186. TO LOVE AND HATE PHILOSOPHY - What is really needed to think deeply?
I started my summer holidays the same way I always do - with a big reading list of all those philosophy books and papers I have been too busy over term-time to get to. And the scene unfolded as it always does: I sit in my chair with some of these titles that have been whirling around in my mind for months, even years sometimes, excited about the ideas and concepts I think I’ll find between their pages, and as I finally get around to reading them…I grow disinterested and bored very quickly. The mind-blowing bit could have been a page, a paragraph, maybe even a sentence. The rest of the work descends into dreary pedantry and painstaking precision of points so fine their relevance seems almost homeopathic.
By week two of the holiday I’ve put most of the philosophy stuff aside. I’m reading novels instead. I’m having a much better time and thinking no less deeply for it.
It is a similar sensation for most students of philosophy too. To be excited about the course they have signed up for, eager to read about all these amazing arguments their teachers or lecturers have trailed enticingly to them in class discussions, only to finally turn to the pages of whatever text they are reading and find the words impenetrable. Or, if not entirely impenetrable, then at least tiresomely angular.
Bizarrely, philosophers speak frequently of clarity. Indeed, much of our work as philosophers is to unpick and unpack confusion and make the truth clear. Yet what has become the professional norm for doing this - going under names like ‘rigour’ or ‘analysis’ - has become, like all professional norms, something opaque and alienating to those who are not part of the professional community of scholars familiar with the esoteric language and practices.
This is, after all, the point of professional practices: if everyone could do it then who needs the professionals? Consider the argument that we only need lawyers because lawyers themselves have made the law incomprehensible to anyone who isn’t a lawyer.
I have loved philosophy since first discovering its existence as a student myself. As a teacher I have been able to instil a similar love of the subject in many students. But I often find myself wondering what exactly philosophy is when I find myself rolling my eyes in tedium at much of the written philosophy which exists…and to then find myself deeply and profoundly moved in philosophical ways by works of fiction, cinema, theatre, art, music…and by every day conversations with people about the world and our ideas…far more than I ever seem to be moved by works of pure philosophy itself. I wonder if our philosophy students are being sold a bill of goods when we tell them how amazing philosophy is because I wonder if professional philosophers have killed what makes it so amazing?
For the last four years I have been on a personal journey of discovery regarding my own philosophy education. Lifting the veil on its gaps and blindspots. The lack of women and people of colour. The biases and missing pieces in the traditional ‘canon’ I was taught merely because it is what my own teachers were taught. A lot has been said about the need to decolonise our philosophy curriculums and part of decolonisation is recognising the mechanisms of colonisation that go far beyond the names on a reading list. The deeper issues of why certain people were excluded and questions of what the creation of those exclusions was for. And the more you look into the sort of ideological gatekeeping which has gone on historically in professional philosophy (and many other academic disciplines) to exclude certain voices from the conversation, several themes emerge. Firstly, a dismissal of the work of these people as ‘not philosophy’ to justify their omission. And the reasons for the judgment being that the proffered philosophy didn’t take the form of the sort of philosophy preferred by the philosophical establishment of the day. A lack of ‘rigour’ or ‘clarity’. A lack of familiarity with ‘essential’ literature on the issue. The work of an amateur instead of a professional. Or a focus on issues not deemed relevant to the established discourse. Work that wasn’t ‘serious’ because it was asking the ‘wrong’ questions about the ‘wrong’ things. Not to mention the fact that the work was being produced (because of other institutional prejudices and barriers) by people without academic degrees in the subject!
Secondly, after dismissal of the source and the form of the philosophy because it did not meet the arbitrary and self-serving definition of what philosophy ought to be (a definition the gatekeepers’ own work, of course, neatly satisfied because they’d come up with the definition themselves) came the further prong of rejection. Now excluded from formal venues for doing ‘philosophy’, historically excluded philosophers then produced their philosophy in other venues instead. The arts, or verbally, through speech and debate. Perhaps even in action, with no formally articulated thesis at all. This further reinforced the gatekeepers’ message that what these people were doing wasn’t ‘real’ philosophy. After all, if it was real philosophy it would be taking place in the university, at academic conferences and in academic journals, not outside of those esteemed places…
The intentionally exclusionary and empty falsity of this idea is now, today, exposed for what it was: a myopic and prejudiced insistence that there was only one way - and only one kind of person capable - of doing philosophy precisely to keep other people - and ways - out. The more we explore the marginalised and excluded voices of women and philosophers of colour the more we not only discover contributions to arguments and ideas which it is criminal to have left out of the conversation until now, but we discover that philosophy does not have to be done in one particular way at all. That the insistence on special esoteric language and formal, alienating vernacular and circular ‘peer review’ process comes more from an insecurity about philosophy’s tenuous place as a ‘science’ than it does from any essential necessity about seeking wisdom. Philosophy, we know now, is so much more than what professional institutions of philosophy tell us it is because the definition of philosophy put forth by these institutions was a definition with a specific agenda.
