Field Notes of a First-Year

8/7/2019 Field Notes of a First-Year

1/36

Field Notes of a First-YearToward a Sociology of the Vanderbilt Philosophy Department

Let us not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worseSuppose Oxford had

snared and disembowelled Shakespeare! Suppose Harvard had set its stamp on Mark Twain!

H.L. Mencken

C.J. Sentell

December 2007

In this essay, I will survey the Vanderbilt Philosophy Department from a sociological point

of view. That is to say, my analysis in this essay will focus on the context of a particular

social and institutional setting that is the Philosophy Department at Vanderbilt University.

While my analysis affirms the sociological premise that the local situation is the starting

point of analysis, not the ending point, I begin the essay by outlining some theoretical tools

that guide my analysis (Collins, 20). In the second section of the essay, I examine the

Vanderbilt Philosophy Department and offer several specific proposal for reconstruction.

I. Analytical Tools: Institutions, Disciplines, and Traditions

All knowledge is produced; it is made, not found. Knowledge is the product of particular

people in the contexts of particular situations. In this way, knowledge is artifactual and ideas

are artifacts. Intellectuals and other knowledge workers do not stumble upon the facts of

nature or the norms of culture and simply report what they find, but rather are always in the

course of making and remaking past facts and past norms in light of present considerations.

The production of knowledge, then, happens in a variety of ways and in a variety of contexts.

These contexts vary to the extent that individuals and their social, cultural and institutional

milieus vary. Problems, philosophical and otherwise, do not exist free-floating, so to speak,

ready-at-hand before inquiry begins, but rather arise in the midst of concrete interactions in a

concrete world. While this way of framing the production of knowledge grounds the

production in a social base, it is not to say that the relationship of knowledge to its base is

unidirectional. Rather, the relationship between knowledge and its social base is adialectical one, that is, knowledge is a social product andknowledge is a factor in social

change (Berger and Luckmann, 87). Thus, knowledge is both produced within a social

context and is, in turn, productive of that social context.

While this analytical framework for the production of knowledge is applicable to

specific cases of philosophical and otherwise intellectual forms of knowledge, the work of


2/36

2

John Dewey expands the sociological premise to include all forms of thinking, not simply its

most theoretical and abstract formulations. According to Dewey, philosophy is just one type

of thinking among many that attempts to find varying degrees of certainty in an uncertain

world. In terms of the philosophical tradition, Dewey traces this quest for certainty from

the Greeks, who held that if philosophy were truly to aim at certainty, it could not be

concerned with the realm of doing or making, but must focus its efforts on the search for the

eternally and necessarily true. Dewey traces this bifurcation between knowledge and action,

between theory and practice, through the modern philosophies of Locke, Spinoza, Kant, and

extrapolates its effects for much of the epistemologically and metaphysically oriented

philosophy that follows in their wake. By maintaining this division between theory and

practice, Dewey claims, the mainstream philosophical tradition has divorced itself from the

conditions that gave rise to it in the first place, namely, the uncertainties of everyday life.

For Dewey, philosophy grows out of the problems of life, it does not stand over and

against an independent reality that is beyond normal reach; it emerges organically from our

fumbling about the world, rather than being handed down through transcendent rationality.

This view is meant to release philosophy from the quagmire of timeless questions and call

it back to cultural relevancy by addressing the concerns and problems that face communities

in the present. Writing a few years before the appearance of his most metaphysically

adventurous work, Experience and Nature, Dewey argues that an important philosophical

and cultural reconstruction would occur when philosophy ceases to be a device for dealing

with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for

dealing with the problems of men [and women] (MW 10: 46).1

Within the limits of this

argument, it is important to note, contain Deweys account of the origins of philosophy as

well as a prescription for its future office; indeed, for Dewey, the two were and are

inextricably linked.

Deweys account of philosophy is simultaneously psychological, sociological, and

genealogical. Psychologically, philosophy arises out of a real cognitive need to attempt to

gain certainty and security in a world fraught with uncertainty and insecurity; it endeavors to

render the world intelligible by means of ideas that facilitate explanation, understanding, and

control. The urge to philosophize, to seek adequate answers to the complex range of

1

I note the sequence here because it is interesting that Dewey develops his meta-philosophical stance,

which is firmly grounded within a sociological account of philosophical knowledge, before writing one of

his most philosophical works; this fact, one can only hope, indicates Deweys intention to provide a

rubric under which to read his own work, as well as the work of others.


3/36

3

problematic experiences is, in other words, itself simple and basic to the continuation of life.

Sociologically, philosophy is a particular form of cultural response to the experience of

uncertainty that confronts individuals and communities in particular times and particular

places; it accounts for various philosophical doctrines, systems, and positions as concrete

artifacts directed at the precariousness of lived experience as it was then had.

Genealogically, these responses are connected across time, through generations of people

living in actual communities who face actual problems, clinging together in the dark against

the experience of indeterminacy. This connection across time is a literal, physical one:

because the material arrangement of cultures, with all their concomitant economies of

community, body and experience, persists through time, the problematic situations

experienced by cultures persist through time. Philosophy, in this way, is both a product of

and constitutive of material traditions of communities across generations.

The strong and central sociological thesis of Deweys account is that all forms of

thinking are ideational constructs that arise within a given culture so as to deal with a

particular set of problems and concerns, which are, in turn, both the necessary conditions of

and the grounds upon which various understandings of the world are constructed. Even logic

itself is subject to this thesis: rather than Aristotles logic embodying the necessary and fixed

logical structure of the world that timelessly obtains, Dewey argues that Aristotelian logic

was relevant, and grounded in, the subject-matter of natural science as that subject-matter,

the structure of nature, was then understood (LW 12: 416). While many of the responses

typically read as part of the philosophical tradition have been articulated in a universal voice,

and therefore have at least implicitly denied precisely that cultural historicity Dewey

attributes to them, the account he offers embraces these intimations to immortality as simply

characteristic of the philosophical experience, which are, in turn, based within everyday

experience. While the attempt to escape the present into an everlasting and unchanging

realm of existence and truth has been a prevalent feature of philosophical inquiries past and

present, the propensity to speak declaratively, in the universal voice, and under the aegis of

finality has been part and parcel of the history of philosophical authorship.

According to Dewey, then, philosophy is a cultural phenomenon whose development

is coextensive with the material conditions of life as they present themselves as problematic.

Problems, actual problems, give rise to philosophical experience; the problems of philosophy

do not exist prior to or outside of experienced life, but emerge rather as responses to

interactions with and within the world. Dewey claims that when the history of philosophy is


4/36

4

understood in this way, the task of philosophy in the present shifts from being concerned with

the timeless and technical disputes of past thinkers something he variously refers to as

scholastics or dialectics and instead becomes an organ for cultural criticism in the

present (LW 1:298). By arguing that philosophers need to return to the problems of men,

Dewey is suggesting that when philosophers return their critical gaze to the problems of

contemporary life they will thereby restore philosophy to its proper office of addressing the

ongoing experience of contingency and uncertainty in the present. In this way, the activity of

philosophizing could be rejoined to its generative conditions and thus regain its original

social function.

