Reading philosophy

I like to participate in orientation sessions with newly arriving college students, and when they ask for advice, I typically highlight the following four thoughts. First, be careful lest you oversubscribe. Campus will present you with more exciting opportunities than you have time for, and you'll be better off doing one or two extracurricular things well than trying to do everything. Second, you should take care of yourself. Get enough sleep, eat healthily, and schedule time to exercise and to de-stress with friends. A lot of college students hit a wall a couple of months into the semester, and that makes it difficult to do well. Third, you should go to office hours. Getting to know your professors will make it easier to get help from them when you need it. (It might also expand your education.) You should especially go to office hours if you're confused about something in class or struggling to keep up. Don't fall further behind. It's our job to help you. Last, keep a small umbrella or poncho in your backpack. The weather turns fast in the middle of the continent. 

(coming soon)

For many years, the number of available tenure-track jobs in philosophy has fallen far short of the number of new PhDs. Indeed, even when non-tenure-track appointments are added in, the number still falls far short. As a result, there is an enormous backlog of PhDs competing for those tenure-track appointments, and newly minted PhDs are up against those who have been teaching and publishing for years. The odds of landing a tenure-track job are no longer in your favor, not even if you are able and willing to move several times over the course of years in short-term appointments.

This makes it difficult to recommend graduate school in philosophy. There are serious opportunity costs to spending six years pursuing a PhD and then multiple years in short-term appointments. If your heart was ever set on academic employment, changing careers after six to ten years of investment is likely to be very difficult.

Moreover, graduate school is stressful. The dominant mode of philosophical education involves taking criticism and responding to it. Even the kindest advisors will say things that are hard to take. Referee number two will not be kind at all. The market does not care, and is manifestly irrational. Rates of depression are higher among graduate students than among the general population.    

All of that is not just one cranky guy's opinions. The internet is filled with data and anecdotes to support these three points: the academic job market is abysmal, there are serious opportunity costs to pursuing an academic career, and this pursuit will involve a lot of stress. 

Still, graduate school can be great. A graduate education can hone some valuable skills. And there are many ways to live well with a PhD, just as there are many ways to live well without one. It might, in the long run, be the right choice for you. 

Just realize what you are choosing. Trying for an academic career is not like going to dental school. It's like trying for an Olympic medal or a flourishing full-time acting or music career. Just about every graduate of dental school makes a good living as a dentist. Very, very few of those who want to be full-time, professional actors and musicians succeed, and even fewer athletes win medals.

Also, if you do make that choice, you'll need to remind yourself daily that your aspirations for an academic job are mortal, you'll need to cultivate alternative career paths, and you'll need to be sure that you don't take on any debt. 

Beginning graduate students should think about two things, early and often. First, what is it to be a good philosopher, and what can I do to become a good philosopher? Second, what gets one recognized by the (publishing and job) market as a good philosopher, and what can I do to become recognized as a good philosopher? The answers will overlap a bit, but, sadly, not entirely. 

Notice that your goals should not be to satisfy your program's requirements. Those are the standards to keep one in the program and to get one, ultimately, to a PhD. But clearing those standards won't make you a good philosopher, and they won't get your recognized as a good philosopher. You've got to go well past the requirements.

At some point, I'll wade in with some thoughts about how to answer the two questions you should be asking yourself. 

The study of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy is multidisciplinary. To do it well, you must have the mastery of Greek and Latin languages and the multidisciplinary acquaintance with the ancient Greek and Roman worlds that are expected of Classics PhDs, and you must have the skills and knowledge base that are expected of Philosophy PhDs. In addition to all that, as a specialist in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, you should want to have at least some familiarity with the full range of philosophical questions that the ancients pursued and with the full range of philosophers who did the pursuing, over the course of about a thousand years.

That's a daunting set of desiderata. But let's be clear, the person who fully satisfies them is rarer than the phoenix. Much of what you need to learn in graduate school is what there is to learn and how, generally, you might go about learning it. You are allowed to leave all sorts of gaps in what you have learned. You are supposed to have more to learn after you graduate. 

