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Philosophers are notoriously incompetent at telling the world why philosophy matters - PR is not our strong suit. So tonight I hope to give you some sense of my perspective on why philosophy is important and indeed - to use a much maligned word - "relevant" in today's world. The question is not, "what can you do with philosophy?" Rather, the question is "what can you do without it?"
As some of you know, I teach philosophy of art and philosophy of law. I am often asked how I could be interested in two such different specialties. In fact, for most of my adult life, I have been interested in the philosophical and theoretical questions presented by art law. Art law occupies a marginal status within the legal world, not unlike that of philosophy of art within the philosophical world. Like many philosophers, I seem to have a talent for zeroing in on the obscure and marginalized.
I mention that to stress that I have nothing against the obscure and the marginalized. I indulge in it frequently. We all know how important basic research is, even though there might be no obvious application in the so-called "real" world. Bertrand Russell's work in Principia Mathematica made possible today's computers, by developing the groundwork for a digital language. The work by physicists on lasers was once maligned for being useless. It took decades for the endless applications and practical value of laser technology to become clear.
In order to do good "applied" work we must first do good theoretical work. The advances in the applications of philosophy in recent decades - in medical ethics, business ethics, and so on - are possible only by building upon solid theoretical work in philosophy. This dependence of good applied work on theoretical, "pure" research is true in all disciplines - the sciences, the humanities, mathematics.
But I am very concerned about what appears to be an increasing marginalization of philosophy as a discipline within the academy. I was alarmed, as I'm sure many of you were, with the article in the Los Angeles Times last Thursday about the job hunting travails of undergraduate philosophy majors at the University of California, Irvine. After studying a discipline once considered to be the queen of the sciences - or perhaps I should say, the sovereign - these students were greeted with laughter upon telling prospective employers their majors.
We all know that philosophy - as with the other humanities disciplines - is intense training in how to think, how to reason, how to put together good arguments, how to analyze alternatives, how to speak and write and think clearly. Why doesn't the rest of the world understand that?
It's easy to blame that prospective employer - a dolt, a barbarian, a technocrat. But we must ask ourselves how he got that way - and how so many other citizens got that way. My worst fear is that philosophy will go the way of classics, Latin, and Greek. Once at the heart of a liberal arts education, they now rarely even have the status of a department, and are not taught at all at many schools.
We must not be complacent. Philosophy departments are too easily merged with religion, history, or worse - amorphous "humanities" departments. These are tight fiscal times - and we can assume this will be a permanent fact of life as the state shifts its priorities to building more prisons at the expense of education.
The responsibility for avoiding the fate of classics lies with those of us in philosophy. We must ensure that the rest of the academy understands the importance of what we do as much as we do. This is our responsibility. How do we meet that responsibility? Philosophy can enrich all the disciplines at the university, but it is our responsibility to show them this eternal truth.
We are better qualified than anybody else in the university to teach aspiring lawyers, and business people, and doctors, and nurses how to approach ethical problems in their chosen careers. We must not abdicate that challenge to others who toss around words like "values" without having the foggiest idea what they are talking about.
We are better qualified than anybody else in the university to teach aspiring artists and musicians and dancers how to talk about the nature of art and the meaning of the word "good" as it is used to evaluate art. We must not abdicate that challenge to others who toss around words like "philosophy" and "theory" and "values" without having the foggiest idea what they are talking about.
We are better qualified than anybody else in the university to teach aspiring scientists and engineers and mathematicians how to think about the ethical dilemmas they face in their careers and to think about the nature of the reality they are exploring. We must not abdicate that challenge.
It is not enough for us to say that our department is listed in the campus phone books and if somebody has an ethical question, we'll answer the phone. If we are nothing but a bargain-basement "answer line" we have abdicated our responsibilities. It is not enough for us to say that those students can come to us - our courses are listed in the catalog. Not if we want to avoid the near-extinction of classics and Latin and Greek.
If we look at the greatest practitioners in all the various specialties in the academy - art, music, science - we see that they do not sit complacently in their laboratories and their offices and their rehearsal halls and wait for the world to come to them. The great composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein was a tireless salesman for the importance of the arts in the lives of every citizen. He lobbied constantly before Congress and state legislatures; he gave generously of his time to speak on the importance of art education in the schools. Jacques d'Amboise, the legendary dancer for George Balanchine, has extended himself continuously into the public sphere - teaching in the public schools, lobbying the Congress, constantly speaking out, reaching out about the importance of art in the lives of ordinary people. The late and pre-eminently great choreographer Agnes de Mille did likewise - writing, testifying, lecturing about the artform she cherished.
In the sciences, think of the enormous public impact of some of our greatest scientists - the physicist Steven Hawking, the astronomer Carl Sagan. They ventured out of the academy to show all of us how their theoretical work enriches all of us.
It is fashionable, it seems, to scoff at so-called public scholars - the scholars who are interviewed on CNN or who write editorial columns or write books that real people can understand. This is a short-sighted death knell for the disciplines we love and care about.
So this is a plea to all of us in philosophy and in the humanities generally. If we believe in the importance of what we are doing - and I believe we all do - then let us not sit back and complain that people don't appreciate us. Let us take responsibility ourselves. Let us reach out to the university and the community and show them just how much we have to offer them.
Your comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome:
Last Updated: January 13, 1997