Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-31T08:20:29.078Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Philosophical Personality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David M. Peña‐Guzmán  and
Rebekah Spera
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The authors adopt a critico‐sociological methodology to investigate the current state of the philosophical profession. According to them, the question concerning the status of philosophy (“What is philosophy?”) cannot be answered from within the precinct of philosophical reason alone, since philosophy—understood primarily as a profession—is marked by a constitutive type of self‐ignorance that prevents it from reflecting upon its own sociological conditions of actuality. This ignorance, which is both cause and effect of the organization and investment of philosophical desire, causes philosophers to lose themselves in an ideological myth (“the philosopher as idea(l)”) according to which philosophers are unaffected by the material conditions in which they exist. This myth prevents philosophers from noticing the extent to which their activity is influenced by extra‐philosophical determinants that shape, empirically, who becomes a professional philosopher (“the philosopher as imago”) and who doesn't. This article explores the relationship between philosophy's “idea(l)” and its “imago” as a way of shedding light on some of the mechanisms that make philosophy inhospitable for so many women, people of color, and economic minorities.

Type
Found Cluster: Issues in the Profession
Information
Hypatia , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , Fall 2017 , pp. 911 - 927
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

AAAS (American Academy of Arts and Sciences). 2013. The “humanities indicators” project. http://www.humanitiesindicators.org (accessed September 16, 2016).Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. 1950. The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. 1984. Aesthetic theory. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
APA (American Philosophical Association). 2013. Minorities in philosophy. https://c.ymcdn.com (accessed September 16, 2016).Google Scholar
APA (American Philosophical Association). 2016. Member demographic statistics. http://www.apaonline.org/?demographics (accessed September 16, 2016).Google Scholar
Botts, Tina Fernandes, Kofi Bright, Liam, Cherry, Myisha, Mallarangeng, Guntur, and Spencer, Quayshawn. 2014. What is the state of blacks in philosophy? Critical Philosophy of Race 2 (2): 224–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1988. Homo academicus. Trans. Peter Collier. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Wacquant, Loïc J. D. 1992. An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bourget, David, and Chalmers, David. N.d. The Philpapers Survey. Philpapers. Web. http://philpapers.org/surveys/ (accessed December 15, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Cheshire. 2009. The undergraduate pipeline problem. Hypatia 24 (2): 216–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carson, Andrew. 2013. Graduate school philosophy job placement records: Will I get a job? Philosophy News. http://www.philosophynews.com/post/2013/10/02/Will-I-get-a-Job-Graduate-School-Philosophy-Placement-Records.aspx (accessed September 16, 2016).Google Scholar
Cavaillé, Jean‐Pierre. 2010. The notion of persecution: History and relevance today. Les Dossiers du Grihl. http://dossiersgrihl.revues.org/3893 (accessed September 10, 2016).Google Scholar
Collins, Randall. 1998. The sociology of philosophies: A global theory of intellectual change. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile. 1960. De la division du travail social. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Fischbach, Franck. 2009. Manifeste pour une philosophie sociale. Paris: La Decouverte.Google Scholar
Gines, Kathryn. 2011. Being a black woman philosopher: Reflections on founding the collegium of black women philosophers. Hypatia 26 (2): 429–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslanger, Sally. 2008. Changing the ideology and culture of philosophy: Not by reason (alone). Hypatia 23 (2): 210–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healy, Kieran. 2011. Philosophy in disciplinary perspective: Percentage of U.S. Ph.Ds awarded to women in 2009. http://kieranhealy.org (accessed September 16, 2016).Google Scholar
Horkheimer, Max. 1972. Traditional and critical theory. In Critical theory: Selected essays. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Jung, Carl Gustav. 1925. Psychology of the unconscious. In Collected works, vol. 5. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Kniffin, Kevin. 2007. Accessibility to the PhD and professoriate for first‐generation college graduates: Review and implications for students, faculty, and policy makers. American Academic 3: 49–79.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Genevieve. 2002. The man of reason: “Male” and “female” in western philosophy. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
NCES (National Center for Education Statistics). 2011. Full‐time and part‐time faculty and instructional staff in degree‐granting institutions, by race/ethnicity, sex, and program area: Fall 1998 and fall 2003. http://nces.ed.gov (accessed September 16, 2016).Google Scholar
NSF (National Science Foundation). 2014. Survey of earned doctorates. http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvydoctorates/ (accessed September 16, 2016).Google Scholar
Paxton, Molly, Figdor, Carrie, and Tiberius, Valerie. 2012. Quantifying the gender gap: An empirical study of the underrepresentation of women in philosophy. Hypatia 27 (4): 949–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rockhill, Gabriel. 2010. Logique de l'histoire: Pour une analytique des pratiques philosophiques. Paris: Editions Hermann.Google Scholar
Romano, Carlin. 2007. A challenge for philosophy, Penn's Anita Allen is at the top of her field, but she has serious concerns about its lack of openness and diversity. An uneasy job for a black woman. www.philly.com (accessed September 16, 2016).Google Scholar
Saul, Jennifer. 2012. Women in philosophy. The Philosopher's Magazine. http://www.philosophersmag.com/component/content/article?id=9:women-in-philosophyAmp;Itemid=101 (accessed July 5, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwitzgebel, Eric. 2011. Sorry, Cal students, no Princeton grad school for you! http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2011/10/sorry-cal-state-students-no-princeton.html (accessed November 13, 2015).Google Scholar
Thompson, Morgan, Adleberg, Toni, Sims, Sam, and Nahmias, Eddy. 2016. Why do women leave philosophy? Surveying students at the introductory level. Philosophers' Imprint 16 (6): 1–36.Google Scholar
Tremain, Shelley. 2014. Disabling philosophy. The Philosopher's Magazine (65): 15–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Camp, Julie. 2015. Tenured/tenure‐track faculty women at 98 U.S. doctoral programs in philosophy. https://web.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/doctoral_2004.html (accessed December 14, 2015).Google Scholar