Month: July 2019

Let’s get rid of “medieval” philosophy!

“Your views are medieval.” Let’s face it: we often use the term “medieval” in a pejorative sense; and calling a line of thought “medieval” might be a good way of chasing away students who would otherwise have been interested in that line of thought. In what follows, I’d like to suggest that, in order to keep what we call medieval philosophy, we should stop talking about “medieval” philosophy altogether.

While no way of slicing up periods is arbitrary, they all come with problems, as this blog post by Laura Sangha makes clear. So I don’t think that there ever will be a coherently or neatly justified periodisation of history, let alone of history of philosophy. But while other names of periods are equally problematic, none of them is as degrading. Outside academia, the term “medieval” is mainly used to describe exceptionally cruel actions or backward policies.  Often named “dark ages”, the years from, roughly, 500 to 1500 count as a period of religious indoctrination. This usage also shapes the perception in academic philosophy. Arguably, medieval philosophical thought is still seen as subordinate to theology. Historical surveys of philosophy often jump from ancient to early modern, and even specialists in history often make it sound as if the sole philosopher that existed in these thousand years had been Thomas Aquinas. This deplorable status has real-life consequences. Exceptions aside, there are very few jobs in medieval philosophy and a decreasing number of students interested in studying it.

You will rightly object that the problems described are not only owing to the name “medieval” and its cognates. I agree. First of all, the field of history of philosophy has not exactly been pampered in recent decades. Often people working on contemporary issues are asked to do a bit of history on the side or the study programmes are catered for in other fields of humanities (history, theology, languages). Secondly and perhaps more importantly, the dominant research traditions in medieval philosophy often continue to represent the field in an esoteric manner. As a student, the first thing you are likely to hear is that it is almost impossible to study medieval thought unless you read Latin (at least!), learn to read illegible manuscripts, understand outlandish theological questions (angels on a pinhead, anyone?), and know Aristotle by heart. Thirdly, most historical narratives depict medieval thought as a backward counterpoint to what is taken to be the later rise of science, enlightenment and secularisation. While the first of these three problems is beyond the control of medievalists alone, the second and third issue are to some degree in our own hands.

Therefore, we can and should present our field as more accessible. A great part of this will consist in strengthening continuities with other periods. Thus, medieval philosophy should always be seen as continuous with what is called ancient or modern or even contemporary thought. This way, we can rid ourselves not only of this embarrassment of a name (“Middle Ages”) but also of trying to indicate what is typically medieval. I’m inclined to think that, whenever we find something “typical” for that period, it will be also typical of other periods. In other words, there is nothing specifically medieval in medieval philosophy.

While there are already a number of laudable attempts to renew approaches in teaching (see e.g. Robert Pasnau’s survey of surveys), my worry is that the more esoteric strands in our field, both in terms of method and content, will be insinuated whenever we talk about “medieval” philosophy. The term “medieval” is a sticky one and won’t go away, but in combination with “philosophy” it will continue to sound like an oxymoron. What shall we say instead, though? I’d suggest that we talk about what we really do: most of us study a handful of themes or topics in certain periods of time. So why not say that you study the eleventh and twelfth centuries (in the Latin West or wherever) or the history of thought from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century? If a more philosophical specification is needed you might say that you study the history of, say, psychology, especially from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. If you believe in the progress narrative, you might even use “pre-modern”. Or why not “post-ancient”?

By the way, if you are what is called a medievalist and you work on a certain topic, most of your work will be continuous with ancient or (early) modern philosophy. If there are jobs advertised in these areas, it’s not unlikely that they will be in your field. That might become more obvious if you call yourself a specialist in, say, the history of metaphysics from 400 to 500 AD or the history of ethics from 1300 to 1800. If this is the case, it would not seem illegitimate to apply for positions in such areas, too. – “Oh”, you might say, “won’t these periods sound outrageously long?” Then just remind people that the medieval period comprises at least a thousand years.

