Why do I reflect on the distinction between the product of an activity and its purpose? As ever, it is because I am confused. I want some clarification. I write to discover why I write.
(Why do I share these reflections? To make a dramatic example of myself. It is an attempt to shout above the choir. It is an attempt to show what isn’t said. But if you state it literally the effect is to weaken the point: such as if you are trying to make someone angry but you tell them you are trying to provoke them.)
It seems very clear to me that I can draw a distinction between the product of my writing and the purpose of it. And not only can I draw a distinction, it is such a sharp distinction that one seems to cut against the other: I think the product undermines the purpose and vice versa.
My purpose here is not the product. I don’t do this in order to produce articles in newspapers or little thought-ditties to put on the internet. If I try to pin myself down I say my purpose is considerably more serious (laughably so): I want to save philosophy from itself.
Philosophy is dying, its insides having been eaten away by, on the one side, the dire state of academia in the modern university, and on the other the ignorance and sophistry of popular philosophy. Is there anything left of philosophy, now, beyond the structures that support it? Or is it only a machine without a ghost? A hollow husk; an empty edifice. If you poke it you can pierce its thin skin and find nothing.
But if I think, as I do, that the spirit of good philosophy is good and among the most important of human things, then how can I be content to neglect it or let it be neglected?
Less grandiose: I want to do a service for philosophy. But I’m not sure how best to do that.
To show the public the benefits of philosophy as therapy?
To show academics what they already know but have forgotten, so that they might recover the true and profound value of the discipline?
To show others, who are not philosophers, the value of philosophy?
Or is it only a matter of applying philosophy to different fields to see and show what grows?
Is it to correct the ignorance of popular philosophy? To trawl the internet in search of errors, then, scattering corrective provocations… As a way of spending your time, it doesn’t seem very noble. That seems very much like something a real philosopher wouldn’t trouble themselves with.
These muddled purposes lead to muddled products. I drift between forms of ‘purification’, ‘enchantment’, and a much more mundane form of ‘explanation’, each of which seems to work against the other. I struggle to make sense of it as a whole: I’m not sure what a reader is supposed to do.
I picture the reader of one of my publications (which have at least a veneer of professional respectability) googling me and arriving here, whereupon they find all this nonsense…
In the terms-of-today we’d say my writing shows some brand confusion. And it does, because I am confused. Were someone to ask me what my business is, in writing what I do, I wouldn’t know what to say.
But neither would Socrates, I think. He’d more likely respond with a question about the proper business of a human being, sowing more confusion, before steering the conversation towards whatever would focus our attention on what really matters.
Branding
I am deeply sniffy about the virtues of brand theory. Mainly this is because it’s been such a corrupting force in the world.
I recognise the importance of it in the business world: in the global information age, the quality of your product means almost nothing in comparison to the quality of your branding, so you would be a fool to neglect your branding if your business is to sell things. The problem is that this pseudo-importance has crept into worlds where it didn’t belong, like education and science. The consequence of this is that the quality of the products in those worlds declined as the drive for branding took ascendency. Look at some of the ‘scientific studies’ conducted nowadays and it is clear to see: they are embarrassingly poor quality. But they are ‘on brand’ and they will be featured in newspapers.
This is old news. The general drive for publication and publicity in academia – and what results from it: ‘publish or perish’ and an endless stream of trivial journal articles – isn’t a new gripe. And I shouldn’t let my cynical prejudice cloud my judgement.
(But if I had my way I would immediately expel all ‘strategic visionaries’ and ‘marketing managers’ and their like from academic institutions and use their extensive wages to hire teaching staff…because you shouldn’t have strategic visionaries who are blind to the value of what they strategize about, and you shouldn’t have marketing managers who can’t manage to understand that the ‘marketplace of ideas’ is not a literal thing.)
Enough. Let me put my prejudice aside. Any good student of Socrates must ask questions in order to put themselves to the test. Here I subject myself to the examination of contemporary brand theory. Let me attempt to define my ‘vision’, my ‘mission’, and my ‘values’.
What is my ‘vision’? Why do I do what I do? I want to save philosophy from itself.
What is my ‘mission’? How will I achieve my vision? I will show a dramatic example.
