Bernard Williams on Why People Hate and Despise Philosophy

Walter Veit argued it is unethical for tenured philosophers to paywall public philosophy on Substack, since they don't need the money and claim to value sharing ideas. The hosts note he never addresses the parallel case of academics charging for books, and that paywalling combined with donating proceeds to charity does not actually remove the paywall, undermining his stated principle.

Tamler argues that because Substack only promotes newsletters with paid subscribers, a philosopher who wants public visibility faces a practical dilemma, so charging money and donating it to charity is a defensible compromise rather than a full betrayal of public philosophy's ideals. Dave counters that this still does not vindicate an argument that paywalls are intrinsically wrong.

Hu's review opens by describing analytic philosophers as combative, monitoring every word for inconsistency, and proudly narrow and irrelevant despite claiming intellectual depth. Dave largely agrees this captures his experience of philosopher friends being unable to turn off argumentative scrutiny, while Tamler thinks this was truer a decade or more ago and depends heavily on which philosophers one knows.

Williams distinguishes a radical complaint, that philosophy is intrinsically useless word-spinning, historically voiced by religion and now by scientists, from a milder complaint that philosophy could help people live well but has become technical academic exercise instead. Both hosts note that critics making the radical complaint typically must do philosophy badly to make their case.

Williams argues science has an effective division of labor where even unexciting professional results contribute to the field, but this model does not transfer to philosophy, where technical debates like the Frege-Geach objection can generate results endlessly without illuminating anything about ethics or human life. The hosts agree this is one of Williams's most important points, though they debate whether this problem is unique to philosophy or afflicts other academic fields as well.

Williams contends that the plain, stripped-down style borrowed from science has become a deadweight on philosophy, and that moral and political philosophy in particular need a style that rings true and integrates with what the writer actually cares about. Both hosts describe personally losing a distinctive writing voice through graduate training and argue this sterilization of style damages the substance of philosophical ideas.

Tamler recounts Simon Blackburn's suggestion that philosophy wrongly modeled itself on science's demand for progress and results, when it should instead be seen like the arts, where nobody expects plays to progress beyond Shakespeare. Philosophy has not gotten better than Plato and Aristotle the way science has advanced beyond Aristotle, suggesting the progress model is a poor fit for the discipline.

Dave agrees strongly with Hu's caricature that analytic philosophers can never turn off their combative, nitpicking mode in ordinary conversation, citing specific colleagues. Tamler resists this, saying it was truer years ago and depends on which philosophers one hangs around, and separately disputes the charge that philosophers are proudly ignorant of the wider world, since the colleagues he knows are curious.

Tamler suggests professionalization has damaged philosophy but argues this applies equally or more to the sciences and other humanities. Dave is more inclined to think it is a specific and perhaps necessary cost of training people in the rigorous analytic approach itself, rather than a general feature of academia.