It is important to note, however, that Dewey is notclaiming that the philosophies of

the past were themselves disconnected from their material, cultural, and experiential bases; in

fact, and as I have put the matter above, Dewey is arguing precisely the opposite. The way to

read the history of philosophy is just as the history of particular artifacts, characterized as

responses to the uncertainty and instability of personal and cultural experiences, the primary

(though not exclusive) expressions and transmissions of which have tended through the

written word. Moreover, Dewey is not saying that philosophers need to stop doing

philosophy and instead do something more practical. Rather, Dewey reiterates that the

vocational imperative of the philosopher is the reconstruction of practices along more

intelligent lines through engaged cultural criticism.2 Philosophy is immanently practical to

the extent that its critical inquires transform actual practices, beliefs, and forms of life. To

cite but one instance of this insistence, Dewey says:

The depersonalizing of the things of everyday practice becomes the chief agency of

their repersonalizing in new and more fruitful modes of practice. The paradox of

theory and practice is that theory is with respect to all modes of practice the most

practical of all things, and the more impartial and impersonal it is, the more truly

practical it is. (MW 8:82)

That is to say, theoretical inquiry is practical insofar as it renders experience more

manageable, more understandable, and more efficacious with regard to experience yet to

come. The potential of philosophy to reconstruct practices along more intelligent bases

resides in the willingness of philosophers to engage people where they stand, in the middle of

their own experience, and in between the experiences of others. Thus Dewey considers

philosophy to be an immanently practical endeavor insofar as it is attentive to the

2

Cf. Dewey, MW 12:80, 187, 256; and LW 1:295; 8:29.


5/36

5

experienced problems of life and responsive to task of making practices more intelligent. But

Deweys account of the social origins of philosophy, as well as the way in which it situates

philosophical inquiry within the limits of particular genealogies or traditions, neglects the

crucial role institutions play in the production of knowledge. Put differently, Deweys

account of philosophy omits the central context in which philosophy has come to be

produced, namely, the institutions of higher education, of which the modern research

university stands as an exemplar.

The institutionalization of intellectual life is closely bound up with the particular

mode of intellectual activity now grouped under the rubric of philosophy. This link,

importantly, is historical and contingent; there is nothing analytically or conceptually

necessary about the link between institutionalization and philosophy, but it is rather the

consequence of a group of individuals working to affect a transformation of the material base

that supported their intellectual lives.3 This institutionalization began in the late eighteenth-

century with the efforts of Kant, and the generation of German Idealists that followed him,

who worked to establish the modern university system as it now exists. Randall Collins has

shown the ways in which the creation of the modern research university has

centered on the graduate faculty of research professors, and [its] material base has

expanded to dominate intellectual life ever since [the late eighteenth-century]. Kant

straddled two worlds: the patronage networks of the previous period, and the modern

research university, which came into being, in part through Kants own agitation,

with the generation of Kants successors. (618)

In other words, the contemporary American university, qua institution, is a direct descendant

of the German university system, and therefore makes the period from 1765 to the

presentinstitutionally all of a piece (Collins, 618). Since this time, the primary home of

philosophical activity has been within the institutions of higher education.

That the institutions of higher education are now the primary spaces in which that

aspect of intellectual life known as philosophy is conducted is a well-established empirical

fact. In many ways, then, the question What is Philosophy? can be answered

sociologically: philosophy is simply whatever is being done in the departments of

3 It is worth highlighting the way in which bread and reason are connected. When one begins to analyze

the justificatory practices that individuals and communities deploy in route to rationalizing their activities,

one must be equally aware that the interests of maintaining an income so as to provide food, shelter, and the

other requisite material goods of life often take on an overriding importance. Put yet another way, one

must be careful about engaging positions that deal with peoples sources of livelihood and income, as these

exist in a close, rapid relation to the reasons they offer to justify their professional activities.


6/36

6

philosophy found in institutions of higher education. This answer may seem question

begging or simply unsatisfactory. And, indeed, a more robust answercan be given to this

question, but only after one accepts it as an entry point for inquiry into the question. Put

differently, it is only by recognizing the inextricable connection between institutions and

activities that the activities whose nature and meaning is being sought can be circumscribed.

All activities even primarily intellectual ones such as philosophy is often taken to be

occur within a social context. And when these activities become such that they do not

typically occur outside of institutional contexts, those very contexts must be the starting point

of analysis. To understand the process of the institutionalization of intellectual life that

began roughly in 1765 and which has continued into today, then, requires further

interrogation into the concept of the institution.

An institution, most generally, is an organization of individuals that structures the

activities of those individuals in a particular way. This organization and its concomitant

regulation of activity requires legitimation as soon as it attempts to pass on the norms implicit

in its organization to a new generation of institutional members. In this way, the expanding

institutional order develops a corresponding canopy of legitimations, stretching over it a

protective cover of both cognitive and normative interpretation. These legitimations are

learned by the new generation during the same process that socializes them into the

institutional order (Berger and Luckmann, 62). Institutions, then, are the organizations of

habits that guide the activities of its members in a particular way. These habits are

transmitted in the processes of socialization and education, which requires certain structures

of legitimation to account for the value of its habituation.

Thus there is a reciprocal, dialectical relation between institutions, the habits they

inculcate in their members, and the reasons given to legitimate those activities that are

considered central or typical of the organization. As Berger and Luckmann point out,

[i]nstitutionalization occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualized

actions by types of actors. Put differently, any such typification is an institution (54). The

typification of behavior, in other words, is the sine qua non of institutionalization. When the

activities of individuals are regulated so as to produce a relatively homogenous (or at least a

consistent) space of behavior, institutionalization is already underway. The regulation which

produces this unified space of activity, importantly, is not strictly limited to institutions qua

buildings or even qua legally constituted bodies organized toward a particular end.

Institutions, rather, include all forms of behavior typification, some of which are tacit, such as


7/36

7

the norms of polite conversation, while others are more explicit, such as the conventions of

public morality as they are ensconced in codified law.4 Institutions involve the ordering of

life and its activities, public and private, along channels of expectation and meaning that are

reinforced through the transmission of the institution to the next generation. In this way,

institutions can be thought of as both the material arrangement of individuals in a given

social space as well as the constitutive patterns of conduct that delimit the bounds of

meaningful and acceptable behavior in that social place. The scope of institutions, then,

extends from edifices architectural and legal, to resource allocations financial and cultural.

Institutions are, above all, spaces of order. The space of this order, moreover, is

always constituted by a particular place. In institutions, space and place exist simultaneously,

coinciding and developing in a dialectical relationship. The space of institutional order, in

other words, is constituted by the material singularity of individuals and their activities

existing at a particular time and place. Put differently, institutions do not exist in the abstract,

but are always constituted by actual bodies and powers existing within a given social order.

In light of this, it is important to note that:

Institutions further imply historicity and control. Reciprocal typifications of actions

are built up in the course of a shared history. They cannot be created instantaneously.

Institutions always have a history, of which they are the products.Institutions also,

by the very fact of their existence, control human conduct by setting up predefined

patterns of conduct, which channel it in one direction as against the many other

directions that would theoretically be possible.To say that a segment of human

activity has been institutionalized is already to say that this segment of human

activity has been subsumed under social control.Institutionalization is incipient in

every social situation continuing in time. (Berger and Luckmann, 54-55)

The order that institutions impose upon activity, then, requires discipline. Varieties of

discipline are to institutions as rules are to games. Without discipline, there would be no

such thing as institutions; without rules, there would be no such thing as games. And, given

that institutions both exist within and are the operative structures of social life, discipline is,

ipso facto, a constitutive feature of social life.

Thus, discipline is a necessary condition of institutionalization. It is not a sufficient

condition because, again, the work of legitimation is always already underway through the

4

For an fascinating account of the former, i.e., tacit norms of civility, within scientific cultures, cf. Shapin

(1994), especially Chapter One.