Still, there is a lot to do, and students who enter graduate school without any background in either Classics or Philosophy will be unable to get to where they need to be by the end of six years of study. But I don't think that you need to have studied both Classics and Philosophy extensively before starting, nor that you have to have learned Greek or Latin before starting. Most of my graduate student advisees in ancient philosophy entered without any Greek or Latin. (This includes Clerk Shaw, Emily Austin, and Nich Baima. Matt Cashen, Jill Delston, and Anna Christensen had, as I recall, studied a bit previously.) I advise them to take at least three years of Greek courses and at least two years of Latin courses, and I encourage them to join the Greek reading group that I convene as soon as they are able. That gives them a lot to do on top of their philosophy coursework, but it is in fact doable. 

More generally, I advise graduate students in multidisciplinary specializations to spend as much time in the discipline other than their home field as they can as a graduate student, because once you have graduated, all the incentives and teaching opportunities will encourage you to develop in your home discipline and discourage you from developing in the other discipline. 

In the case of ancient philosophy, more particularly, I would encourage most to think twice about pursuing this in a Classics department these days, as the dismal academic job market in philosophy is even worse in Classics. There is some chance of an academic job teaching ancient philosophy in a philosophy department. There is virtually no chance of one in a Classics department. I wish this were not so. But I think it is. 

I would also encourage students to prefer schools with deep ties among Classicists and philosophers working in ancient philosophy. A formal program can be ideal, but I wouldn't say it is strictly required. An atmosphere of ongoing collaboration is required. Is there a regular reading group focused on translating and discussing ancient texts, attended by all the relevant faculty and graduate students? (The reading group at Wash U, called SLAGRAP (see the RAQs!), has been meeting since 1997.) Are there regular visitors to campus presenting work in ancient philosophy and interacting with the graduate students?   

(coming soon)

There are broad and narrow construals of philosophy. 

On the broadest construal, philosophy is the desire to understand how things are in the world and how we should live. It is at least as old as Homo sapiens, for human beings have two powerful reasons to seek a better grasp of how things are in the world and of how to live. First, human beings have needs and wants, and it does not take us long to discover than when we have a better grasp of how things are and of how to live, we satisfy our needs and wants better. Second, human beings are curious: we find satisfaction in achieving a grasp of how things are and of how to live.

On this broad view, we all have "a philosophy," a take on how things are and how to live. Even if we don't spend much effort articulating our philosophy, our choices reveal it. Moreover, on this broad view, we all "philosophize," we all give some thought to find a better a take about how things are and how to live.   

Of course, we do not invent our own philosophies all by ourselves. Most of what we think about how things are and how to live we inherit from the culture around us. Many of us inherit our philosophies from multiple cultural traditions that intersect in our lives. 

Accordingly, one way in which some people construct a narrower conception of philosophy is by picking winners and losers among these competing traditions. One might think that one tradition's take on how things are and how to live constitutes wisdom, whereas others miss the mark, and one might accordingly think that real philosophy is the love of this one tradition's take on things, while people in other traditions are not philosophical. 

This is a substantively narrow conception of philosophy, based on what claims about how the world works and about how to live are seen as wise. 

But there is another, more procedural way in which one might distinguish a narrower conception of philosophy from the broadest one. Many of the questions we ask when we are seeking a better grasp of how things are and of how to live are difficult to answer, and we often encounter multiple, conflicting answers. Difficulty and disagreement might occasion the substantively narrow response that clings to one tradition's answers and dismisses others'. But it might instead occasion a new set of questions and a new philosophical desire. Now, in addition to wanting to understand how things are and how to live, we want to understand how, if at all, we might achieve such understanding. 

In the terms invented in Plato's Academy in the fourth century BCE, philosophy about how thing are concerns nature (phusikē), philosophy about how to live concerns character (ethikē), and philosophy about what understanding is and how (if at all) to achieve it concerns speech and reason (logikē). But of course some self-consciously "logical" inquiry was around long before the fourth century BCE, and with it came the power to distinguish ways of seeking understanding and to decide that some ways are good enough to count as seeking understanding—as philosophizing or "doing philosophy"—whereas others are not. 

