Curtain tune for academic philosophy

A curtain tune on a ground, by Henry Purcell, realized by La Nimfea

I'm working on the early Enlightenment in 17th century Europe. One of the many intriguing aspects of this period is how philosophy at this time did not have academia as its center of gravity. There was of course still plenty of academic philosophy. In the halls where schoolmen used to ponder elaborate logical systems, you now had scholastics and Cartesians battling it out with intensity. As Jonathan Israel writes in Radical Enlightenment (2011):

Except for Groningen*, where the academic senate managed to damp down the agitation, all the Dutch universities, especially Utrecht and Leiden, lapsed into a philosophical struggle unprecedented in European history since ancient times for acrimony, duration, and divisiveness.

This was between the proponents of Aristotelian scholasticism under the auspices of Gijsbertus Voetius (1589-1676) against the Cartesians. Yet, while these battles were being waged, the exciting cutting-edge philosophy meanwhile was with laypeople outside of it, such as René Descartes, a professional soldier, Baruch Spinoza, a lens grinder, and Elisabeth of Bohemia, a noblewoman. At the height of this early Enlightenment, you had the Republic of Letters, a network of philosophical conversation done through letters and other media where laypeople outside of the academia stood at the frontier. Obviously, you always had academic philosophers and many excellent ones, such as Isaac Newton at Cambridge. But even later when we get to David Hume, who tried but could not obtain an academic philosophy job, you had laypeople who were at the frontier of philosophy.

Reading these accounts, I am thinking about the survival of philosophy in some form. Academic philosophy is under assault. Some people applaud this. They say that academic philosophy is a degenerative research program, that analytic philosophy in particular has become sterile and not worth preserving. Still, I am worried about the institutional context we are losing. Departments shrink with retirements. I know many people who are soon retiring or recently retired, and basically the curtain on philosophy in their university closes behind them. At the height of their career, they had helped to put together a faculty of up to 10 people. There are hiring freezes. Even tenured academics are not safe from layoffs, especially at smaller schools.

Courses still need to be taught, so the adjunctification continues apace. However, adjuncts mainly teach and they do not do all the work that keeps the edifice of academia going. A lot of our institutions that rely on hope, good will, freely offered labor and duct tape, it seems, are crumbling. As I discuss in the interview here with Greg Sadler (who is also an academic philosopher, an adjunct professor, and who hosts a very cool philosophy Youtube channel), a lot of work in our profession requires heavy lifting such as refereeing, chairing and being part of committees to organize disciplinary conferences, and more. Greg says, very reasonably, that he will not referee. It is invisible, time consuming work and it falls upon tenured and tenure track people to do it. He already only gets paid by the course. Why load on extra work for no pay?

This is probably one reason that refereeing has, as far as I can see, broken down. I'm editor in chief of a general philosophy journal, Res Philosophica, and associate editor with another, Ergo. We get many submissions weekly that need to be read, and reviewers keep on declining our invitations. Everyone is burnt out since 2020—probably since longer—and we have never recovered from this. I'm fully convinced that refereeing has basically broken down, has become a lottery and a time-consuming process for authors, rather than quality control. We cannot continue like this. We can think about how to solve this particular crisis and it's worth doing so (see

Richard Y Chappell

's proposal in Daily Nous, here.) But the refereeing crisis is a symptom of a much, much deeper phenomenon, a full-scale implosion that will happen soon. I am the chair of the Central APA 2025, a large disciplinary conference. I feel like I am a overworked person asking other overworked people who are close to the brink to do more service for us and the profession. This isn't sustainable.

The reason why we are in this mess is the crumbling of our institutions. It becomes difficult to train future people to ensure continuity in our profession. When we do it, it becomes almost morally injurious because we may be setting our grad students up for permanent precarity. The demographic cliff is coming and while our vice chancellors and deans and deanlets are already planning for that by basically not replacing us when we leave or retire, it's a question mark if they've fully costed it in and what the next ten years hold. We're in uncharted waters, but one thing is sure: things won't improve.

Next to an institutional crisis, academic philosophy also finds itself in a crisis of trust and relationality with the people. We are not connecting with the people anymore. People don't care what we have to say. It was not always like this. I don't want to romanticize the past, and the number of people reading academic philosophy was never that great, but I feel, as someone who regularly ventures out to engage the public that the disconnect has become greater.

This is all in spite of our renewed appreciation for public philosophy, and the fact that many of us try to connect with the people. The problem is that a lot of public philosophy suffers the same ailments as our other philosophy: we care too much about prestigious venues such as getting a piece in the New York Times and not enough about what we wish to say. A tiny number of people have a huge platform with book deals and regular exposure in top magazines and newspapers, but what they're saying lacks relevance for most people who look to philosophy for some concrete solace or something to help them with the huge existential problems we're facing (I am not criticizing individual people here, it's just a general observation, plenty of exceptions to this rule, etc etc). Jumping on bandwagons (AI etc) isn't going to solve this. It's not clear what will.

This particular ailment relates to the broader context of academia in its cultural, social milieus. The fact that right-wing agitators could so easily bring down prominent academics in plagiarism and other scandals is, I think, a symptom of a bigger issue. There is a huge issue of trust and a distinct sense of alienation which is not restricted to philosophy but for academia in general—a lot of people for various reasons simply don't think that academics can help them anymore with e.g., life questions, how to live better lives, how to make sound decisions, or to work toward to the common good.

I feel pessimistic today. I write this in part in the hope that the comments will tell me I am wrong and how I'm wrong. That I am a doomer for feeling like a noble at the eve of the French revolution. We have lost relevance, and I fear very much that academic philosophy, alongside other humanities--will still crumble within my lifetime.

The question then is, what comes next? Can philosophy survive outside of it?

Reading these works on early Enlightenment thinkers of how people from outside the academy managed to breathe new life into philosophy. Maybe it can happen again. Maybe we just need some Spinozas and Elisabeths to shake us out of our being stuck. I don't know if we can do it by ourselves. We are too weighed down by institutional forces much beyond ourselves. There is the pressing problem that as our departments are cut, we cannot ensure intellectual continuity through training, tenure track people and so on. Hopefully philosophy will continue in some form.

*Groningen is my Alma Mater where I received my PhD in philosophy in 2011, and I found it somehow pleasing to read this.