philosophy : architecture

Mar 11, 2009 5:49 AM
philosophy : architecture
by doctorzamalek

And here’s another analogy I often have in mind… that philosophical work should be a bit like an architectural career.

To begin with, here’s the recipe for failure and autistic arrogance in philosophy:

“I have some great ideas. They’re not perfect yet, so I won’t publish them. Everything I read is worse than my own ideas. I will not lower myself to the level of publishing imperfect ideas. I am too conscientious to be as sloppy as others.”

This is a great way to take 12 years or forever on a Ph.D., and ultimately quit, all while telling yourself that no one else is really up to your level.

NO!!!!!! Do not go down that path.

Think like an architect. An architect has to build. To build, you have to take the opportunities that come to you. Yes, you may have a unique style that will be expressed in everything you do. But you also have to adapt to the building site, the budget, the deadline, and the personality of the client. You might also have to make changes while in progress without whining about how your beautiful perfect plan was spoiled.

You build a few structures, people like them, you get more commissions. You develop through doing, not through sitting at home with your private drawings and scoffing at every other building you see on the street. Do that, and you’re an architect nowhere but in your mental fantasy life.

Don’t turn down any commissions, unless you are already swamped.

In that vein, let me repeat how I plan to write my talk for next month’s conference– a plan shared generously in a previous post in the spirit of public advice, but which received a few passive-aggressive sucker punches from people who aren’t getting enough of their own work done at the moment. Worse yet, it was little adolescent sneers along the lines of: “On second thought, Harman is right. I guess you have to be a sophist and a sell-out to succeed in philosophy. I always thought philosophy was the noble pursuit of truth, but I guess I was wrong.” blah blah blah. Shut up and build!

If you were building a house in Bristol, there would probably be climate constraints on the building and you might wish to use local materials. Giving a philosophy paper in Bristol, it’s important to me to address Iain Grant’s work, which I have so far not explicitly done in any papers. It’s a golden opportunity. As mentioned in the previous post, Grant’s view of objects is that they come somewhat later than primal matter, through obstructions of some sort. This is the polar opposite of my own model, in which objects come first. And this is a debate worth having.

But a debate between me and Iain Grant has the optical defect that we’re both alive and young and neither of us had published much prior to the current decade (nothing whatsoever, in my case). That’s why it’s useful to give some classical depth to our dispute, just to demonstrate that there are some venerable problems at work in our disagreement. Giordano Bruno fits the bill. Grant’s similarities with Bruno are palpable, and better yet, he openly discusses them in a few passages.

Then I said I’d bring Simondon into the debate. I’ve read enough Simondon to know what his relevance is to my disagreements with Grant. And if you write as much as I’ve been writing these days, then you have precious little time to read whatever you feel like reading. If there’s something long that you want to read in depth, your only hope is to plug it into one of your writing projects and force yourself to learn it inside and out. That’s why this is a good time for me to read hundreds and hundreds of pages of Simondon, both for Bristol and for Zagreb in June. (The “kill two birds with one stone” maxim.) And use Toscano’s interesting treatment of Simondon as a backdrop, right. Where will I ultimately end up agreeing and disagreeing with Toscano’s reading? This will give additional texture to my disagreement with Grant.

What else did I say about this process? I think I simply added that you ought to break your lecture into 4 or 5 simple parts. That makes it much easier to write.

LIke an architect, or (my most favorite metaphor of all) a general, you have to take all features of the landscape into account, or your deeds will fail. Thought is not some angelic activity, lodged in the head and untainted by the corruptions of the body and the world. Thought grows by responding to genuine tasks that the world places before us, not by sitting around sneering about p.r. campaigns by people who are actually delivering the goods.

And there’s another lesson, valid for all written work… remember, nobody has to read your work. You have no right to inflict boring prose on anyone. There are so many things people can do with their time that you have no right to expect readers unless you make the experience enjoyable. This doesn’t necessarily mean puppies and fireworks in your prose, but it at least means keeping things clear, simple, and interesting.

Stop daydreaming, and build something! It’s the only way to learn your current limits, which is always a painful experience, but without that pain you won’t feel the impetus to develop any further. That’s why you have to accept every offer that comes your way to write any article or give any lecture– in order to constantly face up to your own limits and learn new techniques. Sitting around making smart-assed comments about the work that’s actually getting done is a waste of time. You’ll be 5 minutes closer to death once the chuckling is finished.