We should not lament the demise of philosophy departments

It is surely not Gradgrindian to ask whether a subject can do without a corpus of factual knowledge and still expect students to study it, says Colin Swatridge

June 14, 2024
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Several UK university departments, chiefly in the humanities, have recently either been closed or downsized. Philosophy, a historical staple of humanities faculties, is one of these – and there are reasons to support the claim that the subject has indeed run its course.

Martin Rees, the UK’s Astronomer Royal, had assigned the mystery of why anything exists to the “province of philosophers and theologians”. But Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, wondered “in what possible sense theologians can be said to have a province”. Indeed, he failed to see any good reason “to suppose that theology (as opposed to biblical history, literature, etc) is a subject at all”. I submit that much the same can be said of philosophy.

Once upon many centuries ago, philosophy and theology were scarcely distinguishable from each other. Their prolonged divorce proceedings were made more urgent when “natural philosophy” gave way to “science”; only then did philosophy begin to resemble its modern incarnation. Immanuel Kant was appointed to the chair of logic and metaphysics at Kӧnigsberg, in 1770, but he taught mathematics, physics and other subjects besides. T. H. Green, at Oxford, in 1878, was the first English professor of philosophy who was not obliged to sign up to the 39 articles of the Church of England. Philosophy as an academic “subject” is younger than, perhaps, most people think.

Even then, the divorce was not complete. Philosophers still suppose their claims to be applicable universally, as theologians do; for example, there is no more damnable “ism” to the moral philosopher than postmodern relativism. Both disciplines still tend to divide reality, or our perception of it, into just two discrete categories: so, where the theologian speaks of the sacred and profane, faith and reason, or soul and body, philosophers speak of free will and determinism, rationalism and empiricism and necessity and contingency.

Philosophers are also as exercised as theologians by the nature of Truth (with a capital T): both have thought of it as “out there” (or “up there”, as theologians once did). Perhaps this shared interest in Truth is a consequence of the disabling want of facts in both disciplines. Philosophers have little to do but to cast about for puzzles to ponder from their fabled armchair. Look up the subject in course prospectuses and book introductions and you will see the question “What is philosophy?” frequently asked. Is there any other academic subject that needs to ask itself what it is and what it does?

Philosophers continue to be preoccupied with what there is (metaphysics), and with what and how we know (epistemology). But science ought long since to have disposed of both pursuits. Jacob Bronowski, in his 1973 television series and book, The Ascent of Man, tells us that, in the early 1800s, the German mathematician and physicist Carl Gauss was “bitter about philosophers who claimed that they had a road to knowledge more perfect than observation”. More recently, Stephen Hawking scoffed that it was now science that bore “the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge”, not philosophy.

I once thought that ethics might justly survive as a focus of philosophising, just as I once thought that Sermon-on-the-Mount morals might be the most valuable heirlooms of religious belief. What, though, have all the books and taught courses on ethics added to the Golden Rule, in any of its versions: treat others as you would have them treat you?

It is surely not to ape Gradgrind, nor to dismiss the virtue of learning rigorous habits of thinking, to ask whether a subject can do without a corpus of factual knowledge altogether and still expect students to study it, at considerable expense to themselves and their universities.

It is a mark of philosophers’ own dissatisfaction with their subjects’ traditional content, that they have written books and introduced courses on ecological, medical, sporting and other themes that could well have been written by ecologists, physicians and sports writers. What, then, is the difference between one who philosophises and one who thinks? Do we not all philosophise? What transferable skills, what specialist tools, do those who call themselves philosophers have that might lead to breakthroughs of the sort that, in other subjects, win a Nobel Prize, Fields Medal, or indeed, Breakthrough Prizes? Linguistic analysis will not cut the mustard; logic will not butter parsnips; and philosophers have no monopoly on reasoning.

I am far from advocating that we replace philosophy departments with departments of thinking, or, indeed, critical thinking; one might hope, after all, that no subject ignores the need to think critically. Just as religious studies can claim to be a valid heir of theology, so philosophy might live on in a history of ideas (or, indeed, humanities) department. But such a history would include thinkers such as Darwin, Freud and Orwell, whom nobody calls philosophers, while many a so-called philosopher might not survive the cull.

Knowledge is not everything, but few will agree that philosophy has yielded knowledge, or skills of a sort that can compare with the fruits of most other university and college subjects.

Colin Swatridge has been a visiting lecturer at several central European universities. He is author of The Oxford Guide to Effective Argument and Critical Thinking (OUP, 2014) and Foolosophy? Think Again, Sophie: Ten reasons for not taking Philosophy too seriously (ibidem Press, 2023).

