In our youth, we often find ourselves being asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I think, for those of us who ended up in philosophy, there was a call to action as the “hero.” That is, before we are made aware of our greater socio-historical context, we (generally speaking) had a drive to be helpful, to see our agency maximized in a manner that is enjoyed by more than just our singular selves. We set out to change the world in some way. Before any of us could conceive of a good argument—or debate whether tacos should or should not be considered sandwiches (the jury is still out on this)—there was a natural tendency to see the various problems of the world as well as a complimentary desire to fix them.
For some reason, I first interpreted this desire quite literally. So, I spent my time working as a mechanic and then began my undergraduate journey thinking I would become an engineer (the seemingly ‘obvious’ next step). It became apparent to me that the world’s problems were not an engineering problem. Bridges had too few inspectors. Products were designed to fail to encourage profit. The “after-effects” of not thinking about the sustainability of what we produced became an increasingly concerning part of our shared reality. These issues all stemmed from the manner in which we thought about the world and ourselves. Like most of you, I saw humanity as stampeding toward a seemingly inevitable doom of our own making, and I wanted to get in the way and yell, “STOP!” I had, to my mind, identified the cause at this stage. It was our ignorance, our lack of intellectual humility. That is, our “not knowing better” or, in some cases, worse. It became clear to me early on that the fastest way to fix the issues I was seeing was to interfere at the source, like any good engineer. I needed to help people think through things more clearly, point out bad assumptions at the heart of our society, and challenge my own as I went. I was faced with inevitability… I needed to become a philosopher.
So, it’s 2024, and here I am, a philosopher beginning their journey in graduate school. An infinite number of doors leading to incalculable versions of my philosophical future are eyeing me down in a disturbingly similar fashion to how I look at an all-you-can-eat sushi menu. Said differently, I am somewhere between paralysis and pure freedom. All I see are choices with no clear champion. Do I pick the volcano eruption roll and ask for extra eel sauce? Do I go for the tempura? Or perhaps some finely sliced Heidegger topped with avocado and smelt roe? What about a rainbow roll with salmon, tuna, and the later Wittgenstein? Or I could go to the hibachi menu and commit my appetite to the exciting contemporary work in artificial intelligence or philosophy of science. If desired, I could commit myself to a truly endless meal and order the “all you can eat epistemology.” (Talk about staring into the abyss!)
I see two distinctive realities that guide how I read the menu, not just for me but for all of us. We could order what might completely satiate our hunger, trying one or more of everything, leaving us happily undoing our topmost button on our pants, asking for a predictively expensive check, thinking, “I should have stopped before dessert.” Or we could eat from the limited menu, be slightly less satisfied, and know that we will be less financially burdened as well. Though, we might have to learn to cope with the fear of missing out. The two options I see before me are to pursue my interests for my own sake or to pursue financial stability, i.e., a career with a healthy dose of “FOMO.” Then there is this additional ongoing struggle between the version of myself that wants to say something highly original in a field that matters to me and the version of myself that wants to see my work accepted (the caveat being that going against the grain can help you succeed just as easily as it might sink you). Then there are the years of work and debt that I hope will amount to a “payoff,” which is determined by job availability rather than my interests. The theme of this dilemma is mostly consolidated in the following question: Do I tailor my education to my satisfaction, or do I sacrifice my indulgent and broad curiosity to ensure that I get a job? Truthfully, I have accepted that I will have to ‘bend the knee’ to survive in a world where philosophy exists for that which it can sell and not that which satisfies philosophy itself.
In philosophy, we see ethics as something we could not live without. Yet, the primary reason it is funded (and why it is a relatively safe area of specialization) is because of its potential to prevent billions in corporate and social liabilities (i.e., recapture potentially lost profit). That is, it more directly contributes to the production of profit than scholarship on Eugen Dühring is likely to. In fact, the humanities, which do not have obvious tendencies to produce profit, are in desperate need of external funding. Thus, it does at least appear to be the case that we have to pick between “success” as “one’s ability to acquire or produce funding” and “success” as “genuine philosophical progress for its own sake.”
We likely all see philosophy as being an inherently valuable pursuit. But, in late modern capitalism, knowledge (or its pursuit) is valued insofar as it produces profit. Most of us tend to be hostile to the factory line that is contemporary academia producing intellectual laborers for the sake of larger profit margins. Indeed, the sarcastic adage of academic philosophy being a pyramid scheme becomes hauntingly accurate in this sense. It hurts more than I can bear. I would wager that every department chair in philosophy would reject this style of education for profit if they were free to. They share our same misfortune in this regard. You see, if universities fail to place students into tenured positions or jobs that pay well enough to justify the financial and emotional hardships incurred whilst obtaining a PhD, then those departments begin to lose funding via enrollment. They wither away, and they may disappear altogether. For further reading related to this topic, I recommend this article by Justin Weinberg, which was featured on Daily Nous.
Increasingly, academic philosophy must cater to the current means of production to sustain itself. Thus, this “all-you-can-eat” view of philosophy is both too much and not enough. It is doubtful we would ever be able to find a philosophical feast that would truly fill us, and so we face ourselves as possessing an ironically unreasonable hunger. And yet, we are corralled (for the sake of profit) into vocationalized hyperspecialization, into choosing just one or two rolls, denying our own hunger, or, more appropriately, our lust for something more. Do we arouse ourselves with hedonistic indulgence and continue to ponder the endless menu? Do we live a life of endless philosophical consumption? Or do we sacrifice our wonderous appetite to better secure a future for ourselves in an increasingly profit-driven world? And finally, to what degree might this be necessary?
Potential answers to these questions are necessarily specific to each of us. For myself, I will continue to expose myself to philosophical flavors that interest me until I can settle on a few items from the menu that I feel I can return to time and time again. Currently, phenomenological approaches to issues in the philosophy of science & technology, environmental philosophy, philosophy of mental illness, and exploring various notions of “self” are the flavors I show up for. My goal is to create a “specialty roll” out of the intersection of these flavors. The hope is that I might satisfy my hunger in a way that is specialized enough for academia but remains a complex dance of contrasting and complimentary flavors for myself to enjoy. Fortunately, the philosophical menu is by its nature—and our own—endless. If my “specialty roll” does not satisfy me completely, I can always order something else or simply reinvigorate my “specialty roll” with a side of eel sauce and lemon.
Alex Filliez
Alex Filliez is a graduate student at The University of New Mexico. As a former foster youth and high school dropout, Alex is also passionately working with UNM's Mellon foundation to help increase access to education in the humanities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. They are primarily interested in phenomenological approaches to philosophy of science & technology, environmental philosophy, and philosophy of mental illness and psychoanalysis (esp. Issues concerning relationality, the intelligibility of the self, and existential sustainability). In their spare time, they continue to hone their skills as a mechanic and tradesperson while exploring their other hobbies such as guitar, photography, cooking, and enjoying nature.