8/36

8

transmission of the institutional order to new members. Discipline, in this context, refers to

the specific limitations placed on behaviors within the institutional context. But discipline,

obviously, has another meaning relevant to this discussion, namely, an area of study within

institutions of higher learning. In this context, we speak, for example, of history, chemistry,

and mathematics as being separate disciplines, each of which are marked off by discrete

subject matters and distinct methodological approaches that establish lines of demarcation

between different areas of inquiry. It is neither coincidental nor inconsequential that the

word discipline is used in both of these contexts. On the one hand, discipline is understood

to be the general means by which order is transmitted among individuals so as to establish the

limits of meaningful action within social organization. Discipline, in this context, is neither

explicitly violent nor especially coercive, but is instead a function of the scaffolding around

which individual behavior is built according to the joint matrices of social expectation and

typification. On the other hand, however, discipline takes on a more precise meaning by

denoting a particular type of disciplining that constitutes an area of study within the

university. In this context, discipline is a way of thinking, a way of training one to see the

world from a particular intellectualized point of view or framework. Here, disciplines are

differentiated from one another through the identification of methods and contents

distinguishable between disciplines.

It is important to note the way in which the two distinct senses of institution track

along the two distinct senses of discipline outlined above. While institutions are both

conceptual and material, disciplines too are conceptual and material. That is to say, to the

extent that institutions are both the conceptual structures around which an individuals

behavior is shaped and the actual material arrangement of resources and power in a given

society, discipline functions as the regulatory source of that conceptual structure and the

material manifestation of authority in negotiating the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion.

The move from what I have termed the conceptual senses of institution and discipline

to the material senses of the same amounts of a reification of these phenomena. But it is

more than merely a reification, because these two senses are in a dialectical, mutually

constitutive relation. In other words, and as I have argued above, the conceptual aspects of

institutions and disciplines are immanent from within the pre-existing material arrangements

of the same within society. Berger and Luckmann claim that reification is the apprehension

of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possible suprahuman

terms[It is] the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something


9/36

9

else than human products (Berger and Luckmann, 89). The key to the concept of reification

for Berger and Luckmann, then, is that it mistakes those aspects of the world that are made

for those aspects that are found. Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his

own authorship of the human world, they claim, and that the reified world is, by definition,

a dehumanized world (Berger and Luckmann, 89). While this conception of reification is

helpful, there is yet another sense of the term, namely, reification as the making concrete of

that which is merely or simply theretofore abstract. Reification, in this sense, is the

concretizing of the abstract; it is the material instantiation of the conceptual order. But, as I

argued earlier, the material and the intellectual, the concrete and the abstract, are but two

sides of the same dialectical coin, which is to say each reinforces and gives rise to the other.

Thus, reification can be taken to denote a more particular phenomena that involves the

material manifestation of conceptual orders, and this occurs, for example, in the way in

which writing reifies thought and identity or the way in which certain ideologies of

philosophy are reified into disciplinary institutional structures that narrow the range of

acceptable activity on the part of its practitioners.

So, within the academy, disciplines quite literally discipline individuals into a

particular institutional space so as to carry on a specific mode of thinking and writing and

teaching. Because disciplines are situated within actual institutions, which have a limited

amount of resources to allocate, the social and intellectual work necessary to maintain the

boundaries between disciplines gains a decidedly pointed focus. 5 This boundary-work is

characteristic of institutions whose financial or cultural resources are limited, which is every

institution. In other words, because all institutions have finite budgets of money and

eminence with which to dispense according to merit and import, individuals in disciplines

often take up entrenched positions in order to justify or legitimate their place within the

institutional framework. This justificatory work often takes the form of denouncing certain

subjects as not within the legitimate scope of the discipline or the exclusion of certain sub-

fields as being methodologically under par.

It is no surprise, then, that this ideology of disciplinary independence arose in the

very same cultural milieu as the modern research university (Collins, 619). The development

of rhetorical and methodological strategies, and the transmission of these strategies to the

next generation of scholars, is key to maintaining difference and import within an

increasingly specialized and competitive institutional environment. The concept of

5

Cf. Gieryn (1983)


10/36

10

legitimation is again central to understanding the nature of this boundary-work. As Berger

and Luckmann note, the increasing autonomy of subuniverses makes for special problems of

legitimations vis--vis both outsiders and insiders. The outsiders have to be kept out,

sometimes even kept ignorant of the existence of the subuniverse.The insiders, on the other

hand, have to be kept in (87). Negotiating this boundary, in other words, has a double

function in that it demarcates the space of inclusion and exclusion with respect to individual

practitioners so as to create a unified place for the discipline within the larger institution.

The rise of the modern research university brought with it professionalization, which

in turn brought the distinction between professionals and amateurs, genuine practitioners and

mere dilettantes, to the foreground. The lines between these descriptions have been endlessly

negotiated and disputed since the professionalization of intellectual life, and in their very

disputation the distinctions have been mutually reinforced. Marjorie Garber draws these

distinctions in terms of the amateur professional and the professional amateur and notes

how these boundaries continue to shift today. She describes the contemporary debate over

the boundary between professionalism and amateurism in terms of a paradox, namely, that

the virtues of amateurism are the goals of the profession, and yet the professional makes the

best amateur (51). But this debate would not be possible if the modern research university

did not maintain such institutional hegemony over the lives of intellectuals. Before the

modern research university, most philosophers tended to be polymaths that addressed a wide

range of intellectual issues. These all-purpose intellectuals, moreover, were either

independently wealthy (e.g., Descartes), or were supported through the intricate networks of

patronage in the form of aristocratic support (e.g., Hobbes), or held perfunctory governmental

jobs (e.g. Lessing). The important point, in other words, is that before the academic

revolution, the most important and best-known philosophers had for several centuries been

non-academics (Collins, 638). While there is a tendency to idealize this organization of

intellectual life, it is worth noting the difference, if only to compare the benefits and

drawbacks of organizations past and present. But institutionalization brought with it

specialization and the division of the intellectual attention space into discrete academic areas

of focus (Collins, 619).

In light of the above considerations, it should come as no surprise that philosophy has

been an active participant in the persistent and oftentimes vitriolic disputes of the disciplines

since the establishment of the modern research university. What counts as philosophical and

what does not count as philosophical has, in other words, been a central philosophical issue


11/36

11

for some time, and has as much to do with philosophy qua intellectual practice as it does with

the institution qua arrangement of resources. In a very significant sense, the important

innovations that have occurred within philosophical discourse since Kant have been answers

to the question concerning the boundaries of philosophy itself. But these philosophical

questions are not different in kind from the institutional questions. While they can be

distinguished analytically i.e. as philosophical questions within texts and political problems

within institutions such separation is specious at best and nave at worst. The central crux

of the sociology of philosophy is that the philosophical and the sociological are intimately

and inextricably linked. One gives rise to the other and each develop in a mutually

constitutive relation to the other. Thus, while the impulse to make claims in the form of

Philosophy is has been a distinguishing feature of philosophical discourse throughout

history, after the sociology of philosophy such claims are more likely evidence of a

fundamental category mistake. To continue to engage in such boundary-work in an

unreflective or overly serious sense is, in other words, evidence of a certain naivet with

respect to ones own activities. The sociological has now enriched the philosophical, and to

neglect this insight is to be intransigent to the evidence at hand; it is to resist a certain

institutional and disciplinary self-consciousness.

