Those who make a living teaching philosophy, or are hoping to make a living teaching philosophy, have reason to be concerned. Enrollments are in decline, and as the University of Nevada (Las Vegas) example shows, whole departments are under threat of elimination. Some speak loosely of a crisis in philosophy. But it is more like a crisis for paid professors of it. And perhaps 'crisis' is overblown. So let's just say that philosophy teachers collectively have a problem, the problem of attracting warm bodies. The fewer the students, the less the need for teachers.
Lee McIntyre addresses the problem in the pages of the The Chronicle of Higher Education. He asks who is to blame for "the growing crisis in philosophy." His answer is that philosophers are. Philosophers have failed to make philosophy relevant to what people care about despite having had ages to do so. Yes, he uses that '60s buzz word, "relevant." So the problem is not caused primarily by hard economic times despite their exacerbating effect; the problem is that philosophers have failed to make philosophy "relevant."
What is to be done? "We must recognize what is unique about philosophy . . . philosophy's historical mission, which is not merely to find the truth, but to use the truth to improve the quality of human life." This is hardly unique to philosophy -- think of medical science -- but let that pass. We are then told that the goal . . . "should be to help students recognize that philosophy matters. Not just because it will improve their LSAT scores (which it will), but because philosophy has the potential to change the very fabric of who they are as human beings."
Sorry to sound negative, but if there is a "crisis," this high-sounding blather is unlikely to "avert" it. I should think that the primary task of philosophy is to understand human beings before going off half-cocked in pursuit of a radical transformation of their "very fabric."
The theme of 'change' having been sounded, the reader is not surprised to hear McIntyre go off on a liberal-left tangent, identifying critical thinking with the espousal of left wing positions. Here is one example:
Similarly, when a 2009 Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 28 percent of the American public—and an alarming number of their elected representatives in Washington—refuse to believe the overwhelming scientific evidence for the existence of global warming, where is the voice of the philosophical community to right the ship on the norms of good reasoning? Personally, I'm tired of hearing members of Congress who couldn't pass an introductory logic class say that they are "skeptics" about climate change. Refusing to believe something in the face of scientific evidence is not skepticism, it is the height of credulity. How delicious would it be for philosophers to claim public venues to rap their knuckles over that?
This is quite astonishing. We are being told that those who raise questions about global warming such as Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are in violation of "the norms of good reasoning"! Just as lefties think they own dissent, they think they own critical thinking too.
Michael Valle's comment on McIntyre's piece is dead on:
Here's how I read this. "We need to make philosophy more politically active. We need to teach our students that conservative and libertarian ideas are wrong and illogical. We need to spread progressive values and political views to our students. Unless we do this, our discipline will fade into obscurity." Yet this is exactly why our discipline isn't trusted. It's because we are allowing ourselves to become pickled in political correctness and leftwing activism. Until the public knows that it will not get progressive preaching in our philosophy classes, we will not be trusted, and for perfectly good reason.
That's exactly right. Contempt for philosophy, and for the humanities generally, on the part of the public is in large part do to the political correctness that infects humanities departments. Tax payers realize that there is no free and open inquiry going on in these venues, no balanced examination of the whole spectrum of opinion on issues, that what is going on is indoctrination.
To sum up. There is no crisis in philosophy. It is alive and well and will continue, funded or unfunded, enrollments up, enrollments down, praised or maligned, suppressed or supported, as it has for 20 centuries in the West and even longer in the East. It will bury its undertakers. At most, those who fill their bellies from it face lean times. Some will no longer be able to fill their bellies from it. Then we will see how seriously they take it and whether they really believe their own rhetoric. We will then discover whether they live for it or only from it.
The problem is not that philosophers are insufficiently engaged in 'progressive' agitation and indoctrination. The problem is due to the fact that times are tough, economically speaking, and that the cost-to-value ratio of a college education has become outrageously unfavorable. It is just plain stupid to incur massive debt to earn a degree in a subject that has no market value.
Nor is the problem that philosophy is not "relevant" to the issues of the day. The purpose of a university education is to elevate people, to give them perspective, to challenge them with difficult texts and ideas. Concern for "relevance" leads to the erosion of standards. As I used to say to my students: I am not going to make philosophy relevant to you; I am going to make you relevant to philosophy.
References
http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2009/08/does-the-left-own-dissent.html
http://chronicle.com/article/Making-Philosophy-Matter-or/130029/
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