into your position, and if I'm correct about that then I disagree with you.
ReplyDeleteI could certainly read more - I have too much economics and history to read to ever read as much philosophy as I should or would like to read. It's legitimate to look at my reading list and say "he could read more than he's reading". But it's not legitimate to say that theologians are poorly read if they've read deeply enough to fully satisfy their purposes and provide all the necessary context for their project, simply because they haven't delved deep enough for your purposes or your project.
Does that make sense?
The original title of my piece was "The Humanities and the 'Crisis' of Philosophy", with "Crisis" clearly in scare quotes. I have no idea why the editors chose to change the title - it's obviously no small amount of confusion.
ReplyDeleteI didn't have a rough time, and I'm fine with the piece as it is, given the restriction to 1500 words (actually it came in at around 1800 in the end). The material about "crisis" is not my fault, as I just noted. The point about the continuity of current philosophy with the traditional canon is a point about philosophy's relationship with other humanities, because other humanists seem to be confused about this, and it fuels a somewhat self-righteous disdain for the discipline.
ReplyDelete