Because the question regarding the boundary of the philosophical can be answered in

an empirical way does not, of course, mean that there is not a philosophical question

regarding that boundary. Rather, it means that any inquiry into the nature of that boundary

must be carried out in light of the relevant social facts and the arrangement of particular

material and cultural resources. And because such boundary-work occurs only at the level

particular individuals in particular institutional contexts, it is hardly worth talking about

philosophy in the abstract. There is always philosophy begin done here, by this person, or

there, by that person. There is no philosophy in general; and, contra Nietzsche, who wanted

to add philosophers to Aristotles gods and beasts living outside the polis, philosophers too

are always already living within a particular polis, at a particular time, with a particular group

of people, and are acting with particular interests and for particular ends.

With this in mind, I would now like to turn to a particular institution of philosophy

and examine it in terms of its institutionality, its disciplinarity, and its legitimation functions.

But first a note on being a member of the subject of analysis: being a current member of this

institution poses certain problems for the objectivity of analysis. More specifically, as a

graduate student member of this institution, I certainly have certain interests and concerns


12/36

12

that would not, for example, be necessarily the same as a tenured professor of three decades,

or an undergraduate student, or the departmental administrative assistant. But, since one

cannot do without a perspective altogether, I will proceed by way of affirming my place

within the institution so as to heighten the awareness of my potential selective emphases and

guard against their undue influence.

II. The Vanderbilt Philosophy Department

Vanderbilt both in terms of the philosophy department proper and the university more

generally is in a time transition. In many ways and for many good reasons, the university is

attempting to overcome various facets of its history, which includes some disgraceful

episodes and roles as an elite Southern institution. These attempts at reformation include, but

are obviously not limited to, recruiting a more diverse student and faculty body, revising the

curriculum and augmenting it with centres of specialized study, and raising the profile of

specific departments through a variety of approaches. The philosophy department in

particular has purported to be participating in this transition by seeking a way forward as a

coherent and distinct department that exemplifies the universitys larger mission, vision, and

goals. Whether the department will be able to overcome internal oppositions so as to

participate in this transition remains to be seen.

Vanderbilt University consists of 10 different schools offering a variety of degree

programs. The university employs 2,689 full-time and 315 part-time faculty members, 97%

of which hold terminal degrees in their field. When these figures are combined with the

17,567 non-academic employees, Vanderbilt employs 20,571 people, thus making it not only

largest employer in Nashville and middle-Tennessee, but also the second-largest private

employer in the entire state. Founded in 1873 through a one million dollar gift by the

shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, as of June 2006 the universitys net assets

totalled 4.6 billion dollars and it possessed a total managed endowment of 2.6 billion dollars,

an amount that surpasses the 2005 GDP of every nation in the world except the United States,

Japan, and Germany. Obviously, the financial and cultural resources that this institution has

at its disposal are enormous. Moreover, the history of the growth of the university is

complex and includes periods of openly discriminatory practices and the investment and

influence by many who aimed to guide its direction toward decidedly political ends. While

the details of this history are beyond the scope of the present analysis, the general trajectory


13/36

13

of Vanderbilts institutional history is nonetheless an important feature of which to take

note.6

Like any institution, the history of the philosophy department at Vanderbilt is

constituted by various interpersonal pasts. Many members of the faculty have been at

Vanderbilt for several decades, which makes for a significantly rich cluster of interpersonal

relationships. Of particular note is a sexual discrimination lawsuit over a contested tenured

position that began in 1994 and was resolved in 1999.7

Though the explicit and public

rancour that emanated from this conflict has largely subsided, there remains a palpable sense

of division between parties to the dispute. This episode highlights a further fact of note,

namely, that the settlement of the suit resulted in the first woman receiving tenure in the

department. To date, only one other woman holds tenure in the department, and she entered

with a named chair. So, to put this point more directly, only one woman in the history of the

department has received tenure along the typical professional route from assistant to full

professor, and this decision was contested all the way to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Moreover, in the last five years the department has also undergone a significant influx

of new faculty members. One result of this influx has been a significant revision of the

graduate curriculum, which was spearheaded by several of these new faculty members. The

changes of this new curriculum included modifying the structure and content of

comprehensive exams, revising the language and logic requirements, as well as adding

requirements for modest historical breadth and familiarity with a range of disciplinary sub-

fields. The end result seems to be aimed at producing doctoral candidates who have a

specialization in at least one historical period, e.g., the twentieth-century, and one particular

area of focus, e.g., social and political philosophy. One notable change in the new

curriculum is the addition of a compulsory course for first-year graduate students on teaching

and research methods within the profession, which will analyzed below in more detail.

Communities, philosophical and otherwise

Thus far I have been using the language of institutions to denote the assemblage of

individuals within the context of mutually constitutive disciplinary matrices. I would now

like to alter that language by using the word community to denote the same. This shift is

meant to capture the way in which the individuals that constitute the Vanderbilt philosophy

6

For institutional facts and figures, see www.vanderbilt.edu7

1999 FED App. 0243P (6th Cir.), Nos. 98-5266/ 5268


14/36

14

department tend to understand themselves to be participating in a smaller organization, based

roughly on the boundaries of the philosophy department proper, but also within the larger

institutional context of the university. To be sure, the philosophy department is itself an

institution, but it also functions within the larger institution of the university. The philosophy

department is, in other words, a sub-set within the university, a smaller and at least

purportedly more tightly knit group of individuals, which the term community is meant to

capture more effectively.

The philosophical community at Vanderbilt has several spheres of participation and

involvement. If we define a community in terms of those individuals who are affected by

actions taken by other members of that community, the philosophical community of

Vanderbilt must be construed more widely than simply the members of the philosophy

department.8

When so construed, the faculty and graduate students comprise but two of the

most obvious categories of community composition. Other categories include undergraduate

majors, affiliated scholars from other institutions, as well as departmental administrative

assistants, student workers, and janitorial personnel. To be a member of the community,

then, is to be affected by actions taken by other members of the community. In this way, the

scope of community boundaries is drawn so as to take into account all such effected

individuals. That said, in terms of direct philosophical involvement which includes

teaching and learning inside the department and out, participation in departmental functions

and colloquia, and the present and future professional affiliation of its scholars the graduate

students and the faculty comprise the largest and most central members of the philosophical

community at Vanderbilt.

In terms of the faculty, there are thirty-six faculty members, lecturers, or instructors

that constitute or are otherwise affiliated with the department. Of these, approximately

twelve call some other department, program, or office their institutional home. For example,

there are several philosophers or philosophically-trained faculty who are primarily associated

with the Law School, the Medical School, or the Political Science Department, one faculty

member serves in an administrative capacity, two run the Center for Ethics, two are

associated with the Writing Center, and there are at least two professors emeriti still active

within the department. In addition to these, there are two new incoming faculty members,

and the department continues to discuss additional hires. Among the total existing faculty

(including incoming members), there are 28 men and 8 women. Of these, there are three

8

For more on defining a community in this way, cf. Dewey (LW 2:243-246).


15/36

15

faculty members of colour, or who represent typically underrepresented racial and ethnic

groups within the discipline specifically and the academy more generally.

Though not exclusively, graduate students represent the other primary pole of

philosophical community life at Vanderbilt. While there are approximately 10 active

undergraduate majors, there are approximately forty-three graduate students active within the

department, each at different stages of their degree completion. Of the total number of

graduate students, there are 14 women and 29 men. Currently, there are two students of

African decent and two students of Asian decent. Since 2004, the department has accepted

only the number of graduate students to which it could offer fully-funded assistantships. This

has resulted in an average incoming class of five. The move to accept only those students for

whom the university could fully support was a crucial one. When members of the graduate

student community were differentiated by the degree of support they received from the

university, certain social tensions were inevitable. In other words, when some members had

to constantly worry about the sources of their financial support while others did not, that

inequality tended to negatively affect the interpersonal dynamics of departmental life. As I

understand it, the redress of this inequality has resulted in a positive change in the social

organization of the graduate student community.

