The ;Nonsense of "The Stone"

The New York Times occasional philosophy column, The Stone, has built a reputation for unilluminating heat, slovenly inference and wanton accusations.  Almost any column would do as an example. I will take a recent reflexive example, “When Philosophy Lost its Way” in the January 11, 2016 Times.

First, what way did philosophy lose?  The high moral ground, for one thing, say the Texan authors. Philosophers of yesteryear (before the 19^th century) showed integrity and selflessness. Our contemporaries by and large do not.  The study of philosophy, in yesteryear, elevated those who pursued it.  Of old, philosophers were concerned with human functions and purposes. Now they are not. Philosophy was a quasi-priesthood, a vocation. Now it’s just a job. Philosophy of old was spread among the professions, the idle rich, etc. Now it’s confined to philosophy professors.

Second, how did philosophy lose its way?  It became part of the university.  That removed philosophers from “modern life.” (I wonder where the philosophy professors live who don’t: pay taxes, have illnesses, worry for their children, hold political views, fall in and out of love, get divorced, give to charities, etc. Maybe it’s North Texas.)  In the good old days, lots of people with different interests were philosophers, but after the 19^th century they all became academics. lost their virtue and their connection with human concerns.  That’s the story.

Unlike the Texas philosophers, I am loathe to defame the integrity or selflessness of contemporary philosophers. I have met a few really vile ones, but mostly they have seemed pretty ordinary folk on moral dimensions.  But I am not so sure that philosophers of old were selfless and notably different in integrity from their contemporaries. It reads to me as if the Texans have been taking The Apology as the common standard of philosophers before philosophers became professors.  Was Aristotle, who left a contentious democracy to educate the mad son of a monarch, selfless?  Was Plato, the Athenian aristocrat, selfless?  Moving up, what was selfless about Leibniz—did he sacrifice himself in some way for others?  Few characters in intellectual history seem less selfless or charitable than Hobbes and Newton, who saw personally to the mutilation of coin clippers. Integrity (and courage)? You won’t find it uncompromised in Locke, who contributed (albeit on tolerance) to the Fundamental  Constitution of Carolina,  an oligarchy ruling over indentured servants that violated both letter and spirit of Locke’s 2^nd treatise—which treatise Locke made sure not to publish while he lived.

There are lots of examples of 20^th century philosophers who acted with selflessness and integrity.  Bertrand Russell, who went to prison over his opposition to World War I; David Malament, who did the same over his opposition to the Vietnam War; Paul Oppenheim and Carl Hempel, who helped Jews out of Germany during the Third Reich; Albert Camus, who was part of the French underground. Philosophers not engaged with modern life? Read Philip Kitcher, read Daniel Dennett’s more recent works, read just about anything by Peter Singer. Are there no 20^th century philosophers who were not professors? Alan Turing was one of the most influential philosophical writers of the 20^th century—among other things of course. He held an academic position only in the last years of his life.  Camus was a journalist. Paul Oppenheim was a businessman. John von Neumann, who stimulated both the philosophy of quantum theory and computation, was a mathematician.  Russell spent most of his career outside of the academy. Lawrence Krauss, a physicist, is a metaphysician as well. 

What is true is that as universities spread and secularized, a lot more people became “philosophers” and a lot of them are very ordinary people with ordinary minds. The same is true of lots of disciplines I expect, say physics.

What is the author’s remedy? Simple: philosophers should get out of universities. The authors teach at the University of North Texas.