by Jeroen Bouterse
“…And now to introduce our second panelist: Martha. Martha does believe that academic philosophy is worth pursuing, and she has – of course – written a book about it. Martha, can you briefly summarize your argument?”
M: “Thank you. Yes, well, you can imagine that, though I told my publisher that my book is aimed at a broader audience, I should also like to emphasize that my argument will not easily be shortened to 140 characters. Even though I have no doubt that Rob here would find a way to do so.”
R: “Not in your case, Martha; your books are a three-tweet problem. But in all seriousness: I see what Martha is getting at here. It is the contrast between highbrow academic philosophy and ‘pop philosophy’ – a contrast I believe to be mostly a fiction. The notion that what happens in the universities is real philosophy, and that whatever the public can digest can only be a shadow of that, is misguided. It is an artifact of the fact that a few generations of great philosophers happened to work in a world where the highest intellectual authority was that of the university professor.
That Hegel’s lectures were well-attended does not mean that philosophy is, of its essence, most at home in the university. On the contrary: it is illustrative of the fact that a certain, very abstract type of thinking is suitable to the university. But it is not for school, but for life that we learn; there are other types of philosophy, and I am not ashamed that on my Twitter account I try to connect traditional philosophy to topical and pressing issues. I also write books, by the way..”
M: “That is all well and good, but I’d say that now Rob has replaced one doubtful contrast by another: his approach to philosophy concerns ‘life’, and academic philosophy, by contrast, is scholastic – which apparently means dead or lifeless.”
R: “Those were not my exact words, but I will happily embrace a similar statement in the same spirit: philosophy, in the classical sense of that notion, is not a system of more or less well-founded claims, but a way of life, defined and inspired by a reflective attitude towards life. And yes, that requires it to engage in conversation with life.” Read more »