From the issue dated July 25, 2003
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2 Philosophies, Separated by a Common LanguageBy JULIAN BAGGINITake a snapshot of philosophy in Britain today, and you'll get a picture that is recognizable not only to North American philosophers but also to academics in other disciplines in the humanities. Many agree that the field is becoming more diverse, more interdisciplinary, and more relevant to the concerns of wider society. Look closer, however, and the British philosophical landscape is significantly different from that in North America. Examining these differences is instructive, not only for philosophers but for anyone working in the humanities, and perhaps for some of their scientific colleagues as well. I've recently taken such a picture, interviewing, with a colleague, 16 of the best British-based philosophers in the generation that will soon lead their discipline. Along with editing The Philosophers' Magazine for the past five years, the experience has given me an interesting perspective on academic life, one that has enabled me to pan out and see the bigger picture perhaps more clearly than those who are caught up in the specialized slots that academe thrusts them into. The overall pattern that has emerged is of Britain following America's lead, but Anglicizing the influences, with subtly different results. Take interdisciplinary work, a growth area in recent decades. In Britain today, departments are at least expected to pay lip service to its value, but it has not gone as far as it has in North America. For instance, the study of consciousness is widely seen as interdisciplinary in the United States, where a center and biannual conference at the University of Arizona provide a focal point for much of the work being done. In Britain, there is more skepticism about the value of interdisciplinary work, notes Tim Crane, the country's leading philosopher of mind. "A lot of what counts as interdisciplinary work in philosophy of mind," he says, "is actually philosophical speculation backed up with certain, probably out-of-date, Scientific American-style summaries of research in psychology or neuroscience, which tend to support the philosophical preconceptions of the authors." More fundamentally, the difference shows an important disagreement between the most common British and American views of the continuities between science and philosophy. Another leading British philosopher of science, David Papineau, believes that "where Continental philosophy sets out to rival science, and North American philosophy aims to cooperate with it, contemporary British philosophy sits uneasily on the fence. ... British philosophy marginalizes science far more than North American philosophy does." That raises issues beyond philosophy, about the separateness of the humanities and the sciences. I am no expert on the other humanities, but I would not be surprised if the same contrasts in attitudes to science exist in those as well. In Britain there is more of a desire to defend the autonomy of the humanities, in North America more of a desire to find common ground with science. It is not for me to suggest who is right, but anyone working in the humanities needs to be aware of those different slants if they are to make sense of what is coming from the other side of the ocean. There are also instructive differences concerning diversity. Philosophy is still much more exclusively white and male in Britain than it is in the United States. At the biggest general British philosophy conference, the Joint Session (the annual conference of the Aristotelian Society, held with the Mind Association), black or Asian faces have been known to be entirely absent, and women are in a clear minority. That contrasts with North America, where faculties are more ethnically diverse, and where feminist, green, postcolonial, and other nonmainstream branches of philosophy have flourished for some time. Things are changing in Britain. Most noticeably, more women are earning Ph.D.'s and reaching junior positions. At Birkbeck College, part of the University of London, the full-time faculty is already more or less 50-50 male and female. But what is most interesting is not the fact that Britain is "catching up" with America, but the signs that women and members of minority groups in Britain are blending into the mainstream rather than working in specialized ghettos. For instance, the editors of the Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy, Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby, cannot be labeled "feminist philosophers." Rather, they are philosophers, period, who have incorporated feminist insights into their philosophy and are keen that others do the same. My impression is that in North America, feminist philosophy and philosophers form a more discrete set and tend to stand parallel to, rather than within, the academic mainstream. That is not to say that British philosophy is one big happy family. By far the greatest division remains that between departments specializing in "Continental" philosophy, which for the past century have followed in the footsteps of early phenomenologists such as Husserl, and and those specializing in "analytic" philosophy, which have followed Frege, Russell, and Whitehead and concentrated on logic and the analysis of language. Such is the traditional gulf between those two traditions that it is possible for institutions such as the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University to have philosophers literally across the road from one another who are perhaps incapable and certainly often unwilling to enter into philosophical dialogue. More and more philosophers are questioning the philosophical rather than sociological depth of this divide, but the gap between the two schools has not been closed yet. On neither side of the divide are there quasi-autonomous green, ethnocentric, or feminist movements. All three of those currents are being absorbed, some more slowly than others. Probably the least integrated are the ethnocentric approaches to philosophy, which are at least partly the result of a tendency for scholars in those fields to be employed by departments of cultural or regional studies, away from the philosophical mainstream. The question of whether scholarly movements are best absorbed into the mainstream or maintained with distinct identities parallels the political question of whether society needs to embrace multiculturalism, the coexistence of mutually exclusive cultures, or assimilation, in which different cultures contribute to a consequently richer common culture. Interestingly, although the idea of the assimilative melting pot originated in North America, it is an idea that in intellectual life seems to have become more of a reality in Britain. Perhaps the most pressing issue in both British and American settings concerns academic engagement with "real world" issues. In a recent survey for The Philosophers' Magazine, a staggering 77 percent of academic philosophers from across the Anglophone world agreed with the statement, "Philosophers should do more to address the concerns of society." Of the 10 questions in the survey, that elicited the strongest response. The desire to reach out beyond academe is not a new one. Roger Crisp, the British moral philosopher, traces the trend toward more applied philosophy in Britain directly to the radicalization of American campuses in the late 1960s and such subsequent developments as the founding of the U.S.