For a few decades now, the department has been described both internally and

externally as pluralistic, which is most basically understood as not being committed to any

one particular philosophical school or method, but rather open to the co-existence of such

schools of thought within a single department. By their own description, the faculty at

Vanderbilt represent a fairly atypical conglomeration of philosophical perspectives and

specialities. This description is, of course, highly contested from both within and without,

and while it is not my purpose here to inquire if, in fact, the description is accurate, it

nevertheless remains a prevalent feature of the department that it claims to welcome a

diversity of philosophical perspectives, projects, and questions.

It is important to recognize that the philosophy department at Vanderbilt is not

necessarily well-regarded within the profession as a whole. To be sure, within the enclaves

of Continental and American philosophy the department holds a distinct place among the top

institutions covering those traditions. But, as a whole, the program lacks top-tier status

within the contemporary professional philosophical world. To cite one, if contentious,

example: the department fails to appear on the Philosophical Gourmet Report, which purports

to be a ranking of the top 50 graduate programs in philosophy, broadly construed, as well as


16/36

16

specific sub-rankings according to faculty speciality and notoriety.9

This survey is,

importantly, based explicitly on professional reputation. The only place Vanderbilt appears

on this ranking is under the sub-category of American philosophy, and here the department

musters only a Notable status. Also of note, one faculty member of the department serves

in an advisory capacity to the rankings committee of the Gourmet Report, while another

faculty member has commented critically on the Reports methodology in print.10

And while

I wish neither to affirm nor deny the validity of these rankings here, I point them out so as to

index a general professional sentiment about the department. Many members of the

department are aware of the departments status within the discipline as a profession, and this

fact causes a host of reactions among students, faculty, and administrators alike. While some

take pride in the departments outsider status, others find it a source of professional anxiety

and, at the extreme, may even harbour some resentment over the matter. To further situate

this sentiment, many members of the department eagerly await the disclosure of the National

Research Councils findings regarding the respective rankings of departments along more

objective criteria than are used by the Philosophical Gourmet Report. Rather than basing

the rankings of various departments in the reputations of individual faculty members and

their work, the National Research Councils data is based, for example, on the number of

scholarly articles and books accepted for publication.

The reconstructive question thus becomes about how to regard this status and what to

do about it in the future. Some members of the community think that the department needs to

work to become in some way more mainstream. Proposals toward this end include

attracting new faculty members so as to raise the professional profile of the department, and

otherwise move to become more like the departments that are regarded by the profession to

be the best. Other proposals suggest the department find a particular niche within the

discipline and focus resources at becoming a top program in that field. One of the most

recent suggestions has been to focus on Global Value Theory, which would create a new

area of specialization and make Vanderbilt the de facto leader in the field.11

But what,

9 For more details on the Philosophical Gourmet Report and its operative methodology, see its website

located at: http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/10 Stuhr has been quoted inLingua Franca and The New York Times regarding this issue.11 From the proposal: We aim to build the preeminent philosophy department in global value theory,

understood broadly to encompass issues of justice, equality, freedom, responsibility, identity, virtue,

beauty, culture, criticism, tradition, and liberation. This goal both enhances and diversifies our existing

strength in value theory; it is also compatible with our long-standing commitment to doing philosophy in a

historically-informed way. Accomplishing this goal requires a commitment to expanding the diversity of

our faculty, students, and curriculum.


17/36

17

exactly, this field would include is at least not obviously clear, and widespread disagreement

over its potential substance and focus persists. But these two options are not necessarily

opposed to one another, and mediating between them seems to be the most sensible option.

In the view of this writer, the department should avoid trying to become more like the

top departments of the profession because such a pursuit is not likely to succeed, at least in

the short-term, and evidences a peculiar lack of perspective and vision. In many ways, the

department is not ranked with those schools precisely because it fails to fully participate in

the predominant image of professional philosophy in the academy today. This image is

shaped by a thoroughly institutionalized discourse of professionals who direct their energies

into producing journal articles, books, and scholarly contributions for the consumption of

other academics in their fields and sub-fields. The number of philosophers speaking to a

general, non-academic audience or who are at least being listened to by that audience is

quite low, which is to say that an overwhelming majority of professional philosophers writing

today are writing to a very limited, technically-oriented audience that are concerned with

specific philosophical questions. Moreover, though the dominance of analytic or Anglo-

American philosophy may not be as strong as it once was, the analytic attitude remains, on

the whole, the most prevalent one within the top professional Ph.D. producing programs in

the English-speaking world. This framework, of course, is typically contrasted with other

conceptions of the philosophical voice and its praxis, the most common of which falls under

the vague rubric of Continental philosophy.12

Now, obviously, within both of these frameworks there are many variations on

themes, and I do not wish to skate over these differences here, as they often consist of subtle

and insightful critiques of different methodologies. Within the last quarter century or so,

however, the profession has had an ongoing and oftentimes intensely personal and vitriolic

debate over the relative merits of each of these general methodological frameworks.

Furthermore, this dispute constitutes one of the most visible manifestations of the boundary-

work philosophers have been engaged in during this time. It is noteworthy that this

boundary-work has been an internal one to professional philosophy and its departments rather

than an external one between philosophy and some other academic discipline. That said,

there is a significant number of philosophers who see the primary distinctions between

analytic and Continental philosophy as outdated, hypostatized, and otherwise overdrawn.

12

For an fascinating analysis of the historical roots of the split between analytic or Anglo-American

philosophy and its Continental counterparts, cf. Friedman (2000).


18/36

18

More specifically, many young philosophers are intentionally working at the intersection of

these traditions, attempting to synthesize the insights of each in the service of new and

historical philosophical questions. So as far as the departments self-description goes,

Vanderbilts attempt to work in between the two prevailing philosophical traditions of the

twentieth century places it in a unique position vis--vis the profession more generally.

Vanderbilts purported pluralism, then, already constitutes a significant niche within the

profession, and the question then becomes in what ways is it might be most fruitfully

developed. One such way would be to cultivate the difference the Vanderbilt philosophy

department already embodies through the identification and clarification of goals, both

institutional and pedagogical, and augment that difference by selecting potential community

members on the basis of those goals. In other words, rather than effacing the difference

between Vanderbilt and other mainstream schools of philosophy, more work should be done

to differentiate the department from the mainstream.

It would be wrongheaded, then, to work to assimilate the philosophy being done at

Vanderbilt with the philosophy that is done elsewhere, say, at a Yale or Princeton or Notre

Dame. It is, rather, precisely this tension and difference that needs to be highlighted and

explored philosophically. As Collins shows, such tensions and differences have typically

been the central means by which periods of heightened philosophical creativity are initiated

and maintained. The tension is a catalyst, the difference a waypoint between traditions. To

develop the metaphor, traditions are shadows cast against the space of intellectuals operating

in the present. Intellectuals and philosophers are, of course, always simultaneously moving

in the wake of some shadow and are themselves casting a shadow, but the light that causes

the shadow remains the intellectual attention space within a given network of individuals and

institutions. Being consciously engaged in a tradition is much the same as Wittgensteins

remark about knowing ones way around a room: within a tradition, one knows ones way

around problems and pseudo-problems, and one knows how to use the tools implied by the

problem on the way toward their solution. Philosophers are trained within traditions

indeed, to think at all one must already be engaged with some tradition; they take up

positions amid the room and kick away their ladders so as to go about the business of

philosophizing. But I am now mixing metaphor, because the image I am trying to convey is

one in which particular traditions are seen as umbras to the globes of the present. And if

traditions are the umbras, then the boundary between traditions is the boundary between the

umbras and the penumbras, or the negative space outside the shadow cast. The tension


19/36

19

between traditions, then, is a site, it is point along the boundary at which traditions can

engage one another in potentially rewarding ways.

