November 13, 2003
Prof. Swartz:
I do not think that the cause of the conduct you deplore
is a lack of women in the profession. I, personally, have
been subjected to unforgivably rude treatment by a
woman philosopher. I also concur with the
lawyer who posted to say that lawyers, oddly, are far
less combative than philosophers. That's because they
can be sanctioned by the court for discourteous
behavior.
I suspect that there are two or three underlying
causes. First, philosophy itself is a problem, not
because of the ethos of progress through criticism; as
others observed, natural scientists seem to manage a
bit of civility. Rather, it is the absence of any
empirical upshot. Ordinary people understand well
enough that philosophers track no facts and bake no
bread. So how to establish that one is doing it right?
How does one reassure oneself that one has made a
positive contribution? Only by winning these little
contests. Whether such wins do in fact establish that
the combatant is "smarter" remains to be seen, but
there is a larger question, namely: what is the
function of intelligence in the first place? It is
possible that there is some selective advantage
conferred on those seeking political power in making
rivals appear stupid, but I always thought the purpose
of intelligence was to materially ameliorate the human
condition. Lacking the ability to do that,
professional philosophers fall back on the Galileo
myth, the pathos of being in possession of, or at
least closer to, the truth. This seems ironic to me
given the utterly made-up character of most
philosophical problems in the first place.
The second problem is not restricted to philosophy.
Not only is it a good idea generally to track some
facts and to bake some bread, but in the open market,
it is essential and inescapable, for one must offer
something genuinely useful to others if one wishes to
have a claim on the resources *they* have produced.
But we must recall what the social position of
philosophers is. The job that society has assigned to
them, in exchange for which they earn their keep, is
to educate young women and men for the real world.
This task they farm out to their graduate students in
exchange for assurances of future employment, knowing
that this little white lie will seldom come back to
haunt them. The pay they receive is either directly or
indirectly subsidized by taxation of those who do bake
some bread. The books they write rarely attract a mass
audience, and are thus of limited entertainment value,
and instead are largely purchased by the libraries of
their own and their colleagues' employers, which again
means, ultimately, through tax dollars. And unlike
every other job in the world, from prime minister to
busboy, when they perform badly, even by their own
imaginary standards, they cannot be fired by their
employers except under the most extraordinary
conditions. Feyerabend's confession that he was a
civil servant of the spirit was true in more ways than
one.
Strip away the ideological obfuscations and the
phenomenon is clear: with great privilege and complete
unaccountability comes overweening arrogance. Anyone
who calls them on it is dismissed as stupid – a
Catch-22 for the critic.
Since the prospect of eliminating the root causes is
remote, I suggest three remedies: abolition of tenure,
dramatic budget cuts, and a requirement for all
tenured faculty to perform some form of community
service for the hours not spent teaching. After
putting in a rough 5 hours a week in seminar putting
intellectual rivals in their place, if only in one's
own imagination, another 35 hours working in a
homeless shelter or a hospital could do wonders
John F. Doe
Note: the author's name and address have been withheld at his
request. –Norman Swartz
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