It’s August and we’re heading towards the beginning of term. In fact, I’ve already taught my first course at my new university – which was rather wonderful. Anyway, those of us teaching and learning will probably soon bump into newcomers in philosophy. And the big question is always: What shall we tell them? What’s worthwhile? What should stick? What do we wish for them? – I often wonder how I can meet the humility of the learned or of the genuinely curious student on proper terms. There is a lot of good stuff around and I often think back with great inspiration to that brief post by Sara Uckelman about empowering questions. So what’s left to say?
A line I come by in every course is “my point / question / answer is probably stupid …” I think it was Kathrine Cuccuru who said that there’s no question or point that can be both genuine and stupid. So, that’s that. But what I’m trying to counter is not just reluctance but also a genuinely false belief about the nature of (philosophical) points one is trying to make. The false belief I’m thinking of is that you can phrase or underpin a point in such a way that it is immune to criticism. This kind of perfectionism is something that many and even experienced philosophers seem to believe in. It goes hand in hand with the widespread idea that good philosophy consists in rooting out false beliefs (something I argue against here). What this approach misses is a very simple fact: In philosophy, there is no claim that is not vulnerable to criticsm. Whatever you say, can and most likely will be criticised for some reason. This might be owing to a mere lack of understanding or indeed a flaw in reasoning, but whatever it is: there is no escape – there is always a possible objection. In argumentation theory, this was dubbed the vulnerability principle. Once you understand this, trying to immunise your point against objections seems futile, simply because it would amount to a never-ending process. If this is correct, the best advice would be to speak up and make your point – and await the questions and objections not as something hostile, but as something that is to be expected and part of philosophy.
That being said, the vulnerability principle doesn’t entail that any old criticism is valid or that you should put up with impertinent behaviour (sadly not uncommon in philosophy classes). It simply means that, in the proper cases, your interlocutor’s frown might well be seen as an invitation to elaborate, never as a put-down.
All of this is more easily said than done. In fact, it took me half of a life-time or so to get this. The tricky bit is that shame and shaming govern a lot of our interactions. The attempt to hide shame or avoid exposure of supposed ignorance is probably a salient part (not only) in philosophy classes. If there is a way of coping with this it is most likely not avoidance but openness to the sort of vulnerability that comes with it. So, yes, the vulnerability of the argument goes hand in hand with the vulnerability of the person making the argument. The best thing to remember is that there is no other way: there is no point to be made without becoming vulnerable to criticism. But as Brené Brown put it, there is no connection without vulnerability (here’s a ted talk on this).
So whenever you want to say something about your point being stupid, you can just pass over that part and make your point.
Handling Ideas 