Amateur and Professional

Amod Lele e-mails: 

I've been enjoying your blog for some time now, and particularly appreciated your post Philosophy as Hobby, as Career, as Vocation. I recently mused on this topic at my own philosophy blog - http://loveofallwisdom.com/2009/06/neither-career-nor-hobby/ - and you might find my remarks there of some interest. I'm intrigued, though, by your distinction between professionals and amateurs, as distinct from those who get paid and those who don't. I suspect that by your definition I aspire to be a professional philosopher who doesn't get paid; but I'm not sure, because I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Would you care to spell this distinction out further?

 

Here is what I wrote:

 

While I'm on this topic, I may as well mention two other distinctions that are often confused. One is the distinction between professionals and amateurs, the other between people who make money from an activity and those who do not. These distinctions 'cut perpendicular' to one another, hence do not coincide. Spinoza was a professional philosopher even though he made no money from it. One can be a professional philosopher without being a paid professor of it, just as one can be an incompetent amateur and still be paid to teach by a college.

 

A better way to put it would be as follows.  'Professional' and 'amateur' each have two senses.  In one sense, a professional X-er is a person who makes a living from X-ing.  This sense of 'professional' contrasts with the sense of 'amateur' according to which an amateur is is an X-er who does not make a living from X-ing.  As the etymology of the word suggests, an amateur in this first sense is one who does what he does for love and not for money.  In a second sense, a professional X-er is a person whose X-ing meets a high standard of performance, while an amateur in the corresponding sense is one whose X-ing fails to meet a high standard of performance. Examples:

A. Tiger Woods is a professional in both senses and an amateur in neither. Kant is an example among the philosophers.

B. Spinoza and Schopenhauer were professionals in the second sense and amateurs in the first sense.

C. Ayn Rand was a professional in the first sense, but a rank amateur in the second.

D. The vast majority of chess players are amateurs in both senses: they neither make a living from chess, nor do they play at a high level.