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PS. I started this blog on 26 July 2018. So the blog is now over a year old. Let me take the opportunity to thank you all for reading, writing, and thinking along.

On mentoring. A response to Katarina Mihaljević

Professional philosophy has a reputation for protecting harassers in their midst. Although John Searle’s assaults are said to have been known since 2004, it was only this year that he has finally been sanctioned, a bit. Fostering such perpetrators not only speaks of an enormous sexism in the institutions in question, it also affects the normal or desirable relations between faculty members and students. Thus, it is not surprising that many public discussions about “the profession” revolve around the problematic aspects such as the effects of power imbalance. So much so that one might almost forget that faculty-student relations are not only poisonous but might even provide some remedies, also against the problematic culture in our discipline. Katarina Mihaljević argues that mentorship is crucial in education and even in combatting sexism. At the same time she points out that the precise nature of mentorship remains unclear: often neither students nor faculty members seem to have a clear idea of what to expect. In what follows, I would like to reflect on mentorship and its elusive nature.

During my years as a graduate student, mentorship wasn’t part of the educational programme. I just asked two of my professors for guidance and was very lucky in that they responded in an encouraging manner and supported me greatly and continuously. In my faculty at Groningen, mentoring forms a clear part of the graduate education. But that does of course not determine the nature of mentoring. According to one of many definitions, mentoring is a “process for the informal transmission of knowledge, social capital, and the psychosocial support perceived by the recipient as relevant to work, career, or professional development …” While at least some of us are trained to impart knowledge, it’s harder to get clear on what it means to transmit social capital and to lend support. A “code of conduct”, as Katarina envisions it, might provide a framework, but it can’t get to the heart of the matter, simply because questions of social capital and support are highly personal. In this sense, it is no surprise that the “rights and duties” remain and perhaps even have to remain vague. Nevertheless, there are a few elements that form a recurrent part of the conversations I have with students. In what follows, I’d like to list those that I find crucial:

  • Contextualising (content): No matter whether I am formally determined to be someone’s mentor or just happen to discuss a paper, I often begin by trying to figure out what the goals of students are. Why, for instance, does she want to write a certain paper? Is it related to a continuous set of interests or just falling out of the actual course work? Answers to this question help me understanding the philosophical drive of the student and, in turn, enable me to show a particular research question in its relation to wider issues inside and outside philosophy. My hope is that a particular piece of work makes sense to the student in a wider scope.
  • Contextualising (career): Where do you want to go with this piece of work? That is often my next question. Sometimes I receive an incredulous stare, but the point is to relate the actual work to wider life goals. Does someone see themselves as an academic or outside the university? And what difference might the work on a particular topic make? Sometimes people burn for a topic; others might wish to foster certain skills or just challenge themselves. – The idea is not to tailor the essay accordingly, but rather to get a sense of what matters to the student and whether I can say anything helpful at this point. If this goes well, the best outcome is some sort of confident projection of the student’s goals into the future. Ideally, the student seriously begins to see herself in a certain professional context or environment.
  • Understanding uncertainties: Obviously, this projection is not an attempt to fix the future. It’s about seeing obstacles and paths around them. To make this work, I try to connect to my own experiences as a student. This not in order to end up saying something like “do it my way”, but in order to understand: How would I have felt with such goals? How would I have felt about telling them to my supervisor? It helps me seeing the courage and worries involved in this projection. In some moments, I can then honestly say “oh, that would have worried me”, or “I would have loved to do something like that” or “faced with this, I wanted to do x, but never dared to.” Let’s face it: most worries are about performing well and how to get there. But in the background there is a larger story about belonging to a community. The crucial point, for me at least, is not to come up with recipes but to remind myself and others that it is part of the game to have worries or uncertainties. Mirroring that this is normal might help, and also put things into a balanced picture in line with other parts of life.
  • Advising: The forgoing items are mainly elements that figure in listening, “active listening”, still involving some talking on my part. Where does the advice come in? Ideally, students give themselves much advice while responding to questions. Most things suggest themselves when people unpack their ideas. One can steer this by asking things like “Have you asked yourself this?”, “Have you heard about that [book, conference, person]?”, “If you do x, you might run into the following problem.” – The idea is to encourage students to articulate their ideas in the strongest possible ways, to make them see objections, and show them the context in which they can be placed. This has a scholarly and a social dimension. Over and above the discussion of ideas, I find it crucial to impart an understanding of the network of people and institutions involved. Ideally, students feel encouraged to approach people whose ideas they find interesting, be it during talks, at conferences, summer schools or via mail. If students begin see themselves as a real part of the conversation I have reached one of the crucial goals in mentoring.
  • Limits: What I find equally crucial is to point out the limits of this process. Ultimately, I can’t do or help much. I cannot make promises that go far beyond the words spoken in such meetings. Of course, one can and should act on students’ behalf, be it putting them in touch with colleagues or relevant authorities, write a reference or help settle administrative processes. But that’s about it.

