The Road to Public Scholarship
Or: A Journey of Discovery
I’m not quite sure what this story will be. I mean that in the near-term — I haven’t planned out this post — but also in the longterm. I realized earlier this year that I wanted to pursue a PhD. I realized it for a few reasons, and I’ll probably talk about most of them in later posts.
I want to be a philosopher. I will absolutely discuss what this means to me in greater detail later, but a key point that matters now: philosophers generate knowledge and ways of thinking that help our species live happier, safer, and more comfortable lives.
Philosophy has a lot of problems in its implementation. In the way it’s discussed in popular culture, philosophy either deals with morality or existential questions. It’s all abstractions, the academic discipline most removed from anything that actually matters to people in their lives.
It seems likely to me that this happened because philosophy is inaccessible to most people. I don’t just mean they can’t get it…although, they can’t just get it, because academic journals lock their content away behind prohibitively expensive paywalls ($65 for an article?!). But I really mean it’s inaccessible because it’s not written for most people.
I’ve spent the last year preparing for grad school. For all my education, my degrees were structured as job training, which meant they did not touch on the liberal arts as much as I wish. The liberal arts are a library of ideas; we don’t need to agree with every point, but by becoming familiar with the concepts they teach, we can talk to each other with common references.
I want to become the best scholar I can, so I have spent the last year trying to read as much foundational theory as I possibly could. I have been constantly amazed at the ideas that other humans have had over the centuries. It is humbling to stand at the beginning of this journey and see how long a project it has been, and even more humbling to realize that it isn’t a journey I can complete. Civilization is around ten-thousand years old. It was over two-thousand years between Socrates and James Madison, years of war and oppression and struggle and enlightenment. The quarter-millennium since has seen more of the same. I want to aid in the struggle toward enlightenment, but I’m at the beginning of my personal journey, and (hopefully) still near the beginning of humanity’s. I won’t live to see it finished.
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So why am I writing this? If I’m really such a noob, what right do I have to put my ideas down as some sort of authority?
That’s a tough question, and one that I have grappled with for several months now. My answer might seem simple, but it’s taken a lot of thought and deliberation to come to it.
I’m not an authority, not really. But just because I can’t see the whole picture doesn’t mean I can’t see any of it; just because I might be wrong about some things doesn’t mean I’m not right about more things. I think.
But I really don’t want to claim authority. I might be wrong about things. I might be right about things. I might come to a conclusion that’s different than yours, in which case I respectfully request you write to me about it; I’d love to see if we can get to a place of mutual understanding, preferably one where we both see the world clearer.
The other reason I’m writing this is because I think someone needs to. I’ve read incredible ideas from great thinkers, and often I’ve found them impenetrable. It seems to me a shame that a person needs a master’s degree in order to understand big ideas as they’re written down. I believe, truly, that almost anyone can do almost anything. I believe every class, every group, every person has art, culture, and thoughtfulness.
But I also think there are some really great ideas out there that are really hard to understand, because the people who wrote them were primarily talking to people in their same social circles, who had the same education, had read the same books, and knew all the impossibly precise words.
I’ve found personal growth as I’ve learned. I filter (as most people do) the ideas I read through my own experiences. Often, I have found naive preconceptions in myself, ideas I had uncritically formed in childhood which had become a foundation for my adult worldview. Many of these preconceptions were flawed or incomplete; some of them hurt me.
I’ve had a lot of thoughts as I’ve been reading those books. As I learn how to be a philosopher, I’ll learn the skills to better evaluate and defend those thoughts. Open access is very important to me. I believe knowledge should be freely shared, made accessible not only in its availability but also in how understandable it is. This blog is my best effort to accomplish both.
By documenting my journey, I hope to build a database of reflections. I hope that these help readers engage with new ideas. I’ll make an effort to keep my language accessible, and to communicate my ideas explicitly. If you disagree with something I’ve written, or don’t understand the point I’m trying to make, please let me know. Sometimes I’m not specific enough in my language, which can lead to confusion or misinterpretation. If my words offend, it may just be poor phrasing on my part; I apologize in advance, and will work to identify and clarify whatever it is that needs to be fixed.
Let’s get started.
