hypothetical institution

One of the interesting conversations with B. in Amsterdam went as follows… Assume you were given a more-or-less unlimited grant from some billionaire to start an educational institution. What would you do.

I had a few scattered thoughts on this, but will save the more important one for the end.

*Europe is probably still the place to locate it. We sort of agreed on Brussels as not a bad location due to its proximity to both London and Paris, and its “European City” reputation. I also get the sense that Brussels is fairly affordable compared to most large European cities. (Berlin perhaps even more so, though it’s too remote from everything else.)

*though I hate the word “interdisciplinary,” it would have to be interdisciplinary, because it’s boring to be in contact only with philosophers

The key impetus to the discussion actually came from B. He pointed out that the usual method of philosophy training in the continental tradition: “Unit 1. Ancient Philosophy… Unit 2. Medieval Philosophy… Unit 3. Modern Philosophy….” is in fact probably not the best way of educating philosophers. I happen to think he’s right, but more about that in a moment.

My related idea, which I plan to implement when/if I ever have Ph.D. students, is to require a 30-50 page preliminary thesis containing no footnotes or quotations. This would be one of the hardest things that any student ever had to write, but would also serve well to orient them as to what it is they are really trying to say. Too few students in our tradition acquire sufficient self-confidence to speak in their own voice without leaning on some historical heavyweight to back them up at every turn.

So, does this amount to admitting that analytic philosophy was right all along, and that the history of philosophy is not so important? Not at all.

First, when I suggest that the students ought to write 30-50 pages without references, I never said that it should be 30-50 pages of “arguments”. As usual, the real problem is not a logical lapse, but a failure of imagination. Most problems we confront in philosophy have already settled into a boring trench war situation where both sides are equally bland and both think they have better arguments than the other, just like a literal trench war. Such a a waste of resources and of careers to get involved in such things.

Deleuze is surely close to the truth when he says that philosophy is a creation of concepts. It is much easier to remember Leibniz’s monads or Nietzsche’s will to power than the “arguments” given on their behalf. No concept can ever counter all arguments made against it, and many arguments are rationalizations in the first place, designed as after-the-fact justification for models preferred for their power, elegance, clarity, fascination, or the like.

An opposition is usually drawn between analytics who give arguments, and continentals who merely write book reports on past works written by others. Yet it seems to me that both sides share the same basic problem. More on this once I’m traveling a bit less.