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Reader's comments (12)

Yes, we should. An institution is not a university without a Philosophy unit, in whatever form (although the institution at which I worked did abolish its Philosophy Department in the 80s - 'shame on it').
In my experience, facts in philosophical arguments are mostly drawn from common sense and common observation. In that, it shares at least some ground with the natural sciences. I graduated in philosophy in the early 1980s and I agree that many philosophical arguments are interesting but useless. The main exception is the study of the first cause (i.e. God, in theological terms). A rational belief in God orients your life and opens religious literature to study. I was also taught that linguistic analysis/analytic philosophy came to an end with Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity (1973). How or whether the subject has reoriented or reinvented itself in academia since then, I can't speak for. What I've heard isn't all good and I agree that getting into (very much) debt for a liberal education can be storing up problems for later in life.
For an article claiming that philosophy is useless, there are surely a lot of (philosophically poor) claims and arguments being made here.
Thank you for throwing stones around and hope you have hit the target. The current university environment is more of a business establishment than a place where knowledge can be said to have been acquired. Philosophy is not to be taught. People should be introduced to Philosophy. Platos cave is a good example of this. The faculty of humanities has been invaded by humans of course. First principles have been replaced by modules. It has been accused of toxicity. If you abandon first principles for modules then sponsored consultancy takes over. The NHI led by Anthony Fauci and the recent "ESG" are prime examples of modularity. They all fall apart when First principles are applied.
In the modern world, when all factual knowledge is at the fingertips of everyone 24/7, only subjects that concentrate on the processes of thought, rather than its products is of any use at all. And i say this as a practicing research scientist. "But science ought long since to have disposed of both pursuits." What is science and what makes something valid science, and how does science know what it knows (ie the philosophy of science) is something we spend considerable time on in the (science) degree I teach on. It is true that analytical and critical thinking should be taught in many subjects, but that does not make the teaching of them in philosophy invalid.
If you think it's only worth learning facts, isn't it worth spending a bit of time working out first what a fact even is?Which subject can help with that I wonder?
"It is surely not to ape Gradgrind, nor to dismiss the virtue of learning rigorous habits of thinking, to ask whether a subject can do without a corpus of factual knowledge altogether and still expect students to study it, at considerable expense to themselves and their universities." Mathematics has the same problem. Recall the quote attributed to mathematician Leopold Kronecker, "God made the integers; all else is the work of man." Still, non-trivial theorems exist, and we find plenty to occupy our minds with, when we study the results and techniques. I hope that the author will not also call for the abolition of mathematics.
This writer and his ilk will indeed soon do just that, I'm sure (writing as a mathematician here). They are the types who want to turn University departments into diploma mills and think-tanks for hire.
What a frightening proposition. Considering how far our recent batch of politicians have become slavishly attached to the image - in more or less exponential proportions - at the the expense of actually governing. On combination of how easy it is to buy influence and supposedly scientific conclusions to fit large corporations requirements and designs for the human race. I simply can't think of how removing any futher bastions and hubs of critical thought could possibly make this situation in anyway better. Click on the first link on any Wikipedia article and you will very quickly end up terminating at philosophy. Not a scientific conclusion, though perhaps an emergent fact, arising from a disparate and somewhat open source corpus of knowledge built on multiple uncoordinated human wills. The arguments given in the piece above are either misguided and seriously given in a perversely academic context and corresponding symbolic territory, or worse, backed whether directly or not, by an unhealthy financial will (or need) - in stark and total contrast to the beauty of the human spirit.
This author’s thinking is a good reminder of what we are losing as the value declines of training people to exercise discipline in their contemplation of a topic, examine the soundness of their arguments, and even more importantly, become aware of what work is done by their unexamined premises. It would be illuminating to press the author on what makes something a fact or perhaps what is justice or the difference between knowledge and belief and opinion. For most studying philosophy, the value is not so much in what they think but how they learn to think. For most, the value of a mathematics degree is not in what maths they do, much of which they will never use, but in learning how to think mathematically. The value of studying empirical subjects like history or archaeology or chemistry is in learning how to hypothesise, gather and evaluate evidence, and appreciate the imperfections and uncertainties inherent in the process. After a few decades as an experimental scientist (who also studied philosophy), I wish young people would acquire more philosophical habits, not less. Beyond this author’s unexamined assumptions about where the value is in higher education, we are already face-to-face with one or two practical questions about ourselves and our education: what do the bulk of humans offer that cannot be mechanised soon, what will humans be for, what will they need, and who will care? What a time to bin off philosophy! While we are at it, why bother with history or art or poetry or even music? Why ponder what it is to be human or study human expression or revel in it? Let’s load up our STEM courses with young people. Industry will only want the services of the best of them, in rapidly decreasing numbers, and from lower cost countries wherever possible.
Yet an other example of the THE talking down a branch of the sector of which it is meant to be the 'trade paper'. Next week: do we need the THE?
The author knows nothing about the formation and history of disciplines. There were no disciplines in the modern sense before the late 19th C. Philosophy was NOT late. Philosophy distinguished itself from theology from at least the century. "Facts"! I don't believe this in 2024!

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