On 16 May, the NY Times introduced a new opinion column called “The Stone” which describes itself as “a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless”. They billed the series as “a rotating group ” of “contemporary philosophers”. The same day, the chair of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and the moderator of the series, Simon Critchley, posted the inaugural entry: “What Is a Philosopher?” While an interesting read, somewhere between Plato and . . . well, Plato – as that seems to be his only point of reference, the author failed to mention his apparent criterion for all philosophers: a Ph.D. and chair at a prestigious university. How exactly this becomes important, I’m not at all sure, but over the coming weeks a number of self-proclaimed, university proclaimed, Times proclaimed, or simply Critchley proclaimed, “philosophers” make a number of comments on anything but philosophy, often throwing in a comment by Plato, Kant, or (God help us) Hegel here and there to remind you that they do know something about philosophy. I’m not sure that life in the ivory tower actually precludes one from becoming a philosopher and several of the writers take offense at the suggestion that they live in ivory towers, but those who pretend to philosophy rate a fare share from the peanut gallery and so I will comment on a few of their ramblings here, or at least I hope to, if time grants me the chance, in which I will attempt to point out the flaws in their thinking and maybe make a comment or two of my own on the underlying area of philosophy.
One more general comment for the time being, first I would note that at least one of the authors suggests that the fact that he has stirred up a huge volume of comments means that it has been successful, at the same time he seems quite upset at some of the comments. Plenty of political commentary draws a lot of response but that doesn’t make it philosophy. One’s ability to tug at heart strings and enrage or enthrall may make for good poets, musicians, and actors, and these are not at all bad skills for philosophy, but they certainly don’t define good philosophy. If they did, philosophy would be as simple as suggesting a mosque in any US village or making an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor.