What I’ve Learned From Teaching Philosophy

Philosophy has no history, one might say, any more than human nature does, or better, any more than human DNA does: philosophy is the DNA of thought, a twisting perpetual reshuffle of the same astonishingly sparse number of components, rotating around one another in a semblance of constant play.

– Arthur Danto, Danto and His Critics (1993), p. 193-194

This year I have had the great opportunity to work for the Philosophy Department at Sydney University as a tutor for their first year courses. Apart from thoroughly enjoying this and gettin’ real paid, this has given me occasion to reflect on what I think the purpose of philosophy is. The above ahistorical, metaphysically rich remark from Arthur Danto comes close to encapsulating my position. This came as quite a surprise to a me: an historically minded and metaphysically impatient/suspicious type.

Philosophy is an activity. Before it is an area of study or method of inquiry, before it is a received set of ideas or a canon of certain books, it is an activity that many people find themselves involved in. It is activity which involves reflecting on your life, it is an activity which attempts to synthesize all your beliefs and observations into a synoptic vision of how the world is, it is an activity which criticizes certain ways of going about life and attempts to conserve others.

Philosophy is an activity which accompanies other activities. In Plato’s dialogue, Ion, Socrates, with his tongue firmly in his cheek, criticizes poets and composers of stories because they have no craft of their own, and they claim to be a jack-of-all-trades, writing about chariot making one day, then about tactics of warfare then next, then about the inner workings of fate, the gods and romance. The irony here, is that philosophy too, finds it tricky to articulate exactly what it’s subject matter is. You can study Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Physics, Philosophy or Art and Philosophy of Language – what do politics, mind, physics, art and language all have in common? The tempting answer is – nothing. This is because philosophy is not a subject matter, but is something which accompanies other more concrete and meaningful thought. As you think about art, politics etc, philosophy pops its head up. This is what the Danto quote is getting at above – ‘philosophy is the DNA of thought’.

I think this (brief!) description fits with the impressions I have gotten from my students over the past year, and accounts for the mixture of curiosity, satisfaction and frustration I have seen in their faces. Philosophy is extremely satisfying when it opens up a subject area to you, when it clarifies another particular concrete discourse, or when it is orientated towards concerns you have felt pull on you and questions that have presented themselves to you in your everyday life. I think it can be frustrating when it is removed from concerns you have ever had, or discourses you think are particularly important. In this way, it actually requires quite a lot from its participants.

The promise of the Danto quote is that there is an astonishingly sparse number of components to philosophy. Once you get into it, there are thought patterns, concepts and reasons which are transferable and manage to crop up in a lot of other thinking. A comforting idea to those new to the game, and a promise that philosophy needn’t only be an academic activity!