180. WHAT PHILOSOPHY COULD BE - Breaking The Norms That Don't Have To Be Norms
Philosophy is difficult. But it is only as difficult as we choose to make it. Rigorous thinking does not have to be alienating. It does not have to speak a secretive and opaque language different from the way non-philosophers speak. That is a choice, not a necessity. Nor too should academic specialisation and disciplinary complexity be mistaken as necessary components of philosophy. Navel-gazing is still just navel-gazing, even when it props up an entire job market. So too is self-interested gatekeeping intended to preserve a questionable system rather than make it accessible to the masses.
I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a fellow teacher of A-level philosophy. We both worried that the current AQA A-level in the subject is demanding too much of students, preparing them well for academic philosophy but forgetting to instil any kind of love of the subject or intellectual wonder in them. Turning philosophy into a form of historical mathematics and regurgitation of a solved puzzle rather than asking students to philosophise. Thinker A presented Argument 1, and this was responded to by Thinker B, whose Argument 2 raised brand new questions, addressed by Thinkers C and D. Remember the order, remember the named arguments and thinkers from the specification in the exams, and repeat. Whatever you do, do not consider the ideas of Thinker XXX who totally rejected the very terms of the debate Thinkers A - D were having. And your own thoughts, while nice, need to be attached to a verified Thinker for them to be properly credited as ‘philosophy’.
Similarly, a colleague in charge of university admissions dutifully shared the latest advice from Cambridge regarding applying for philosophy there. ‘Useful preparation’ for the course includes mathematics, with 63% of typical philosophy entrants having studied maths between 2017 and 2019. Unsurprising for a course which prides itself on occupying ‘a distinguished place in the history of philosophy’ as it was ‘here, in the early twentieth century, that Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, Ramsey and others developed the analytic style of philosophy that is now prominent in much of the world’, Cambridge clearly has yet to reckon with its own history of sexism and exclusion in the subject. This despite the general turn of the world towards greater diversification and decolonisation of historic curricula and despite the recent glut of books and thought on the subject of the quartet of remarkable women who transformed philosophy over at rival university, Oxford, in direct response to some of the worst excesses of the ascendant analytic, male-dominated, tradition. Indeed, Cambridge’s ‘recommended reading’ list for potential candidates is all male, all white, and incredibly traditional. This is not a course looking to grab students’ interests and show them the transformative and multi-faceted power of what philosophy could be, but rather a course designed to induct students into the dogma of Cambridge analytic philosophy and a limited, Western-centric ‘study of the history of philosophy from Plato to the present day’ - contemporary decolonisation and diversification be damned.
Why care about Cambridge - a single university - and its specific entrance requirements for the subject? Because the way that schools work in a world where Oxford and Cambridge are seen to be the pinnacle of academic success (and where Oxford university does not offer Philosophy as a single degree at undergraduate level) is that departments are incentivised to encourage their best students to apply for these ‘esteemed’ institutions. Meaning, for philosophers, Cambridge. And meaning that teaching students an alternative vision of philosophy might actually act as an impediment to their eventual success in such an application. Although the majority of students won’t be applying to study philosophy at Cambridge, we won’t know who will and who won’t until at least the end of the first year in the course, so the course, and the advice, has to remain amenable to them doing so until such final decisions are made. Because schools are all about such foolish prestige. Numbers of applicants and success-stories for Oxbridge. But even without that minority of aspirational students, wanting to ape the supposedly ‘best’ institution, many other excellent philosophy departments mimic the Cambridge expectations too. Or at least some version of them. Philosophy, as an academic conversation, is one which has been chatting about the same stuff now - dictated largely by Cambridge - for a very long time. It is incredibly hard to try and change the conversation and bring in new voices by yourself, and incredibly hard for those new voices to be coming from students the leading institutions involved in such conversations might reject offhand simply for presenting their philosophy in some unpreferred way and on some unpreferred topic.
Therefore it remains vital as a philosophy teacher to be able to juggle both the goal of facilitating students’ best options around philosophy in the real world and also the conflicting goal of facilitating students’ understanding that philosophy is so much more than all that. Playing the game and inducting students into the stodgy, alienating, exclusionary norms of the discipline, both as an A-level and within academia, but also reminding students constantly that this is not the totality of philosophy. That it is just an institutional norm developed through prejudiced and blinkered vision, unchallenged not because it is right, but because it is the loudest and most powerful and enabled view in the modern academic landscape. Maintained because it has set the standards of what is needed to do the job professionally by those who have excelled in the job when it is defined on those terms. Maintained because it keeps out approaches deemed too radical which might rock their comfortable boats.
We do not want to disadvantage our students, but we also need the philosophers of the future to start to tear down these stagnant and stilted exclusionary institutions. Remind the world that philosophy is not limited to the jargonised business of academic journals, or the stale requirements of inherited syllabi. That philosophy is alive ad evolving. Done by normal people, every day, in all kinds of different ways. That rigorous thinking does not mean thinking in only one kind of way. And that we need philosophy now more than ever in a world so full of bad argument, logical fallacy, misinformation, epistemicide, and empty rhetoric.
The gatekeepers might be keeping their ivory towers a domain of exclusivity and pseudo-rigour, and they might be enabled in this by us school teachers of philosophy, but they - and we - are performing a disservice to the whole world when our actions and professional norms limit philosophy into being a tool of only the privileged few. And a de-toothed tool at that.
Author: DaN McKee (he/him)
My book, ANARCHIST ATHEIST PUNK ROCK TEACHER, is out everywhere now on paperback and eBook. You can order it direct from the publisher or from places like Amazon.
My latest academic paper - ‘An error of punishment defences in the context of schooling’ is finally out in the Journal of Philosophy of Education here. (Though OUP wouldn’t let me make it open access without paying an extortionate amount so you will need either institutional access to the journal or to be a member of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain to read it, unfortunately).
My other book - AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY: An Ethical Justification of Anarchism - is available HERE , from the publisher, and from all good booksellers, either in paperback or as an e-Book. Listen to me on The Independent Teacher podcast here. Read my Anarchist Studies journal paper on Anarchism and Character Education here. Listen to me on the Philosophy Gets Schooled podcast here. Listen to me talk anarchism and wrestling here. For everything else DaN McKee related: www.everythingdanmckee.com
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