All of these steps are fairly elusive because they depend on the personalities of the people involved. This means that the crucial outcomes (or limits) of mentoring ultimately depend on the mutual trust that people have. That’s why students should feel free to turn away from a given mentor and turn to someone else if they wish. Personally, I always found it helpful to talk regularly to two people: one person who is more involved in the topics I care about; another person who might be more efficient when it comes to settling formal or even career-related issues.

Countering sexism, then, as Katarina envisions it, is ultimately an issue of fostering trust, confidence, and empowering ways of dealing with uncertainties. It should go without saying that this can only flourish in a climate in which perpetrators of any kind do not enjoy any protection. That is true of individual people and institutions as well as the wider discipline. But there is also a lot of sexism below the threshold of harassment. While good mentoring might be part of a remedy against this, mentoring is always related to a certain status quo. If mentoring is a form of guidance for going along with that status quo, it would involve strategies of coping with forms of sexism. It is here that I see the limits of mere mentoring. Countering sexism cannot mean gaslighting people into living with it.

Sexism and the importance of mentors in academic philosophy

It takes a village to raise a baby and it takes willing mentors to turn you into a good philosopher. I know it is true because I never had one. And then I briefly had one (nod to you, Martin), and now I have a new one ( 👋 Sander). When discussing mentoring with my colleagues, it often seems that the reason so many of us did not manage to clock in over the total of sixty minutes with our assigned academic supervisors/mentors during our one or two year-long master program was the skewed balance between the research, teaching and the administration duties. Argument went that, at the end of the day, our mentors/supervisors simply had no time or desire to meet with us.

But what if we could argue, even better, give some evidence that mentoring presents an important factor in helping underrepresented groups, such as women, to continue their studies on the graduate level?

Although mentoring, widely construed, is by no means a sufficient condition to secure transition of more women from the undergraduate to graduate programs[1], it is my contention that ultimately external conditions, such as mentorship, peer review, access to work spaces and the relevant literature are necessary if a student is to develop her philosophical contributions to a satisfactory level. For the purposes of this short note, I will only focus on mentoring and how the absence of it helps uphold the status quo in philosophy.

It is my contention that to stop being sexist in academic philosophy is to stop being selfish: with (1) the attention and (2) the resources.

One thing that all of us struggled with asking for and receiving attention were the unclear boundaries and vaguely described and understood rights and duties on both sides. Is one’s mentor supposed to take on a parental role? Or that of a therapist? Or that of a shoulder to cry on after Joris never texted back? The attention that so many of us wanted was never expected to be a one-sided effort. Regardless, most of the times, we would end up talking to whomever would listen about our minors, essay ideas and career plans.

To succeed in academic philosophy, women need not only mentors but also promoters. What does a promoter do? One example of promotion is to use resources at hand in a form of the access to information on relevant venues for the development of her research interests (read: summer schools).

In conclusion, to tackle the continued perpetuation of institutionalized sexism in academic philosophy, we ought to help develop more both capable and selfless male and female philosophers. In order to do that, I believe that we need to set up a more concrete mentor-mentee code of conduct which will outline rights and duties on both sides of the table.

[1] In their own take on quantification of the gender gap in the philosophy departments, Paxton, Figdor and Tiberius (2012) argue that the presence of female faculty members positively impacts the number of students transitioning to philosophy majors.

How is the Western philosophical canon sexist?*

My daughter Hannah clearly begins to realise that she is a female person. Half a year ago she turned two, and by now she has been pointing out that certain people are men and women for quite a while. At the moment she is using these concepts quite playfully: so while she might at one time say that she is a “girl” (certainly not a baby!), at other times she’ll also claim that she is a “good boy”. I don’t know what goes into the mastery of these concepts, but a fresh look at some canonical philosophers like Aristotle, Albert the Great and Hegel made me worry. So far, I mostly tended to think of condescending remarks about women as inconsistencies or aberrations that might be ‘typical of the time or context’. But what if they are not mere inconsistencies? What if they are part and parcel of their philosophical theories?

As is well known, Aristotle conceived of women as defective males. Calling something defective, has normative and teleological implications. Accordingly, the generation of women is not seen as the best or intended outcome. In other words, it seems that if natural processes always were to run perfectly, there wouldn’t be any women. This idea plays out in number of ways, but the upshot is that women count as performing less well in everything that matters in our lives. Moreover, these defects are related to metaphysical notions. Women are seen as connected to the material, while only men are truly capable to indulge in the life of the mind. If you know a little bit about Western philosophy, you’ll probably know that the mind or intellect is pervasively construed as superior to the material. Now if your theory also tells you that women are more bound to the material (and to things related to matter, such as emotion etc) than the intellectual, your theory implies that women are inferior to men. In this context, the idea of women as defective males might sound straightforward. But is sexism restricted to such contexts? I doubt it. As Christia Mercer puts it in an intriguing article: “It is almost impossible to exaggerate the influence these ancient ideas had on the history of Western thought.”

Not surprisingly, then, there was and is a lively debate among feminist historians of philosophy as to whether the Aristotelian notions of matter and form are inherently related to the notions of female and male respectively.  Thus, the question is whether the concepts of matter and form depend on the concepts of being female and male. If yes, Aristotelian hylomorphism would be inherently or intrinsically sexist. And what if not? Would Aristotle’s philosophy be absolved? – While this question seems important, I think it is too strongly put and might distract us from the issue at hand. The notion of an inherent relation strikes me as a red herring. As I see it, the relation between materiality and being female cannot be shown to be an inherent one, unless you have a very special metaphysical theory. But that doesn’t mean that the concepts are not intimately related in the actual historical theories. In other words, Aristotelian metaphysics is still sexist through and through, even if matter is not identified as inherently female.

As I said in the beginning, it might be tempting to just push the sexism aside as an inconsistent aberration. Corrected by contemporary insights, you might say that Aristotelian philosophy is great as long as you ignore some factual errors about women. Yet, I doubt we can separate the sexism that easily from Aristotelianism or other philosophies. I began to realise this when considering Albert the Great’s defense of the Aristotelian view of women. Albert the Great and other Aristotelian thinkers clearly defend the idea of women as defective males. What is striking is that they continue to maintain the idea even in the light of fairly obvious objections. One such objection is this: If women are defective males, then every women born is to be seen as going against the perfection of natural processes. If this is correct, then why are there so many women in the first place? As Evelina Miteva pointed out in a recent paper (at the IMC 2019), Albert explains the abundance of women by claiming that the generation of nobler and more complex beings (= men) requires the concurrence of many external conditions. In other words, the more perfect the intended product, the more can go wrong in the production. And since natural processes are often obstructed by a lack of required conditions, we can explain that so many women are born, even if their generation goes against natural design. Put simply, the reason that there are so many women is that so many things go wrong. If this is correct, then one might say that Albert is adamant to maintain the sexist ideas in Aristotle’s philosophy and show why they are consistent. Put more drastically, Aristotelianism can be defended by rendering women as subhuman.

