Public Philosophy, “Dumbing Down,” and the Demands of Justice

When an academic philosopher takes her first steps into public philosophy, she quickly confronts a challenge: We are used to writing in a slow, careful, sort-of-boring-but-at-least-precise way to hedge our claims, to qualify the scope of our theses, and so on. But editors for popular publications want something different: brief, succinct sentences, fewer qualifications, more exaggeration, and a polemical tone. And often, they request more: “We really need a concrete example here,” they say. “This is too abstract, we’ve taken the liberty of rewriting it a bit.”

For many of us, these negotiations feel a bit awkward. Different people draw the line in different places—but it seems unavoidable to play this game, at least up to a point, if you want to reach a broader audience. We should, however, welcome this challenge to our practices, because, as I will argue, there is a matter of justice at stake here.

How far do we academic philosophers want to go in playing the “reach a broader audience” game? This question could be understood as a purely strategic matter. Or maybe it is aesthetic. But arguably, there is a matter of justice as well: Do we keep philosophy to ourselves, the educated middle class to which most of us belong? Or do we also try to offer it to different social groups? What about those who hardly ever read anything? What about those who have difficulties with the language, for example, because they aren’t native speakers? If “philosophy” is only ever written and presented in ways that presuppose certain educational and cultural resources, doesn’t that imply that we don’t take “other people” to have any “philosophical” questions? And doesn’t that seem not only terribly arrogant, but also plainly wrong? Isn’t it unjust if philosophy isn’t available for everyone, in the many different keys that are needed to reach many different groups?

One might argue that in an ideal world, all these differences of class and educational background would not exist: All citizens would have at least a certain level of education and could participate in philosophical discussions if they wished. And philosophers would come from all kinds of backgrounds and so wouldn’t have any trouble communicating with non-philosophers from different walks of life. But we are far from that ideal world, and there is no reason to think that we shouldn’t at least try to reach out to broader audiences. If we, as academic philosophers, don’t do it, others will.

One scenario, which is arguably the case for Germany, is that the public interest in philosophy is, to a large extent, satisfied by other actors, such as “pop philosophers” who write popular audience books, or philosophy magazines (e.g. here). Many of them do a rather good job, but one has to keep in mind that most of them are commercial enterprises. They have to make a living from doing public philosophy, and hence they go to where the purchasing power is. This is not necessarily helpful for addressing the structural injustice that philosophy is made available to some social classes but much less to others, and it quite likely distorts the topics that are discussed toward what “sells.”

I take it that as a professional community, we have a responsibility to make philosophical knowledge available to broader audiences than just the “usual suspects,” such as the (often retired) educated citizens who come to public philosophy talks. There are many ways of doing so, from newspaper columns to podcasts or YouTube clips. Sometimes, academic philosophers—especially at so-called “elite” institutions, in my experience—frown upon such “dumbed down” messages. But this kind of snobbery seems out of place if we consider that the people who might have an interest in philosophy come from so many different backgrounds and places, both literally and metaphorically. Shouldn’t we aim at a variety of styles and levels of communication?

And yet, I have to admit that I was dismayed by an invitation from the editors of a fashion company’s corporate magazine to do a “photo story” with bits of philosophy inserted, presumably in really short sentences. In the end, I declined the offer, but I’m still not sure it was the right decision. Did I fail all the teenage girls who might have fallen in love with philosophy while flipping through advertisements for the new winter fashion?

What we need—and what is, fortunately, already taking place—is experimentation: trials with different formats, different styles of communication, different ways of reaching out, online and offline, to people who might be interested in philosophy but have few opportunities to encounter it. One nagging doubt that I have is that there is still a massive classist bias in many of these forms, and I keep wondering how we could do better. I am convinced that this wouldn’t be a one-way street: we would probably learn a great deal, as philosophers, from interacting with people from more diverse backgrounds. But we shouldn’t do it for instrumental reasons. We should do it because philosophy is for everyone!

Editor’s note: This is an edited version of a blog post that first appeared at www.justice-everywhere.org, a blog about justice in public affairs, and is published here with permission.

Lisa Herzog

Lisa Herzog teaches political philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, Netherlands. She published on the philosophical dimensions of markets, liberalism and social justice, ethics in organizations and the future of work. The current focus of her work are economic democracy, the future of work, and the role of knowledge in democracies.