Where Have All The Philosophers Gone?
Richard Marshall, Philosophy at 3:AM: Questions and Answers with 25 Top Philosophers
Oxford University Press, 304pp, £20.00, ISBN 9780199969531
reviewed by Jeffrey Petts
The day I first looked at 3:AM the latest End Times interview by Richard Marshall shared the website’s homepage with a review of Russell Brand’s Revolution, a juxtaposition worthy of Marshall’s concern: ‘where have all the philosophers gone?’ Marshall describes 3:AM as ‘a self-proclaimed underground mag’, essentially iconoclastic rather than philosophical, often anti-academia, and generally publishing in areas related to fiction and the arts. His series of interviews began as an experiment in the effects of introducing philosophers and their ideas and working methods in the context of 3:AM’s contrastingly broad agenda, ‘Whatever it is, we’re against it’.
Marshall has been prolific – this batch of 25 interviews is from 2011-12 and the series continues (well over 100 interviews have been published). His guiding idea remains that philosophers – specifically UK and American philosophers in the analytic tradition – are absent from public debates about issues in the contemporary world that should concern them, leaving the field to other intellectuals – historians, economists, political scientists, cultural critics – who aren’t qualified to deal with them with appropriate philosophical rigour. Within that context Marshall’s interviews tend to focus on each philosopher’s method and solutions to particular problems, and their relations to other thinkers, past and present. Each is prefaced with a biographical sketch; they reveal that most philosophical fields are covered from the inner circle of epistemology, metaphysics and logic, out to, especially, philosophy of mind and language and to ethics and political philosophy. Marshall’s first interview, with Timothy Williamson, set the subsequent selection criteria – he thought his Vagueness (1994) intriguingly ‘odd, perverse, unbelievable’ and Marshall’s interest is in philosophers who address ‘the big questions that pop up in the dead of night’.
So why aren’t there more publicly well-known philosophers in the UK and US? Are there methodological reasons perhaps that cut across their varied interests? Williamson holds the prestigious post of Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford; as such one could say he’s the personification of British analytic philosophy. But when asked about the possible neglect of his work in contrast to the supposed high public profiles of Continental philosophers, Williamson is unconcerned. Marshall’s example, Jean-Paul Sartre, is countered as a special case because of Sartre’s literary work. And Bertrand Russell’s public fame in his time is explained by Williamson, similarly, by his general interests in marriage and morals, for example, and nuclear disarmament. So for Williamson there’s a clear implication that philosophical analysis per se – his work – is simply not a matter of public interest. This is not to argue that it fails to properly engage matters of fundamental importance, however. Williamson, along with most contemporary analytic philosophers, distances himself from any idea that their work merely ‘rephrases philosophical questions as questions about words and concepts’; that would miss the underlying interests we all have in the ‘big questions’. But this is not necessarily a turn to the public – it’s more likely, notes Williamson, that philosophers then turn to psychologists, biologists and physicists to situate and ground their work. Jerry Fodor’s philosophy of mind works in that vein, especially by drawing on cognitive science; and Marshall’s interview with him reveals another thematic difference between analytic and Continental philosophy when Fodor’s response to the latter is: ‘as a matter of principle I refuse to read philosophers who write that badly.’ Fodor is perhaps Marshall’s most distinguished interviewee – and here too the daily work of the philosopher is explained as ‘contemplating issues about explanatory adequacy’ (reiterating the seemingly non-public nature of the work of philosophy).