The problem is that this revelation has yet to trickle down within the education system, at least in the UK. While some undergraduate university courses might be starting to pay lip-service to decolonisation (which, as the recent decolonisation toolkit released by SOAS in London reminds us, requires also decolonising methods of assessment and the norms of what is considered ‘good’ philosophy within the currently colonised subject area if we want a truly decolonised philosophy), the fact remains that traditional curriculums and structures of assessment are often stuck in place simply because changing them is too large a job for overworked academics to do. And these traditional curriculums and structures of assessment, which have served institutions for years, assume a traditional body of knowledge which they are looking to easily assess because it is very difficult to break the cycle of teaching something you haven’t yourself been taught before.
The way education systems develop is essentially a passing on and evolution of information from teacher to student who then becomes teacher. An induction process or apprenticeship where the next generation of teachers build on the foundations they have been given by the education they were offered by their predecessors. This works well where the foundations are solid, and new information and ideas can be comfortably added to the evolving schema. But when the very foundations themselves come into question and a radical overhaul of a whole discipline’s basic understandings are called for, the conventional chain is broken. The current generation of teachers are lost, with a road map no longer fit for purpose, yet with no time to become sufficiently familiar with the new terrain they are now supposed to navigate. After all - a university lecturer, at a minimum, is supposed to have the grounding of subject knowledge which comes from a three year undergraduate course, and a few more years of postgraduate research. But if their new classes start on Monday - even with reading weeks and long summer vacations, do they have a further five plus years of serious study time to re-educate themselves up to speed in something new? And, psychologically, can they admit to themselves that what they have been educated in might be deeply lacking? They do, after all, have a qualification which names them as a supposed ‘expert’.
These practical problems mean that academic philosophy has unearthed historical exclusions and started to acknowledge the sins of its past, but hasn’t really seriously looked itself in the mirror and thought deeply about what norms of the subject are truly necessary and which norms might simply be yet more barriers for unnecessary exclusion. Academic philosophy has theorised about decolonisation, but not really put it into practice and amended what it does.
But at least in higher education the issue is alive enough to be a growing area of discussion - albeit a slow-moving one in practical terms. At the secondary school level, unfortunately, we are beholden to exam boards seeking to prepare students only for entry into these historically limited and questionable university norms. A grade which can translate into an offer and a place on a philosophy course. And unlike universities, where there is at least more individual freedom for teaching staff, and certainly for teaching institutions, about what actually goes on in the classroom, the standardised nature of the national A-level course in philosophy means a rigid uniformity regarding a singular vision of philosophy which must be taught and the topics and thinkers covered. One which asks few questions of philosophy itself and which favours traditional arguments and counter-arguments which fit neatly into essay plans like a jigsaw puzzle. Traditional response B to traditional argument A and traditional counter argument C. Philosophy by numbers. Philosophy as chess moves. Philosophy which frequently becomes mathematics. If P then Q. P, therefore Q. Philosophy as intellectual posturing - knowing the right arguments - rather than philosophy as genuine inquiry and deep and imperfect thinking about the world.
Again - institutional norms make this difficult to change. A student, sadly, isn’t doing an A-level for mere intellectual curiosity. They are doing it to acquire grades so they can move forward into the next phase of their lives - higher education or the job market. And to study philosophy right now means to study the structurally flawed model of philosophy which has been the historical product of trying to professionalise and keep distinct as an academic career the basic human instinct most of us have to theorise and ask questions about the world. We are all born philosophers, whether we study the subject formally or not.