The thought here is that some ways of trying to understand how things are and how to live pay too little attention to the difficulties of achieving such understanding and of determining how to try to overcome those difficulties. Perhaps some traditions in some times and places would strike us as unphilosophical in these ways, and perhaps some individuals, no matter their cultural tradition(s), would, too. But how many takes on how the world is and on how to live would count as unphilosophical by this test? 

I take it that disputes about whether this or that counts as philosophy are often fought over whether this or that uses philosophical procedures, or indeed over what the philosophical procedures are. I am thinking about boundary disputes between science and philosophy or between religion and philosophy, but I am also thinking about the assumptions in play when someone asks, "But how is this (lecture, essay, book) philosophy?" 

My advice is to proceed cautiously and humbly on these matters. I do think that there are good reasons to think hard about better and worse ways of seeking understanding, and there are good reasons to exclude some ways of inquiry as non-philosophical. But whatever is the best distinction is between philosophical inquiry and non-philosophical inquiry, then some scientific inquiry will also be philosophical and some will not, and some religious inquiry will also be philosophical and some will not. Moreover, whatever is the best distinction, the inquiry on the non-philosophical side might nonetheless hit upon some wisdom about how the world works or how to live. So we should be slow to rule things out as non-philosophical, and even slower to rule things out as not worth considering. 

This point needs emphasizing, because we have powerful pragmatic reasons to narrow the methods and sources for our inquiry. Life is short, no one can become expert at everything, we are already a leg up on this kind of inquiry but not that one, etc. We should be careful lest our seek to rationalize our pragmatic decisions with theoretical justifications, and especially careful lest we think that the narrowing we choose should be imposed on others.

All of these concerns are relevant not just to questions that are explicitly about whether this or that is philosophy but also to questions about that concern whether this or that is good philosophy. And these questions are unavoidable. We cannot self-consciously philosophize without trying to do it well, and I doubt that we can think about what counts as philosophizing well without judging that some philosophy is bad. Our judgments are inevitably focused on what kinds of methods are used or what answers are arrived at or some combination, but they are colored by what traditions we work in and what traditions we are comfortable with. Nobody thinks from nowhere, and it takes a lot of hard work to be able to think well from more than one standpoint. So we should be careful about airing these judgments and especially if we are speaking from a position of authority (as a teacher, or a reviewer or referee). 

A lot of philosophical training is acculturation into a particular (sometimes very narrow) tradition of philosophizing, and often it proceeds by crudely dismissing philosophizing in other ways. (I think here of so much talk of "analytic" vs. "continental" philosophy.) Some contrastive acculturation is unavoidable: you cannot encourage thoughts in this or that vein without at least implicitly casting doubt on other, competing thoughts. Moreover, quicker and more total acculturation to one way of philosophizing makes it easier to generate and defend answers to life question's. But if philosophy is marked as distinct from non-philosophy by its grappling with the methodological questions about what understanding is and how one might achieve it, then there is something deeply unphilosophical about quickly and totally adopting one tradition's approach to these questions. 

So my advice to people looking to "do (more) philosophy"  is not to lose sight of broader conceptions of philosophy and of philosophical traditions outside one's own. By all means, increase your familiarity with this or that narrowly construed philosophy, but do not limit your explorations to just one or two narrow construals.  

Another thing: don't rush. The goal of philosophy is to understand how the world is and how we should live, but philosophy does not have to achieve its goal to be valuable. The activity itself has value, and brings its own lessons. In fact, rushing to some attractive answers and clinging to them undermines this valuable activity. So do not worry too much about achieving the goal. Just take up the activity and try to make some progress. 

I advise you to mark up what you read to help you find all the transitions and main claims. For marking the text up, I like to use a straight-edge to underline main claims, and to circle words that signal big transitions and use squiggly lines underneath words that signify transitions between subpoints. But you don't have to be so fastidious. For the love of the holy, though, do not mark up the library's copy. 