While Albert the Great’s defence of Aristotelianism is clearly sexist, not everyone who endorses Aristotle can be justly taken as explicitly endorsing sexist beliefs. But sexism has not to be explicitly endorsed in order to gain ground. This is what makes sexism and other ideologies structural. Given the prominence of Aristotle, the sexist ideology might be sufficiently served already by not renouncing the doctrine of the defective male. The point is this: A canonical doctrine retains its sexist impact as long as the sexist elements are not explicitly excluded. Arguably, this kind of implicit sexism might be said to be even more pervasive. Basically, it resides in the conjunction of two claims: (1) that the intellect is more dignified than the material and (2) that women are more tied to the material (or emotional etc.) than to the intellectual realm. I honestly wonder when these claims have been explicitly challenged or renounced for the first time.

If it is true that these claims largely went unchallenged, then much of the history of Western philosophy coincides with a history of sexism. Arguably, this does not mean that all Western philosophers are sexists. Firstly, the positions of the philosophers I alluded to (and others) can be said to be much more subtle, and not reducible to the claims I ascribed to them. Secondly, some philosophers, when pressed, might expressly have rejected or do reject sexist beliefs. What can we say in the light of these facts? The point is perhaps not so much that all these philosophers endorse sexist beliefs. The point is rather that they continue to endorse ideas that come out of sexist convictions. As Crispin Sartwell recently claimed, the history of Western philosophy might even be seen as justifying white supremacy. While I am quite hesitant about a number of Sartwell’s historical claims, I still think his piece suggests an important lesson.** If one accepts the general line of argument in his piece, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the philosophers in question are all white supremacists. It just means that they build on ideas that might have served and can continue to serve as a pertinent justification. But even if they aren’t supremacists, this doesn’t mean that the justifying function of their ideas can be cast aside as a mere inconsistency (at least not without scrutiny).

Analogously, one might argue that not all Western philosophers are sexist. But this doesn’t mean that our canon is off the hook by declaring that the sexist parts can simply be cancelled out. Certain ideas continue to justify sexist assumptions, even if no one expressly were to endorse sexist ideas. Once you notice how authors such as Albert twist and turn the ideas to justify the sexism of Aristotle, you can’t unsee the connections that hold these ideas together. If we don’t expose and disown these connections, we continue to carry these assumptions along as canonical. Saying that they are merely inconsistent outliers (that can be ignored while the rest of the theory might be retained) just seems to ingrain them more deeply. – Why? – Because then the justifying connections between sexist and other claims remain unchallenged and continue to pervade our canon.

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* Earlier, the post was called “Is the Western philosophical canon sexist?” Désirée Weber convinced me to change the title to its current form.

** Addendum: Speaking as a historian of philosophy, I find Sartwell’s piece wanting. Why do I find it interesting? I think it makes (but partly also exemplifies) crucial points about the use and abuse of ideas, and more generally I’m wondering whether there are limits to what we can do with an idea. — Currently, much of the so-called Enlightenment ideas are used on a newly populated battlefield: On the one hand, there are whig ‘historians’ like S. Pinker who argue that the Enlightenment is all about progress. On the other hand, there is someone like Sartwell making the contrary claim. – Professional historians like to discard both appropriations, for good reasons. But the appropriations won’t go away. On the contrary, they are very powerful.  –– Moreover, I also think we should be careful when assessing a piece of “public philosophy” by means of regular academic standards. Sartwell explicitly acknowledges the limits and polemical nature of his piece.