On the one hand we have the popular philosophy for children movement (P4C), showing every day that you can have profound philosophical discussions with primary school students, and on the other we have the idea that philosophy is the privileged domain of a few specialists who can speak only to each other in language so specialised and nuanced that it leaves any layperson cold. The solution to this seeming confusion is, of course, to dismiss the former as ‘proper’ philosophy and privilege the latter as ‘true’ philosophy. But this is a fallacy (no true Scotsman). We have that same discrepancy between the curious GCSE student enjoying philosophical discussions arising out of other areas of their school curriculum and that same student when they decide to study philosophy A-level and realise that ‘proper’ philosophy is something different than what they used to enjoy. Something more rigid and precise than those enjoyable classroom discussions that made them choose the subject in the first place. Something far less open to curiosity, wonder and intellectual speculation and far more about knowing the ‘correct’ way of doing things and ‘right’ things to say. Plato can write his philosophy in dialogue form. Nietzsche can write poetic aphorisms. But the A-level philosophy student must write only a specific kind of essay in a specific kind of way. One which pleases examiners because it reminds them of the sort of philosophy they think philosophy must be.
Meanwhile, across the country, philosophy departments are closing. Numbers are dropping. Interest is in decline…The philosophy A-level student who used to love the idea of philosophy before they formally studied it knows enough by the age of eighteen to pick a different subject at university!
Again - I love philosophy. I have spent decades of my life doing philosophy and love my job teaching philosophy to young people each day. But, in all honesty, the best philosophy I read these days comes from novels, or comes from movies or comes from music. From poetry or theatre. It comes from Geography departments, or Sociology departments, or from Politics departments or English departments. It comes from the Sciences, it comes from watching the news. And - and this is so important - it comes from talking to students. It comes from talking to friends and family. It comes from conversation, not from academic papers and dull books.
For the last two years I have been working on a piece of philosophical research around prisons, ideology, punishment and schooling. This summer, I decided to scrap the project as a work of formal ‘philosophy’ and write a novel instead. I think it is far more likely to have an impact on people’s thinking like that. And I also believe it will still be a work of philosophy.
Ultimately, philosophy is about asking questions about the world as it appears to be. It is about problematising assumptions and norms and seeing what survives our scrutiny. This must include asking questions about philosophy itself, and problematising its own norms and assumptions. And once we do this we realise that academic or professional philosophy is not all that philosophy is (despite the message we are forced to give students studying A-level). That it is merely one particular way of doing it. One influenced and formed by its context more than anything that is intrinsically necessary to philosophical pursuit. It is philosophy as devised specifically by those needing to prove that philosophy deserved its place as a distinct academic discipline. Philosophy with barriers to entry put up to intentionally keep professional membership to its ranks limited. Philosophy seeking to define itself by qualification and disciplinary norms to create hierarchies and careers, not merely philosophy for philosophy’s sake.
Philosophy is all about fine distinctions, and it is a fundamental error to conflate philosophy itself itself with its professional cousin. There is no logical reason the philosophy produced by a primary school student cannot reach conclusions just as profound and perception-changing as the philosophy produced by a professional academic. Nor, to be honest, is there actually a reason philosophy must be ‘logical’ - many philosophers have questioned even that assumption. Philosophy is all of these things and none of them. All of them and more. Philosophy is fluid and non-binary, and we forget this at our peril. It is therefore a crying shame that the true diversity and potential of what philosophy is and could be is something we teachers of philosophy are forced each year to suppress and distort to our students so that they can succeed within the myopic and limited vision of philosophy put forward by our unimaginative and dated exam boards.
To all this year’s new A-level philosophy students and undergraduate philosophers, therefore, I welcome you to this wonderful subject but implore you to remember, always, that there is so much more to philosophy than what will be taught to you on your courses. Explore! Read widely and variedly! Talk to people! Ask questions! Think! And see the limitations and frameworks of whatever hoops you are being asked to jump to ‘prove’ your philosophical acumen in end of year assessments next summer for what they are: nothing to do with philosophy and everything to do with institutions and their need to categorise, rank and sort. You are already philosophers, whether you get the qualification or not. We all are.
Author: DaN McKee (he/him)
My book, ANARCHIST ATHEIST PUNK ROCK TEACHER, is out everywhere now on paperback and eBook. You can order it direct from the publisher or from places like Amazon.
My academic paper - ‘An error of punishment defences in the context of schooling’ is out in the Journal of Philosophy of Education here.
My other book - AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY: An Ethical Justification of Anarchism - is available HERE , from the publisher, and from all good booksellers, either in paperback or as an e-Book.
I also have a chapter in THIS BOOK on punk and anarchism.
Listen to me on The Independent Teacher podcast here. Read my Anarchist Studies journal paper on Anarchism and Character Education here. Listen to me on the Philosophy Gets Schooled podcast here. Listen to me talk anarchism and wrestling here or anarchism and education here. For everything else DaN McKee related: www.everythingdanmckee.com
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