As a undergraduate maths student, I feel like I can relate to this so much. I don't think you thought of mathematics while writing this, but personally, I don't consider it and philosphy to be drastically different from one another. At the very least, both are equally esoteric and useless to the average human you encounter on the street, and students of both are frequently asked what they want to do with their degree after school.
I hate nothing more than being asked that. As if I need a lesser reason, like employability, to find inherent beauty in mathematics and to love what I am doing. Most of my colleagues, maybe me too since I really am not smart enough to make research my career, will probably end up in jobs like investment banking, consulting etc. It genuinely upsets me that those career paths resemble success to the majority of people. If I end up at a place like that, it will be because I have failed.
Suggesting that one needs a reason beyond just passion for why one studies anything feels so insulting.
As someone who taught anatomy and figure drawing for close to 40 years I can sadly relate to this rant. At my very last class before retiring, I told the students to remember this moment because t would pass away, especially at public colleges and universities. On the left it was being attacked as exploitative and unnecessary, on the right as prurient and immoral. And god forbid the administration would defend it based on historical necessity and the touchstone of all proportionality and grace.
Anti-intellectualism is not solely the province of the right and the boorishness of monied elite. The left which puts everything from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" to Velasquez' "Rokeby Venus" to a test of political purity is equally shameless in their attacks on the world of beauty and ideas.
In the end true learning will reside only in those elite academies where money will tolerate it with amusement or the rich will find it a pleasant diversion from their chores.
In the end, true learning resides only in the individual, liberated soul. Our modern-day academies (pale shadows of Plato's) have very little to do with it. As Thoreau observed, "There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers." Scholē is wasted on the scholars!
Thank you. This was exactly what I needed as I watched the snow fall and enjoyed my morning coffee. I teach high school philosophy and I've faced the puzzled looks and questioning remarks of students, parents and administrators more than once.
I don't know if this comparison makes sense but if you recall (and by that I mean you are old like me) the TV show The Greatest American Hero? The conceit was that the hero found a suit that gave him superpowers but the suit did not come with directions. All power, no instructions. I was a kid and I loved that show - the theme song was great too - but now I see that story parallels with philosophy in education. We have all the other subjects - the powers if you will - but our educational system lacks the instructions to demonstrate how all those subjects connect and work in tandem to create art, culture and inspiration. Philosophy is that instruction manual. It's the connective tissue that allows students to see that their subjects of study are not isolated topics but an interwoven system of human knowledge that, taken together, gives us culture and meaning.
The other thing (my dad wrote it once in defending his profession) is that most intelligent people will always, sooner or later, think about existence, God, nature, what's right, etc - i.e., they will philosophise, as he put it, in any situation short of totalitarian terror (and I would add, even then: prisoners held evening lectures in the Gulags, and as C.S. Lewis put it in his famous Oxford Union lecture, 'conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells' - referencing, as you do, Boethius). So we might as well have people who do it well, and for a living.
Philosophy keeps getting asked to justify itself in economic terms because institutions have forgotten what it originally existed to do. It was never about optimizing labor markets, but about building the conceptual structures that modern knowledge rests on. Reducing it to ROI just shows how far the system has drifted from its own foundations.
A rant of excellence. Now do political philosophy--as you know, Aristotle argued that was of prime importance to us.
I used to live near Crystal Palace. The palace is no more; there is a park with fake dinosaurs from the 19th century and a soccer team nearby which is on a downturn, though still in the Premier League.
Very beautiful and not just that, persuasive. I especially liked the paragraphs that expounded upon philosophy as the first academic discipline and the foundation for the scientific method and our liberal values.
I’m not sure if this can be improved upon, but If I had written an essay like this, I would’ve said that philosophy is important because we are all amateur philosophers from the day we are born - all of us.
Philosophy keeps us from moving in circles, discovering the same questions anew, and trying to figure out the answers without the benefit of many thinkers over time who pondered the same.
I would add that philosophy has prtobably never been more important than it is now. As AI becomes more and more capable, we need to be spending more time thinking carefully about human flourishing and what it requires.
One small quibble with the Ferrari example: people do buy Tesla cybertrucks.
Philosophy as the gear that turns the world is a powerful image! So many people see it as some kind of phase of 1800/1900’s humanity, when really all of the scientific methodologies of modern science are based in one philosophical viewpoint which we’re showing to be increasingly limited in describing reality as it actually is. I hope that more people will come to see the great benefits that philosophy has for their personal wellbeing and overall mental health over the next century.
I loved all of this so much. An incredible, tantalizing and powerful expose about the gumption and audacity that philosophy visits upon (and demands of) the world
Lately - the last 5 years approximately - I’ve had the very disconcerting thought that philosophers do not have much left to do to make ourselves intelligible except tighten the ropes that link and secure the ancient world to our modern one. This is such important work - and we fail to do it at great cost
That’s why I so strongly recommend Bernard William’s Shame and Necessity. I found him solidly grounded, esp. compared Russell, and thus to my mind a more effective thinker for these unsettling times
As a undergraduate maths student, I feel like I can relate to this so much. I don't think you thought of mathematics while writing this, but personally, I don't consider it and philosphy to be drastically different from one another. At the very least, both are equally esoteric and useless to the average human you encounter on the street, and students of both are frequently asked what they want to do with their degree after school.
I hate nothing more than being asked that. As if I need a lesser reason, like employability, to find inherent beauty in mathematics and to love what I am doing. Most of my colleagues, maybe me too since I really am not smart enough to make research my career, will probably end up in jobs like investment banking, consulting etc. It genuinely upsets me that those career paths resemble success to the majority of people. If I end up at a place like that, it will be because I have failed.
Suggesting that one needs a reason beyond just passion for why one studies anything feels so insulting.
As someone who taught anatomy and figure drawing for close to 40 years I can sadly relate to this rant. At my very last class before retiring, I told the students to remember this moment because t would pass away, especially at public colleges and universities. On the left it was being attacked as exploitative and unnecessary, on the right as prurient and immoral. And god forbid the administration would defend it based on historical necessity and the touchstone of all proportionality and grace.
Anti-intellectualism is not solely the province of the right and the boorishness of monied elite. The left which puts everything from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" to Velasquez' "Rokeby Venus" to a test of political purity is equally shameless in their attacks on the world of beauty and ideas.
In the end true learning will reside only in those elite academies where money will tolerate it with amusement or the rich will find it a pleasant diversion from their chores.
In the end, true learning resides only in the individual, liberated soul. Our modern-day academies (pale shadows of Plato's) have very little to do with it. As Thoreau observed, "There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers." Scholē is wasted on the scholars!
Thank you. This was exactly what I needed as I watched the snow fall and enjoyed my morning coffee. I teach high school philosophy and I've faced the puzzled looks and questioning remarks of students, parents and administrators more than once.
I don't know if this comparison makes sense but if you recall (and by that I mean you are old like me) the TV show The Greatest American Hero? The conceit was that the hero found a suit that gave him superpowers but the suit did not come with directions. All power, no instructions. I was a kid and I loved that show - the theme song was great too - but now I see that story parallels with philosophy in education. We have all the other subjects - the powers if you will - but our educational system lacks the instructions to demonstrate how all those subjects connect and work in tandem to create art, culture and inspiration. Philosophy is that instruction manual. It's the connective tissue that allows students to see that their subjects of study are not isolated topics but an interwoven system of human knowledge that, taken together, gives us culture and meaning.
"Believe it or not, I'm walking on air...."
I’m intrigued you teach high school philosophy. Where? In the US? Any good books to recommend?
I always wished I had exposure to philosophy at a young age and want my kids to have the same, even if I have to be the one giving them the exposure.
That’s the sexiest PHIL nutshell I’ve read in a long time. Thank you, good sir.
My heart is singing after reading this post.
Thank you for articulating what we know in our bones but lack the skills to express in language. 💚🤗
The other thing (my dad wrote it once in defending his profession) is that most intelligent people will always, sooner or later, think about existence, God, nature, what's right, etc - i.e., they will philosophise, as he put it, in any situation short of totalitarian terror (and I would add, even then: prisoners held evening lectures in the Gulags, and as C.S. Lewis put it in his famous Oxford Union lecture, 'conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells' - referencing, as you do, Boethius). So we might as well have people who do it well, and for a living.
Philosophy keeps getting asked to justify itself in economic terms because institutions have forgotten what it originally existed to do. It was never about optimizing labor markets, but about building the conceptual structures that modern knowledge rests on. Reducing it to ROI just shows how far the system has drifted from its own foundations.
A rant of excellence. Now do political philosophy--as you know, Aristotle argued that was of prime importance to us.
I used to live near Crystal Palace. The palace is no more; there is a park with fake dinosaurs from the 19th century and a soccer team nearby which is on a downturn, though still in the Premier League.
Very beautiful and not just that, persuasive. I especially liked the paragraphs that expounded upon philosophy as the first academic discipline and the foundation for the scientific method and our liberal values.
I’m not sure if this can be improved upon, but If I had written an essay like this, I would’ve said that philosophy is important because we are all amateur philosophers from the day we are born - all of us.
Philosophy keeps us from moving in circles, discovering the same questions anew, and trying to figure out the answers without the benefit of many thinkers over time who pondered the same.
Holy cow is this terrific.
Thanks so much for this!
I would add that philosophy has prtobably never been more important than it is now. As AI becomes more and more capable, we need to be spending more time thinking carefully about human flourishing and what it requires.
One small quibble with the Ferrari example: people do buy Tesla cybertrucks.
Philosophy as the gear that turns the world is a powerful image! So many people see it as some kind of phase of 1800/1900’s humanity, when really all of the scientific methodologies of modern science are based in one philosophical viewpoint which we’re showing to be increasingly limited in describing reality as it actually is. I hope that more people will come to see the great benefits that philosophy has for their personal wellbeing and overall mental health over the next century.
I loved all of this so much. An incredible, tantalizing and powerful expose about the gumption and audacity that philosophy visits upon (and demands of) the world
Lately - the last 5 years approximately - I’ve had the very disconcerting thought that philosophers do not have much left to do to make ourselves intelligible except tighten the ropes that link and secure the ancient world to our modern one. This is such important work - and we fail to do it at great cost
That’s why I so strongly recommend Bernard William’s Shame and Necessity. I found him solidly grounded, esp. compared Russell, and thus to my mind a more effective thinker for these unsettling times
Truly excellent rant! Thank you
Absolutely fantastic
Well said my friend!