What are my ‘values’? To be what you would claim to be, which is to say that philosophy should not go against itself: what is profound should not be trivial; what is difficult should not be easy; what is priceless should not be sold; etc.
And so my ‘one-liner’ business pitch:
Society has lost sight of what matters. Philosophers ought to correct this, but philosophers have lost sight of what matters. Philosophers need to remember what they already know but have forgotten. I will remind them.
I’m told I need to find a ‘reward’ here, following my ‘problem’ and ‘solution’ set-up. But since I am a philosopher, I understand the distinction between the product of an activity and its purpose. And so here we hit a sticking point because, as my ‘values’ dictate, philosophy should not go against itself.
Of course the ‘reward’ is priceless: if you take the lessons of philosophy, learn them, and apply them in your life, you will be left with a gift that keeps on giving, an investment with endless returns. Philosophical understanding never goes away and cannot be taken away: once you have it, you cannot lose it, so long as you live and can think. Unlike material wealth, whose worth is always subject to good or bad fortune, the wealth of wisdom only ever increases its worth. It doesn’t rot or degrade; it can’t be stolen or defrauded; it isn’t taxed. It is a wealth that can be passed on to future generations, if they choose to receive it. It costs nothing but is worth everything. Why would you refuse such an offer, at any price?
And yet I say: what is priceless should not be sold.
Give it away for free, then. But here we hit a paradox or a form of cognitive bias (I’m sure someone has named it): if you put a high price on something then people will tend to think that it is valuable, but if you give something away for free then people will tend to think that it’s worthless. There’s no getting around this natural human tendency. So I’m not sure I do philosophy a service by giving it away for free. Those who are keen to sell it seem to have far more success in promoting it. In refusing to sell it, I only sell it short.
It is a dilemma: philosophy should not be sold, because to do so goes against itself, but neither should it be given away for free, because to do so undermines its value.
Or rather, it undermines the appearance of value, and this appearance doesn’t necessarily come in terms of money. In academia, for example, were I to publish with a reputable publisher or in a prestigious journal, the appearance of the value of the work would be automatically higher than if I throw it away online.
Another dilemma, peculiar to the academic: philosophy should not be kept behind an elitist wall of academic publishing, because to do so goes against itself (see above), but neither should it be thrown away online, because to do so throws away any claim to respectability.
Give it away for free, then, but advertise its value and your credentials. Make a name for yourself, be a public face, then stick your name and face on everything that you make, and say that philosophy will make you happy, and successful, and rich, and good-looking. Promise people the answers to all their problems: ‘Think Well, Live Well‘. But here we hit another paradox, because anyone who understands philosophy knows it to be composed primarily of questions, and any answers are not things that can be promised.
Philosophy can ask you questions – it can teach you the right kinds of questions to ask and can show you how to go about making an attempt to answer them – but answering these questions is your business because any answers must be your own.
A third dilemma: if you give answers then you do what philosophy is not, but if you ask only questions then you don’t advertise the value of the discipline.
You cannot put a price on it, nor give it away for free; you cannot publish properly, nor improperly; you cannot give answers, nor ask only questions. It is quite a bind.
But these dilemmas are only symptoms. The superficial question of ‘at what price?’ hides a deeper problem, which is that philosophy should not be turned into a ‘product’ that goes against its purpose: the pursuit of wisdom. And there’s the real sticking point, because it seems that as soon as I produce something, such as a bit of writing, I make a product, and this shows the business of a philosopher as if it were to produce such products. I know it’s not, of course, and I will literally say as much, but what I show goes against what I say.
That is why I am confused. That is why I talk about the hypocrisy of a man putting himself on a stage only to say ‘don’t listen to people who put themselves on stages’, and the not-so-shrouded irony of all this: to talk about showing and not saying.
Philosophers must not be seen to be petty peddlers of written lines of reasoning (or worse), or else we will all show philosophy to be just this and nothing more.
That is why I say: ‘We are not lovers of wisdom but adulterers. We say we love wisdom but we are always pursuing something else: a job, a publication, a citation. These are our affairs.’
To do any of this is to misrepresent it, but to do nothing is to leave it without representation. I can’t find a way out of this rabbit-trap. But what else is to be done, other than to show these confusions?
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