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Philosophy Clubs and the Academy

July 21, 2012 by Wes Alwan 4 Comments

Apparently public forums for the discussion of philosophy are on the rise:

The London Philosophy Club, of which I am an organiser, is the biggest in the UK. Our 2,000 members include bankers, lawyers, therapists, advertising people and a few academics looking for a more social form of philosophy. We hold free monthly meetings in pubs, cafés, galleries, parks and restaurants. Sometimes we try to match the topic to the venue: last week a group met to discuss Italian philosophy in a pizza restaurant by the River Thames.

The rise in popularity of such venues over the last few decades is explained by an increase in university graduates, not to mention the availability of online educational material (PEL included we hope). But there's tension with academia:

The movement must also improve its relationship with academia. Academics accuse grassroots philosophy of incoherence, with grassroots philosophers retorting that academic philosophy is irrelevant. This mutual suspicion dates back partly to the shift from informal to formal education – the London Mechanics’ Institute, founded in 1823, eventually became Birkbeck College – and philosophy’s becoming, in the eyes of grassroots philosophers, increasingly specialised, theoretical and introverted (that image of the lonely philosopher again), losing its outward focus on improving people’s lives.

I don't think that the problem here is that philosophy is "theoretical and introverted" -- the inevitable result of deep study. And specialization is not inherently bad: it's a problem only when specialized to such a degree that you know nothing outside your specialty.

The real problem is salience: academics are not always good at figuring out what's important. So for instance, I find something perverse in the impulse to answer the scholarly question of whether Nietzsche was influenced by so-and-so to the exclusion a deeper engagement with his ideas. It's like horse race oriented political analyses that refuse to address the effectiveness of policies and instead focus on how well politicians are doing in persuading the public of their policies. It's a defensive retreat from a more difficult, interesting and important question to a less difficult, more narrow and scholarly question. These sorts of retreats are required because an academic career requires publishing on a certain schedule, and this schedule does not always line up with one's progress to date in, say, mastering the subject of epistemology as opposed to the provenance of a single paragraph in Kant.

I'm not saying that I'm entirely uninterested in such historical accounts, nor that academic philosophy -- and what is else there, really? -- is devoid of interesting work. Whatever interesting philosophical work is being done today, it's very likely being done in the academy. The point is that the academy also encourages a great deal of work that is more necessary for survival than conducive to flourishing.

-- Wes

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Filed Under: Web Detritus Tagged With: philosophy clubs, popular philosophy

Comments

  1. dmf says

    July 21, 2012 at 7:16 am

    I think that through most of human history there was an assumption that knowing about how the world works would tell us how to live, and higher-ed moved from a kind of Christian humanist moral model to a scientific one where pure research was the priority with any applications to follow, but now for many of us this basic assumption is not so one to one. Philosophy clubs are most often versions of self-help groups and not so given to trying to think things thru in any depth/complexity as say the famed metaphysical club that Menand wrote about.
    here is an interesting account, and interview, of how a public intellectual came to productive terms with not being an academic philosopher and the history of thinking about how to live:
    http://tmi.wfmu.org/?s=philosophical+life

    Reply
    • Ryan says

      July 21, 2012 at 11:20 am

      Likewise I would say philosophy clubs historically have began to act more generally as self-help groups, and specially here in the United States, as the encroachment of capitalism in to our lives began to drive us apart in to these so-called “rational self-interested individuals”. Having largely given up on speculative, critical, metaphysical thought is not an achievement of philosophy, it is only the direct result of pervasive capitalist ideology cementing itself into the social consciousness. It is also a Christian movement, because it is the notion that there is some “Great Outside” which we all share in and is simply too infinite for us to even begin to explore, and so instead we should turn inward and think about ourselves as being divided away from it. The history of philosophy has been to tear that relation down, but now it seems that role has been handed over to the scientists.

      Reply
  2. feelingsososo says

    July 24, 2012 at 9:59 pm

    When Wes distinguishes between developing your own epistemology and more scholarly/academic considerations I am reminded of Bryan Magee (now of Youtube fame – you wont regret looking him up if you don’t know who he is) pointing out that most of what is produced in philosophy departments is not really philosophy at all but rather commentary on other people’s philosophy. If literary criticism/commentary/analysis is not itself considered literature why is it that commentary on philosophy is considered philosophy?

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. The Future of Education | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    July 29, 2012 at 9:28 am

    […] counter-revolution to this ‘revolution’ are public discussion groups: see this post by our own Wes on the subject.  He points out the tension between grassroots collective learning […]

    Reply

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