I also advise you to try to write up an outline of what you read. If you cannot state the author's thesis, and outline their arguments for their thesis, and summarize the objections they consider and how they try to meet them, you haven't understood what you've read. So try again. Also, if their thesis seems obviously wrong, or their argument seems obviously invalid, you probably haven't understood what you've read. So try again.

This is difficult, and most people lack the patience to become good at it. (Many professional philosophers are not especially good at it, and regularly misconstrue what others have said.) So don't be dismayed if the point of what you are reading remains obscure. Much philosophical writing really is obscure. Doing philosophy is hard, and making interesting points that haven't been made before is even harder, and putting this all in a way that any reader can comprehend it is nearly impossible. That's why so much philosophy is difficult to read, and why it sometimes takes multiple readings before the big picture starts to come into focus, let alone all the details. And if you're reading some philosophy written in a very different cultural milieu, then a whole other set of problems enters, as your author might making some very different background assumptions from those that you make. That's why it is not a bad idea to avail yourself of published interpretations and commentaries to help yourself along. But you should use these warily, and with the aim of being able to comprehend the reading without them.   

In any case, I advise you to type up your outlines on your computer. Then you'll have them when you revisit a work, and you can easily revise the outline on the next reading. I like to outline the author's points in larger font, and add my own commentary in smaller font. My own commentary is sometimes critical, and sometimes just refers to other relevant discussions. Occasionally, I add in the smaller font someone else's reconstruction of the work's argument. 

You should compare the useful advice Jim Pryor has posted for reading philosophy.

There are two crucial points. First, the primary aim of a philosophical essay should be argumentative, to persuade the reader that some question is worth asking (or is not worth asking), that some answer to a question should (or should not) be preferred, or that some argument for an answer works (or does not work). The point is not to convey information, except insofar as that information is necessary for the reader to grasp the argument. Second, the point of the essay is not to convey its author's thought process, but to help the reader's thought process, to move the reader from thoughts that are easily and widely available to the author's less widely accepted conclusion. 

Consequently, you should think of writing in two distinct stages. First, you write to get clear about exactly what your point is and exactly what argument(s) you want to make for that point. Then, once you've gained clarity about what you are doing, you should start over, with a blank page, and think about how best to communicate to your reader, who is not clear about what you want to say. Think about what you can count on the reader knowing, and think about how to bring the reader from that point to your argument(s) and conclusion. 

The hardest part for many of us is to delete the words we've written, and to be satisfied with the most direct route to our conclusion. We want to show all our work. But we need to resist this urge: our work is not as interesting to others as it is to ourselves. What matters is the argument that will persuade the reader, and not the process that persuaded us. Especially if you are writing for a grader, cut ruthlessly, and argue directly.

Beyond those two main points, everything else is details. But some of those additional details are in the writing guidelines appended to the syllabi I've posted on my teaching page. Additionally, Jim Pryor has posted a very good page of advice for beginning philosophy students writing essays, and David Ebrey has posted a very good page of advice that is pitched at graduate students in philosophy. 

For those who are writing for publication in a scholarly journal, I would add the following: you are responsible for showing that your argument needs to be made and deserves to be published. So you need to convey that you've mastered the nearby literature and that it has not done what you are doing. Much of this can and should be done in footnotes, but it has to be done, and ideally on the first page or two of the essay, partly to establish the reader's trust that you have done your homework. Exactly how much homework you need to have done will depend on the field to which you are contributing and even on the journal to which you are submitting. A lot of philosophical referees do not require much mastery of past literature, which guarantees that almost all published philosophy will be ephemeral and that the vast majority of it will reinvent old wheels. Referees in the history of philosophy tend to be more demanding, and some journals will expect engagement with non-Anglophone scholarship or scholarship that is decades old. But you can get an idea of what is expected by reading recent essays in the journal to which you are submitting, and you can get an idea of what is best by thinking about the essays you have found most helpful in your own research.