A Primer on Field Philosophy

Our concept of field philosophy could use some elaboration.

Our tack has been to define it in contrast with applied philosophy. We have, I think, made three points.

First is the question of audience. Applied philosophy assumes a disciplinary audience–(applied) philosophers who are writing for other philosophers. It is simply an assumption: rather than arguing for this approach, the question of audience does not come up. Applied philosophy is top-down in orientation. It places a premium on getting the theory right through ongoing philosophical debate. At some later point the results are disseminated in one way or another to non-philosophers (perhaps, mailing the resulting article to someone). But this is ad hoc: non-philosophical audiences are not designed into the work plan and have no effect on the nature of the theorizing.

Field philosophy is bottom up: it begins with a problem in the world that has a philosophical dimension, and directs its attention toward working with the parties involved–seldom philosophers–on terms largely set by them. It works through case studies–or if that sounds too much like the ‘objectification’ of people, let us say that field philosophy takes a problem-based focus. In any case, field philosophers emphasize getting their hands dirty: going to the site, working at the project level, attending meetings, working through the messy (and largely non-philosophic) details of the problem, and working within constraints set by others.

This is why we have emphasized the bureaucratic nature of this enterprise, even offering a term (philosopher-bureaucrats) to highlight the fact that contemporary society is governed by large organizations, and that if philosophers are going to be effective they need to learn how to work within such structures.

You might say that field philosophy is a form of existential phenomenology. It takes Husserl’s “to the things themselves” seriously, going out to the actual situations in the world. The philosophical life becomes a lived experience. Of course, the typical philosopher is living philosophy as well–but in a decidedly different manner: teaching classes, attending faculty meetings within the department, counseling students, writing articles and books for other philosophers. Alternatively, field philosophy can be seen as resonating with eastern thought, yoking (cf. yoga) theory and practice, making philosophy into a type of practice.

The second difference between applied and field philosophy is theoretical–or more precisely, meta-theoretical–in nature. In its insistence in going out into the world field philosophy does not become anti-theoretical. In fact, quite the contrary. It believes it gets the nature of theorizing right, in that philosophy should begin out in the world rather than with a set of academic problems. At some point (such as right here and now) field philosophers turn to theory, drawing conclusions from fieldwork that are shared with the philosophic community. But rather than (as with applied philosophy, and with X-Phi) stopping when we have returned to the study, field philosophy continues the cycle, over and over, between field and study, a never ending dialectic between practice and thinking.

This is also where we offer a historical critique of 20th century philosophy. We see it as anomalous in its turn inward and in its refusal to recognize that from the time of Thales and Socrates philosophy has always had a rich (if tense) relationship to the polis. This was broken in the 20th century, especially in America and especially by analytic philosophy. Not only that: across the ages philosophers not only practiced but also theorized this relation. This is why Plato invented the dialogue form, Descartes wrote the Discourse in French, and why even Kant wrote “On the Old Saw: That May Be Right in Theory but It Won’t Work in Practice.”

In a word, 20th century philosophy became disciplined–and unselfconsciously so, a cardinal sin for a philosopher. There has been little or no critical work within philosophy on the institutional expressions that philosophy has taken (ie, the department). Another token of the philosophy’s blindspot here is that there is no established work on the philosophy of disciplinarity (interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity)–which would have prompted philosophers to ask whether philosophy is itself properly a discipline at all.

I suspect that its inattention to these two points–audience, and meta-theory–go some distance in explaining why applied philosophy has gotten so little respect within the philosophic community. Applied philosophy has been an uncritical response to the 20th century disciplining of philosophy. In Kuhn’s words:

For a scientist, the solution of a difficult conceptual or instrumental puzzle is a principal goal. His success in that endeavor is rewarded through recognition by other members of his professional group and by them alone. The practical merit of his solution is at best a secondary value, and the approval outside the specialist group is a negative value or none at all” By not theorizing the relation the question of audience, or offering a meta-theory on the relation between theory and engagement, applied philosophy ends up looking like it does not have its own set of distinctive theoretical problems.

This is how it has been with philosophy: we have only valued the opinions of other philosophers.

Now, these two contrasts between applied and field philosophy (audience and meta-theory) doubtless constitute a bit of a straw man. (Every generalization does.) Applied philosophers sometimes go out into the field, and work on case studies; and it is possible to find articles on applied philosophy that touch on one or another aspect of these issues. But field philosophy highlights and collates these points in a distinctive way.

Third, and in conclusion of this post, field philosophy has challenges our standard notions about the nature of philosophical rigor. Applied philosophy (nor philosophy in general) has not recognized–or theorized–how sustained engagement in the world requires that issues of timeliness, rhetorical effectiveness, and cost be factored into our work. The point can also be made in terms of expertise: there has been something of a boomlet in recent years on the philosophy of expertise (eg, Collins, Selinger); but these books have not paid attention to questions of the dependence of the concept of expertise on disciplinarity. The notion of rigor within field philosophy is pluralist rather than monist–balancing epistemological polish with other constraints such as timeliness, cost, and rhetoric on a case-by-case basis.

So much for previously made points. In the next post I want to address a fourth element–the relation between field philosophy and the rising tide of neoliberalism.