-based journal Philosophy and Public Affairs. Here again it is Britain following the North American lead. There are two broad models of how such engagement might best be achieved: what I call the participatory and the contributory. In the participatory model, academics engage in real-world problems by becoming members of the institutions that are directly involved with those problems. In the contributory model, academics remain in academe, but issue documents, books, and papers that are supposed to contribute to public life. In Britain, the participatory model is in the ascendancy. For instance, three philosophers -- Onora O'Neill, Anthony Quinton, and Mary Warnock -- sit in the House of Lords. Many other philosophers sit on government and advisory committees. For example, John Harris, of the University of Manchester, has served on the ethics committee of the British Medical Association and on the Human Genetics Commission as well as acting as an ethics consultant to the European Parliament, the World Health Organization, the European Commission, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, and England's Department of Health. Immersion in public life has sometimes exacted a price in terms of academic success. In the case of Mary Warnock, she would be the first to acknowledge that she has shone more as a public servant than as an academic philosopher. I cannot speak for the other two, but it is at least true to say that the work they do in public life does not earn much in the way of academic kudos. By contrast, in North America, examples of the contributory model have grabbed the most attention. Most notably, the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs is in essence contributory, in that it is literally a collection of papers designed to contribute to public debate. In another example of the contributory route, in 1997 six leading philosophers -- Ronald Dworkin, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, Thomas Scanlon, and Judith Jarvis Thomson -- prepared an amicus curiae brief for the U.S. Supreme Court for its deliberations on the right to assisted suicide. That presentation of a brief prepared wholly within academe contrasts with the British philosophers' involvement with nonphilosophers in the preparation of documents for the legislature. There is an important issue as to the relative merits of the participatory or contributory models. Across the humanities and even the sciences, not only in philosophy, scholars want to speak to the public more directly. To do so effectively, however, may sometimes require not merely the communication of ideas, but also an involvement with the nitty-gritty of public life. If that exacts a price in terms of academic work, is the academic community prepared to pay it? For Britain's part, the performance of academics is monitored strictly in terms of academic output. Unless credit is given to work that takes academics outside higher education, no matter how much philosophers and their colleagues may want to address the needs of society more, they have little professional incentive to do so. A pattern emerges when we look at the responses to diversity, interdisciplinary work, and public engagement together. In Britain, we see change occurring gradually, and in terms of old institutions' absorbing new influences. Academic philosophy slowly takes on board feminist and green thinking; philosophers with an interest in public life gradually come to hold more chairs on the institutions that govern them; interdisciplinary work is accepted only so far; and wholesale demolition of disciplinary boundaries is resisted. In North America, we see a bolder, more self-confident spirit. Philosophy of mind is overtaken by the next new great thing, consciousness studies; alternative and minority movements in philosophy spring up and assert their independence; philosophers contribute to public life by issuing documents they deem to be of use. Those are, to some extent, exaggerated caricatures. But they are caricatures that I believe magnify the truth rather than distort it. As is often the case, examining the differences between Britain and America suggests ways in which we would be wise to adopt the best characteristics of both worlds. Americans should learn by Britons' caution and Britons by Americans' boldness. The British could give more encouragement to fledgling subdisciplines to establish themselves without requiring them to blend into the mainstream, while the Americans should be prepared to draw such movements closer to the center, without seeing that as a threat to diversity. The British could become more prepared to contribute to public intellectual life directly from their seminar rooms, and the Americans more prepared to work alongside their nonacademic peers to address issues of policy and practice. And on both sides of the Atlantic, those controlling education should reward and provide incentives for academics who attempt to get involved in real-world issues, whether by the contributory or the participatory route. However we move forward, we need to be aware that, despite superficial similarities, there are differences in the academic cultures of North America and Britain that should be appreciated if we are to make sense of and learn from each other. Julian Baggini is editor of The Philosophers' Magazine and author of Making Sense: Philosophy Behind the Headlines (Oxford University Press, 2003). He and Jeremy Stangroom are the editors of New British Philosophy: The Interviews (Routledge, 2002). http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 49, Issue 46, Page B12
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Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education