If that’s what philosophers do qua philosophers, what do they know? What Do Philosophers Know? is the title of a 2009 book by the last interviewee, Gary Gutting. In the course of the interview Gutting gives the by now standard response about philosophy as ‘intellectual maintenance’, although linking the work of ‘understanding implications’ and ‘eliminating internal contradictions’ to ‘defending and modifying fundamental beliefs.’ (His book on what philosophers know is, tellingly, restricted to case studies in the analytic tradition). Applying technical methods in philosophy to our beliefs is grist to Marshall’s mill – it marks the point at which philosophers in the analytic tradition can reasonably be public figures, engaging in debates wherever terms like ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, ‘justice’ are used. The interview doesn’t pursue this, though; instead it returns to the analytic-Continental divide, and again familiar stories. So Gutting notes his waning interest in Continental philosophy (with Sartre’s influence noted as an exception) and his barb on Jacques Derrida is typical: ‘I think that his writing often has far less intellectual density than its difficulty suggests.’ Pushed a little by Marshall, Gutting sees the lower public profile of analytic philosophers in historical terms, mentioning, but that’s all, ‘tradition and anti-intellectualism in the US.’ Whether that’s also related to the fundamental differences in philosophical approaches – the analytic tradition’s emphasis on common sense and logic rather than Continental transcendence and creativity that Gutting observes – is not explored further. Gutting is keener to end the interview – and the book as it happens – commenting on the progress that’s being made to get philosophers known more widely through Marshall’s own work and by various online forums like The New York Times’ The Store.
So where have all the philosophers gone? It’s clear that they’ve not retreated from public arenas, but rather that they continue to work the way philosophers do. Marshall’s recurring sense of absence is misplaced then for those working at philosophy’s core and in areas where it works closely with the sciences – an intersection of substantial coexistence with analytic philosophy. But there are now also strong analytic traditions in political philosophy, ethics and aesthetics. Where are these philosophers, who might be expected to be more publicly engaged than say philosophers of mind? The answer might lie in Marshall’s observation about philosophers in general. He notes how impressed he is with their rigour, how they welcome interrogation and discussion, how they lack a sense of self-importance. But these qualities are not necessarily politic. Norman Malcolm was a student of Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge, before becoming a Professor of Philosophy himself at Cornell University. In his 1958 memoir of Wittgenstein he recalls his teacher’s manner as often severe, ruthless and censorious. Perhaps that is the social cost of analytic philosophy; and it also suggests the intellectual maturity required of any political culture embracing philosophical rigour.
A story from Malcolm’s memoir is illustrative. In 1939 Wittgenstein fell out with his friend as well as student Malcolm because the latter had remarked that ‘British national characteristics’ made it impossible for any British government to contemplate assassinating Hitler. Wittgenstein thought the comment ‘shockingly primitive’ and represented Malcolm’s failure to learn anything from philosophy. In 1944, still worried by the incident, he writes to Malcolm: ‘what is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic etc and if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?’ But trying to rekindle the friendship he adds: ‘I’d very much like to see you again; but if we meet it would be wrong to avoid talking about serious non-philosophical issues’. The lesson seems to be that philosophy teaches rigour and demands that universally, but that politics is still ours to decide.
Marshall has been prolific – this batch of 25 interviews is from 2011-12 and the series continues (well over 100 interviews have been published). His guiding idea remains that philosophers – specifically UK and American philosophers in the analytic tradition – are absent from public debates about issues in the contemporary world that should concern them, leaving the field to other intellectuals – historians, economists, political scientists, cultural critics – who aren’t qualified to deal with them with appropriate philosophical rigour. Within that context Marshall’s interviews tend to focus on each philosopher’s method and solutions to particular problems, and their relations to other thinkers, past and present. Each is prefaced with a biographical sketch; they reveal that most philosophical fields are covered from the inner circle of epistemology, metaphysics and logic, out to, especially, philosophy of mind and language and to ethics and political philosophy. Marshall’s first interview, with Timothy Williamson, set the subsequent selection criteria – he thought his Vagueness (1994) intriguingly ‘odd, perverse, unbelievable’ and Marshall’s interest is in philosophers who address ‘the big questions that pop up in the dead of night’.