But, by arguing against the effacement of methodological difference and for the

cultivation of cross-traditional tensions, I do not wish to argue for its contrary, namely, that

the boundaries between traditions need to be maintained in a rigorous way and simply joined

together in a crude amalgamation. Rather, I am suggesting that the members of the

department begin to more actively ignore the anachronistic dualism between analytic and

Continental philosophy, to resist the temptation to see the department as consisting of two

camps of competing philosophical methodologies, the peace of which rests in a tenuous

balance of power between the two. Perhaps it is needless to say, but a mere dtente between

these camps does not constitute a genuine pluralism. By assuming a shallow pluralism, the

department risks locating the balance of power that maintains the peace in a superficial

numerical criterion. Such an attitude was on display, for example, during the recent hiring

processes of the phenomenology and ancient positions. During that time there was at least

one faculty member that explicitly used the balance of power language in arguing for the

need to hire an analytically trained ancient philosopher in light of the inherent

methodological alignment of the incoming phenomenologist. By continuing to employ these

distinctions in evaluating the merits of potential colleagues, members of the department

reinforce the seeming self-evident value of such a distinction. The shallow pluralism that

locates departmental homeostasis in this numerical balance of power is, moreover, patently

unethical in that places the source of contention on an individual that has not yet even

become a member of the community. So I am not advocating a continuation of this type of

pluralism, but am rather suggesting that through the dissolution of that boundary the

department may more effectively maintain and develop its institutional difference within the

profession.

One upshot of the above considerations is that new faculty members and graduate

students be selected according to the extent to which they are willing and able to expand the

departments conception of philosophy by covering under- and un-represented traditions of

thought. More specifically, new faculty could be chosen so as to increase the breadth of

exposure, rather than consolidating areas of departmental specialization. By exposing

students and faculty alike to new traditions, questions, and methods, faculty members could

provide the necessary exposure for future philosophical experimentation. To put this point a

slightly different way, rather than choosing faculty based on their alliance with a particular


20/36

20

tradition, or their eminence within their sub-field, faculty selection could be based explicitly

on criteria that emphasized a desire to represent a genuine diversity of viewpoints and a

willingness to engage in cross-traditional dialogue. Obviously, the risk of this suggestion is

that the department would become a jack of all trades and yet a master of none. But as soon

as this charge is levelled and considered more carefully, it becomes quite clear that

departments themselves can be masters of nothing; only individuals within departments can

be specialists in one sub-field or another. And to the extent that departments do become

homogenous bodies of scholastic perspective and method, they run the equal risk of

becoming static and insular and losing the very material by which further creative thinking is

initiated.

By resisting the urge to focus the philosophical specialty of the department through

the respective specialities of the faculty, moreover, entails nothing about the future

specialization of students. Specialization will occur among those not yet specialized

regardless; by definition, the dissertation is a work of intense specialization. Students will

pick historical periods on which to focus and will chose particular problems to engage and

address. Just because the speciality of the department is dispersed across traditions, in other

words, does not mean that the specialization of the scholars its produces will be dispersed.

Rather, it is precisely through the exposure to diverse traditions and questions that students

will be able to synthesize their training so as to produce genuinely new philosophical

inquiries. But to locate and cultivate the intersections of traditions requires a great deal of

breadth, creativity, and patience on the part of both faculty and students. It requires,

moreover, a thoroughgoing acceptance of the value of experimentalism, and the ability to

follow up on a potential line of inquiry and change tack as lines no longer prove fruitful. It

requires a certain flexibility of the intellect and a certain willingness to try new arrangements

of ideas and insights. These are all issues of pedagogy, however, which I will address below,

but not before stepping back a bit to the ends of graduate education in the first place.

Interests and Ends

Heretofore, I have been speaking as though the reasons for educating graduate students in

philosophy were clear. This is hardly the case, and thus raises the question as to the end or

ends toward which this activity is aimed. To ask this question effectively, the various

perspectives from which such reasons could be given need to be identified, and the sets of

diverse but distinct interests at play need to be differentiated. Empirically, these seem to be


21/36

21

three, namely, the individual graduate student, the faculty (taken both individually and as a

group), and the institution of Vanderbilt as a whole.

Obviously or not, the individual graduate student tends to have the most at stake in

undertaking a graduate education in philosophy, at Vanderbilt or anywhere else. Because of

the relatively few number of positions available, as well as the prominent uncertainty of

employment after completing the degree, applications to pursue graduate education in

philosophy are not generally taken lightly. The application process is by all accounts

competitive, and when this is considered in light of the wide array of the disciplines various

sub-specialties, the student generally engages in a fair amount of deliberation as to which

programs might be the most appropriate given their interests and educational background.

The factors that go into this decision are many, but the most prominent tend roughly to be

based on such things as the reputation of the department (within the discipline and more

widely), the specific areas and traditions of philosophy covered by particular faculty

members, and the more general atmosphere of collegiality between students themselves and

among the faculty.

The faculty of the department also represent a distinct set of interests and

perspectives to consider when considering the goals of graduate education in philosophy. On

the one hand, graduate students offer faculty the chance to pass on their philosophical values

to the next generation of scholars. In this sense, graduate students are the sites of tradition-

transmission, the importance of which often depends upon the previous work of the teachers

career. Obviously, there is as much at stake for the particular teacher in this relationship as

there is for the student. Studying under a specific faculty member whose work is not

influential or will be dated in short order is one of the pitfalls of this arrangement of

mentoring. On the other hand, however, the faculty as a whole have an interest in the success

of its graduate students because their success reflects back on the departments standing

within the profession. If graduates of the program do well within the profession, this is taken

as evidence of the strength of the training offered by the program.

Finally, the university as a whole represents a substantial set of interests and

perspectives in this analysis. In fact, without the institutional support of the university,

graduate education in philosophy would be significantly more difficult and, therefore in all

probability, significantly less common. Because the university provides nearly all the

financial resources to attract and maintain graduate students, it is apt to call its interests and

support one of the primary conditions of possibility for graduate education in philosophy.


22/36

22

Again, in the long run, the success of its graduates goes on to reinforce the eminence of the

university within the wider context of institutional competition. More specifically, however,

the universitys interests in graduate education are also directly instrumental in that graduate

students in philosophy teach required introductory courses in the core curriculum. This role

of graduate students is particularly important given that students are employed as cheaper

labor for accomplishing the larger and more central mission of the university, namely,

preparing its undergraduates for meaningful and effective lives within the larger society.

Now that the primary interests have been identified, it is appropriate to turn to the

more specific reasons why graduate education in philosophy is undertaken. One such reason

is an abiding interest in continuing the cultural conversation that has been characteristic (and

a caricature?) of philosophical discourse for the last several centuries. Members of every

group identified above can be seen to support this goal in some way, as it is largely abstract

and an ideal at which scholarship aims more generally. Within the scope of this reason,

faculty and graduate students evidence at least a tacit commitment to the value of

philosophical inquiry, no matter how it is actually conducted. The university, too,

purportedly values these things, but its commitment tends to be couched in a more general

terms, e.g., by providing a well-rounded, liberal education to its general student population.

Following this line of thought, a further reason for conducting graduate education in

philosophy is to train the next generation of scholars who will continue this conversation

after the retirement and death of the existing generation of scholars. In terms of graduate

students in particular, there is of course the interest in pursuing a career. Advisedly or not,

many students choose to undertake graduate education so as to give them the credentials to

pursue a career within the academy. In this sense, graduate education is instrumental vis--

vis the student and their pursuit of a means by which to support their lives, both intellectually

and financially. Of course, the particular career path of the professional academic typically

comes after ones interest in philosophy has begun, but many view the career path as

inevitable if they are to maintain an active engagement with philosophy. According to this

reason, then, becoming a teacher is a central aim of graduate education, if only as the

inevitable outcome of a deeper interest. Moreover, to be a teacher within an institution of

higher education is to be already caught up in a system of professionalized standards that

tends to relegate teaching to a second-order activity, behind the primary one of producing

novel contributions to a generalized body of cultural knowledge. These standards, obviously,

are inextricably linked to the reward system based on professional eminence.


23/36

23

But, by almost all accounts based on the number of positions available within the

professoriate, the institutions of higher learning in the U.S. are producing too many Ph.D.s.

Philosophy is no exception to this professional trend, and may even be one of the trends

exemplary cases. There are, in other words, too many applicants for too few academic jobs,

or at least the jobs people actually want. Many doctorate-level graduates end up teaching not

at top-tier research university, but at small liberal arts and local community colleges. This, of

course, is not necessarily an undesirable situation, but one which further begs the question as

to the appropriateness of training received during graduate school. In light of these facts, the

department should initiate an open and earnest dialogue with its members about the reasons

for undertaking graduate level education in philosophy and the possibility (or lack thereof) of

being employed in a desired capacity. Why does Vanderbilt have a graduate program in

philosophy? Whose interests does it serve and who is being served equitably or inequitably

in the process? What is the point of a Ph.D. in philosophy? The answers to these questions

cannot be answered in the abstract, prior to engaging in an actual conversation. Nor can they

be answered for every institution offering graduate education in philosophy. Rather, if these

questions are to be answered adequately, they require an active engagement on the part of

students and faculty at Vanderbilt.

With respect to the problem of employment, instead of focusing solely on training

graduate students to be academicians, the department could begin to think through some of

the ways in which philosophers could work outside of the hallowed halls of the ivory tower.

By restricting the efficacy and utility of a doctoral degree to professional philosophy, the

department (and the academy more generally) does a disservice to itself and the larger culture

in whose service it stands. The narrowly focused career path typical of early twenty-first

century academic philosophy is, in large part, simply a failure of imagination. Through

various institutional apparatuses, the seeming inevitability of this career path stifles the

possibilities of philosophers contributing to the development of their cultures social

consciousness through the reconstruction of actual practices in ways that do not involve

publishing in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy or even in Philosophy and Public

Policy.

By most accounts, philosophers tend to think that philosophy is in some ways

important to both individual lives and the collective social future. If such a premise is not at

least tacitly present, it is doubly unclear why one would dedicate a careers worth of energy

to its practice. Rather, I suggest that the doctorate degree in philosophy is an eminently


24/36

24

practical degree to the extent that it prepares individuals to carry out independent research

and writing into the cultural problems of their day. But it can potentially be so much more as

well. In this sense, graduate education that is circumscribed to being an apprenticeship into

the guild of professional scholars is fundamentally lacking in imaginative solutions to

contemporary problems, both inside the academy and out. Such an education merely

transmits and legitimates norms of inquiry and modes of thinking that were handed down

from the last generation of scholars who, in turn, received their norms from the preceding

generation.

Education is always a particular form of socialization. It socializes students into

thinking about the world and their place within it in a particular way. Education habituates

students into particular modes of inquiry and rewards, both socially and professionally, the

behaviors that are prized within a given institution or discipline. But an education that isjust

this contains nothing in particular to distinguishes it from indoctrination into a cult of

professional experts who regulate the boundaries of community membership.

The Program and Its Pedagogy

My analysis so far has been concerned to situate the Vanderbilt philosophy department

within the larger context of institutions of higher learning that support communities of

intellectuals who identify themselves as philosophers. I suggest that when the theoretical

insights outlined in the first part of this essay are coupled to an analysis of the material

arrangement of resources and persons that is the Vanderbilt Philosophy Department, an

important perspective is gained as to the potential ways in which the department could guide

its reconstructive efforts in the future. More specifically, I have argued that a lack of

sociological perspective as to the interests and ends at work within the department and

university leads to a certain lack of perspective when it comes to charting a course for

changing the department in the near future. Rather than naively pushing forward with

reforms aimed at raising the stature of the department in traditional ways, I have suggested by

cultivating the institutional difference that Vanderbilt already embodies would be a more

fruitful way to proceed. While this course of action, no doubt, includes adding more faculty

to the department whose research areas compliment the current constellation of interests by

augmenting their scope, there are other important areas on which to focus as well. One of the

most promising of these areas, and an area that has received surprising little imaginative

attention thus far, is pedagogy. While the Vanderbilt philosophy department may be unique


25/36

25

in its self-described pluralism, the pedagogical approach outlined in the curriculum is far

from novel. In fact, the way in which the degree is structured, i.e., with the first two-and-a-

half years being devoted primarily to course-work and the last two-and-a-half years being

primarily devoted to researching and writing the dissertation, is roughly identical to the

majority of departments training graduate students in the U.S.. Thus, developing a novel

pedagogical structure could function so as to further differentiate Vanderbilt from other

institutions.

The most obvious place to begin thinking about restructuring the departments

pedagogy lies in the seminar. Currently, the graduate seminar is the centrepiece of graduate

course work in the department. By rethinking the purposes of seminars, the department

might develop a more distinctive approach to the course-work aspect of the doctoral degree.

Again, like the degree itself, the specific purposes of seminar are at least not obviously clear.

While such purposes may be implicit and assumed valuable by the fact of their long-standing

use within the academy, an explicit discussion of the consequences that result from the

pedagogical experience of the seminar might cause their structure to be significantly altered.

The credit-bearing seminar, moreover, is a distinctive feature of American as opposed to

English and other European graduate educations, and for many it is an attractive feature to

the extent that it continues the intentional and systematic exposure to new texts, traditions,

and questions that is lacking in graduate programs that focus primarily on research and

writing. By dedicating time and space to examining these texts and traditions, students

acquire insights and conceptual tools that can contribute to their more specialized work once

it is taken up more directly. Put another way, the importance of continuing course work into

the first few years of graduate study lies in the lack of deep and broad exposure typically

found in contemporary undergraduate majors.

But the classroom does more than allow such exposure to continue by offering a

place for individual students and faculty to engage in face-to-face conversations over issues

and problems found within the studied material. Personal interactions are crucial aspects of

the educational process, whether that process be elementary education or graduate education.

By directly engaging their colleagues and teachers, students learn how to phrase questions,

pose examples, and participate in the give and take of ideas that is a central virtue of

intellectual life. In this way, learning the arts of conversation, which include the arts of

listening attentively and respectfully as well as the arts of speaking precisely and cogently, is

one of the more underdeveloped aspects of seminar pedagogy. This, again, points to the


26/36

26

ways in which the purposes of such pedagogical structures remain unarticulated, or at least

under-articulated.

Under the current program, graduate students typically attend three seminars per

semester for the first five semesters. Seminars are typically focused either on a particular

figure considered to be of traditional importance, a certain historical or topical theme, or a

combination of the two. Typically, seminars consists of both lecture and discussion formats,

which depend upon individual faculty members pedagogical style and the intent of the

course. Naturally, the lack of a clear intent behind the seminar can and does lead to a

diminished pedagogical experience. But, more generally, the purpose of seminars is both too

wide and too nebulous. In other words, oftentimes too much is being attempted in single

enterprise. For example, one purpose of seminars seems to be to teach students to become

close and careful readers of texts, and to understand the source of potentially divergent

readings of certain texts within various traditions. Another possible purpose of seminar

seems to be to learn how engage colleagues in respectful and productive ways. These two

purposes can often work at cross-purposes. That is to say, if a faculty member were more

text oriented, a seminar consisting primarily of lecture and exegesis might be the most

efficacious pedagogical practice. If, on the other hand, a course were more focused on a

contemporary issue within the literature, a class of primarily discussion and disputation might

be the more appropriate approach. The point I am trying to raise here is that perhaps these

two purposes should be more clearly distinguished within the graduate curriculum so as to

cultivate these skills in more direct ways.

More specifically, and to further distinguish the Vanderbilt graduate curriculum from

that of other programs, perhaps seminars ought to be disaggregated into several distinct

components. This disaggregation, moreover, could work to obviate the difficulties that

accompany graduate level work that stem from being part of a larger institutional calendar.

As it stands now, graduate seminars are identical in length and in fact are co-extensive with

regular undergraduate classes, classes that the faculty and graduate students themselves

teach. The result of this that all the courses, i.e., the ones being taught and the ones being

taken, follow the same rhythm, beginning at the same time and ending at the same time.

Now as every member of the university knows, the end of the semester is the most hectic and

busy time of the semester. Exams are being given and studied for, papers are due and require

grading, and yet, more often than not, assigned course work continues apace. By suggesting

seminars be disaggregated into distinct blocks of purposes and focus, what I am suggesting is


27/36

27

that courses at the graduate level be taken out of sync with courses at the undergraduate level.

For example, instead of having just one type of seminar structure that continues for an entire

semester, perhaps there could be two distinct types of classes offered throughout the same

time period. The first type of class I would propose would be ones characterized by short,

intense periods of closely reading a particular text or author. These classes could perhaps

meet every other day and complete a difficult text in, say, a three week period. The purpose

of these classes, again, is to get exposure to a text or set of text in a direct way. Another type

of class could then be devoted almost completely to discussion and conversation. The

subjects of these conversations, importantly, would be the materials written by the class

participants. This type of class would be much more on the model of a workshop wherein

pieces of writing are distributed ahead of time and students come prepared to offer feedback

in a formal but conversational atmosphere. According to this proposal, then, perhaps two

reader sections and two workshop section could be completed in a single semester.

This proposal is meant to address the way the structure of the semester works against

the habits of good thinking, writing, and discussion skills. While the beginning part of the

semester is relatively open, the latter part of the semester is over burdened with work and

obligations. As many are well aware, good thinking takes time, and good writing takes even

more. The department does a disservice to both of these pursuits to the extent that it

continues to perpetuate an acceleration of work toward the close of the semester. This

proposal would allow the intent of the scholarly activity to be more clearly defined, thereby

allowing the pedagogical experience to be sharpened in the process.

But, if for some reason such a proposal were found unfeasible, the department should

definitely rethink the tempo of the semester seminar anyway. What I mean is this: assigned

readings should stop anywhere from two to four weeks before the ending of the semester so

all to allow the seminar participants to share their writing projects and get feedback from the

group. Seminars during this time would consist of participants passing around drafts of

essays and short presentations of their theses, ideas, and arguments so as to solicit

constructive criticisms and suggestions. Not only would this benefit the papers written for

the seminar, but it would also facilitate conversations between students working on similar

topics and questions. So many potential conversations are missed simply because we remain

ignorant of the subjects on which our colleagues are writing; so many connections could be

made between persons and ideas that are currently being missed in our largely isolated

intellectual lives. Moreover, this type of schedule would lighten the reading load as the


28/36

28

seminar progresses so as to allow more time to write. This just makes sense. At the end of

semesters everyone is extremely busy trying to balance new, often quite important, reading

material, all while trying to give birth to a seminar-size idea and paper, all while trying to

teach, grade, and appropriately attend to private and familial affairs. This would, of course,

also work toward making us better conversationalists, better listeners and responders. It

would work toward integrating our analytical eyes and our analytical ears. With the tendency

to be much better readers than listeners, our philosophies too might benefit from some better

conversational skills.

Two further ideas to increase the pedagogical distinctiveness of the department

include designing seminars in concert with graduate students. Seminars could be constructed

more effectively by soliciting feedback as to what figures and topics graduate students are

interested in. These interests naturally change as various individuals migrate in and out of

the philosophical community. For example, in one series of years several graduate students

could be very interested in topics such as Marx and Freud, while a few years later there is a

significant interest in the connections between philosophy and literature. Now, this proposal

raises the issue of equity and balance between what graduate students are interested in and

what graduate students need to learn. This, in turn, points to a potential deficiency in the

curriculum by not having a standard set of courses offered regularly as a core set of

knowledge and skills the department considers central to graduate education, which, again,

raises the question as to what end graduate education is aimed. Another idea would be to

allow graduate students in their final year of dissertation work to teach an upper-level

seminar on their dissertation topic. This could be a very fruitful space in which to test the

ideas and arguments of the dissertation, as well as allowing graduate students experience

teaching a more focused and intense course. It could also serve as a recruitment tool, as

many programs do not have such a option for their upper-level graduate students, and many

such students at Vanderbilt appear genuinely excited by that option.

I would like to conclude these considerations of pedagogy by addressing a recent

addition to the curriculum that has caused a significant amount of discussion and dissention,

namely, PHIL 301: Teaching and Research Methods. This course was brought to Vanderbilt

by a recently hired faculty member from another university, and was required of first- and

second-year graduate students for the first time this year. This course consisted of three

sections teaching, research, and professional development and seminar visits by every

faculty member of the department. While many students found the faculty visits enjoyable,


29/36

29

and the first two foci of the seminar helpful, the professional development section was

entirely dogmatic, narrowly-construed, and superficial. This section of the seminar

unreflectively regurgitated the current mainstream standards of the profession and

perpetuated the seeming inevitability and necessity of pursuing the typical career progression

of a twenty-first century academic philosopher. This course ought to be overhauled

completely, integrating more discussion and interrogation as to the causes of this seeming

inevitability and necessity. Moreover, the course should be revised so as to introduce a

thorough amount of reflection on what it means to do philosophy and what it means to be a

philosopher today. Not only would this course be an ideal place to begin a discussion about

the potential ways in which philosophy could be practiced outside the academy, it is also the

ideal place to begin to raise the levels of reflective awareness about what the practice of

philosophy entails within institutions of higher learning. In short, rather than being a nave

inculcation of professional standards, this course ought to serve as the starting point of

critical analysis over those standards; instead of being a space of passive acceptance over a

tacitly accepted conception of philosophy, this course ought to be an active examination of

the history and sociology of the discipline as it is inherited and transmitted today.

This, finally, points to the way in which critical thinking about the practices of the

department and discipline are lacking a formal mechanism within the department. In other

words, now that the curriculum has been revised, the department needs to take steps to see

that the consequences of these revisions are studied an

Field Notes of a First-Year

Documents

Transcript of Field Notes of a First-Year