Daily Nous (RSS Feed) on Nostr: Two Ideas for Improving the Future of Philosophy (guest post) “In this post, I want ...

Two Ideas for Improving the Future of Philosophy (guest post)

“In this post, I want to encourage a conversation about active steps that we—all of us who love, teach, and write philosophy—might take to help philosophy’s future.” There are many concerns about the future of philosophy in higher education. In the following guest post, Alex Guerrero, professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, puts forward two ideas he thinks are both feasible and effective about how to improve philosophy’s prospects. This is the fifth in a series of guest posts by different authors at Daily Nous this summer. (Posts in this series will remain pinned to the top of the homepage for several days following initial publication.) Two Ideas for Improving the Future of Philosophy by Alex Guerrero For those of us who teach philosophy or love philosophy, it is hard not to notice the steady drumbeat of despair and demise sounding in the background of what we do. There has been much discussion on these pages and elsewhere about the many threats and concerns. Some aren’t particular to philosophy: the general decline of interest in and support for humanistic education and a decline in humanities majors and enrollment, the corporatist mindset and administrative takeover of higher education, the politicization of higher education, the political attacks on “critical race theory” and other humanistic subjects, the decline in public support of and funding for post-secondary education, the threats posed by AI to the humanities and university education. Other concerns—including the regular “what are you going to do with that?” jokes and “uselessness” rhetoric, circulating in the public and on occasion being embraced by administrators—are more philosophy-specific. These and other forces have resulted in philosophy department and program closures, firing of tenured philosophy faculty, failures to allow departments to replace retiring and departing faculty, and a general sense of precarity regarding the future of philosophy, at least within the university setting. Responses to all of this are often reactive (let’s try to put out this particular fire), fatalistic (so philosophy, too, burns in the world-engulfing flames), exhausted (I’d like to help, but I’m already on fire myself, thanks), or aloof (I can’t even smell the smoke from way up here). Many of these responses are understandable, even sensible. But they leave us struggling to..
The post https://dailynous.com/2024/07/24/two-ideas-for-improving-the-future-of-philosophy-guest-post/
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https://dailynous.com/2024/07/24/two-ideas-for-improving-the-future-of-philosophy-guest-post/