

Ask HN: How many of you are philosophers? - copycat22

what are your works?both published&#x2F;non published or currently working on.
======
ColinCera
I went to grad school in philosophy, but quit ABD. I regret neither going nor
quitting. Someday I'd like to write a book or two in the "popularizing
philosophy" genre.

------
igravious
I kind of think it is unseemly to call oneself a philosopher. Better is that
someone else calls you one.

I did an undergrad in philosophy & mathematics. Have since broadened into
digital cultural studies and digital humanities.

What I am working on (read: playing around with in my head for the last few
years) is a philosophy of the digital that is integrated with Luhmann's theory
of society.

~~~
dragonwriter
Why would it be any worse to self-identify as a philosopher than as an
engineer? Both are vocations; why would someone else be better able to assess
whether "philosopher" is yours?

~~~
igravious
1) Because humility dictates.

2) I have no problem someone calling themselves an 'academic philosopher' if
what they teach and publish is philosophy. That still doesn't make them a
philosopher though, at least not to my mind. Also, if you have studied
philosophy but don't devote a good proportion of your life to philosophising
you are not a philosopher.

3) Maybe I do need to distinguish between philosophers of the first rank and
workaday philosophers... I'll concede that :)

4) The boundaries of what a philosopher is are far more nebulous than those of
other 'professions' or 'callings' due to the very nature of philosophical
pursuit and practise.

4) Would you designate Eckart Tolle a philosopher? How about Kahlil Gibran? Or
Paulo Coehlo? Or Alain de Botton?

5) Allow me to demonstrate to contested fluidity of the subject: Derrida, a
pillar of continental philosophy is not even recognised by some[1] as a
philosopher. `Some analytic philosophers have in fact claimed, since at least
the 1980s, that Derrida's work is "not philosophy."'

6) I would prefer to say that I 'do' or 'study' philosophy... :)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida#Criticism_from_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida#Criticism_from_analytic_philosophers)

~~~
dragonwriter
> 1) Because humility dictates.

Even assuming the validity of the maxim, that would still only be valid if
"philosopher" were a value judgement and not a value-neutral description of a
vocation. "Philosopher" isn't an honor being claimed.

> 2) I have no problem someone calling themselves an 'academic philosopher' if
> what they teach and publish is philosophy. That still doesn't make them a
> philosopher though, at least not to my mind.

I think its fairly obvious that the set of "academic philsophers" is a subset
of the set of "philosophers".

> Also, if you have studied philosophy but don't devote a good proportion of
> your life to philosophising you are not a philosopher.

Sure, that's a defensible standard for describing any vocation, but not a
reason _someone else_ would be better situated to judge it. I know what I
spend my time doing better than anyone else does.

> 3) Maybe I do need to distinguish between philosophers of the first rank and
> workaday philosophers... I'll concede that :)

That's not something particularly unique to philosophers. Every field can be
viewed to have a (usually highly subjectively defined, and this is certainly
true of philosophy) "first rank".

> 4) The boundaries of what a philosopher is are far more nebulous than those
> of other 'professions' or 'callings' due to the very nature of philosophical
> pursuit and practise.

I don't think that's at all true.

> 4) Would you designate Eckart Tolle a philosopher? How about Kahlil Gibran?
> Or Paulo Coehlo? Or Alain de Botton?

I wouldn't reject the designation for any of them.

> 5) Allow me to demonstrate to contested fluidity of the subject: Derrida, a
> pillar of continental philosophy is not even recognised by some[1] as a
> philosopher. `Some analytic philosophers have in fact claimed, since at
> least the 1980s, that Derrida's work is "not philosophy."'

There are quite a lot of fields where members of some particular subschool
deride those of other subschools as not being in the field, that is neither
special to philosophy nor something that makes someone else more qualified to
judge your vocation than you are; in fact, it illustrates a pretty big
weakness in such external assessments.

> 6) I would prefer to say that I 'do' or 'study' philosophy... :)

And that's great, but we have a nice noun for people who do or study
philosophy...

