Reflections on the Fate of Philosophy in the University

I wonder if it’s easier to see what might be on the other side of the wall once you’re on the other side of the wall?

When I left the university I asked: ‘how can philosophy survive without the university?’ Now I wonder if philosophy can only survive without the university.

The university, as it’s become in the past few decades, has made philosophy unrecognisable to itself. It is a version of philosophy in which Callicles is the ideal, not Socrates. That a philosopher would now encourage someone not to pursue philosophy for monetary reasons…

If the university is a sinking ship, captained by managers who understand no value that doesn’t have a number, do philosophers have no more good sense than rats?

I wonder if, at this moment in time, philosophy finds itself – or perhaps rediscovers itself – when it sees what it’s become and turns away from it. But that is a hopeful thing, because it means that philosophy can be more than it is at the moment. Whichever direction it goes from here will at least be away from something that was dragging it down.

Nick Trakakis applied a good line to this, citing John Smyth who quotes R. Buckminster Fuller: ‘You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.’

Philosophers are clever people; they’ll work it out. My fear is that the fall of academic philosophy is not as great a threat to the discipline as the rise of whatever might take its place. As academic philosophy loses ground, philosophy might come to be dominated by charismatic pseudo-philosophers: self-help gurus and the passionately ignorant. People talk about the decline of trust in ‘experts’, but there is another side to that coin: the rise of trust in charlatans and idiots. This happens because people know no better, because the blind can lead the blind if only they brag about seeing. If it isn’t a philosopher’s job to provide a better example then we really are lost. Although I suspect any efforts will be like Cnut standing against the tide (which might be exactly the point…).

‘Be of unwavering good faith and love learning. Be steadfast unto death in pursuit of the good Way. Do not enter a state which is in peril, nor reside in one which people have rebelled. When the Way prevails in the world, show yourself. When it does not, then hide. When the Way prevails in your own state, to be poor and obscure is a disgrace. But when the Way does not prevail in your own state, to be rich and honoured is a disgrace.’

Confucius, Analects 8:13, translated by A. Charles Muller

Related posts: The Death of the University, My Last Lecture, The Call of Callicles