So why aren’t there more publicly well-known philosophers in the UK and US? Are there methodological reasons perhaps that cut across their varied interests? Williamson holds the prestigious post of Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford; as such one could say he’s the personification of British analytic philosophy. But when asked about the possible neglect of his work in contrast to the supposed high public profiles of Continental philosophers, Williamson is unconcerned. Marshall’s example, Jean-Paul Sartre, is countered as a special case because of Sartre’s literary work. And Bertrand Russell’s public fame in his time is explained by Williamson, similarly, by his general interests in marriage and morals, for example, and nuclear disarmament. So for Williamson there’s a clear implication that philosophical analysis per se – his work – is simply not a matter of public interest. This is not to argue that it fails to properly engage matters of fundamental importance, however. Williamson, along with most contemporary analytic philosophers, distances himself from any idea that their work merely ‘rephrases philosophical questions as questions about words and concepts’; that would miss the underlying interests we all have in the ‘big questions’. But this is not necessarily a turn to the public – it’s more likely, notes Williamson, that philosophers then turn to psychologists, biologists and physicists to situate and ground their work. Jerry Fodor’s philosophy of mind works in that vein, especially by drawing on cognitive science; and Marshall’s interview with him reveals another thematic difference between analytic and Continental philosophy when Fodor’s response to the latter is: ‘as a matter of principle I refuse to read philosophers who write that badly.’ Fodor is perhaps Marshall’s most distinguished interviewee – and here too the daily work of the philosopher is explained as ‘contemplating issues about explanatory adequacy’ (reiterating the seemingly non-public nature of the work of philosophy).
If that’s what philosophers do qua philosophers, what do they know? What Do Philosophers Know? is the title of a 2009 book by the last interviewee, Gary Gutting. In the course of the interview Gutting gives the by now standard response about philosophy as ‘intellectual maintenance’, although linking the work of ‘understanding implications’ and ‘eliminating internal contradictions’ to ‘defending and modifying fundamental beliefs.’ (His book on what philosophers know is, tellingly, restricted to case studies in the analytic tradition). Applying technical methods in philosophy to our beliefs is grist to Marshall’s mill – it marks the point at which philosophers in the analytic tradition can reasonably be public figures, engaging in debates wherever terms like ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, ‘justice’ are used. The interview doesn’t pursue this, though; instead it returns to the analytic-Continental divide, and again familiar stories. So Gutting notes his waning interest in Continental philosophy (with Sartre’s influence noted as an exception) and his barb on Jacques Derrida is typical: ‘I think that his writing often has far less intellectual density than its difficulty suggests.’ Pushed a little by Marshall, Gutting sees the lower public profile of analytic philosophers in historical terms, mentioning, but that’s all, ‘tradition and anti-intellectualism in the US.’ Whether that’s also related to the fundamental differences in philosophical approaches – the analytic tradition’s emphasis on common sense and logic rather than Continental transcendence and creativity that Gutting observes – is not explored further. Gutting is keener to end the interview – and the book as it happens – commenting on the progress that’s being made to get philosophers known more widely through Marshall’s own work and by various online forums like The New York Times’ The Store.
So where have all the philosophers gone? It’s clear that they’ve not retreated from public arenas, but rather that they continue to work the way philosophers do. Marshall’s recurring sense of absence is misplaced then for those working at philosophy’s core and in areas where it works closely with the sciences – an intersection of substantial coexistence with analytic philosophy. But there are now also strong analytic traditions in political philosophy, ethics and aesthetics. Where are these philosophers, who might be expected to be more publicly engaged than say philosophers of mind? The answer might lie in Marshall’s observation about philosophers in general. He notes how impressed he is with their rigour, how they welcome interrogation and discussion, how they lack a sense of self-importance. But these qualities are not necessarily politic. Norman Malcolm was a student of Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge, before becoming a Professor of Philosophy himself at Cornell University. In his 1958 memoir of Wittgenstein he recalls his teacher’s manner as often severe, ruthless and censorious. Perhaps that is the social cost of analytic philosophy; and it also suggests the intellectual maturity required of any political culture embracing philosophical rigour.
A story from Malcolm’s memoir is illustrative. In 1939 Wittgenstein fell out with his friend as well as student Malcolm because the latter had remarked that ‘British national characteristics’ made it impossible for any British government to contemplate assassinating Hitler. Wittgenstein thought the comment ‘shockingly primitive’ and represented Malcolm’s failure to learn anything from philosophy. In 1944, still worried by the incident, he writes to Malcolm: ‘what is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic etc and if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?’ But trying to rekindle the friendship he adds: ‘I’d very much like to see you again; but if we meet it would be wrong to avoid talking about serious non-philosophical issues’. The lesson seems to be that philosophy teaches rigour and demands that universally, but that politics is still ours to decide.