1.1. Overcoming intellectual asceticism

In my view, we can address this issue by examining how academic philosophers approach their practice. For example, Lou Marinoff diagnoses philosophy’s decline partly in terms of macro-political forces and partly in terms of a lack of imagination or engagement with the world.Footnote ¹ He then reimagines philosophical practice as a political programme peopled by philosophical counsellors that seek to “return philosophy to the marketplace from whence it came.”Footnote ²

I approach philosophical practice differently. Instead of emphasising the political dimension of philosophical practice or accusing philosophers of turning away from the world, this article claims that when philosophers treat philosophical practice as a thinking of the world, they are preparing for their own self-isolation from it.

This modelling of practice on thought is driven by an intellectual asceticism rooted in Plato’s Socrates. In the Phaedo, Socrates famously defines philosophy as the “practice for dying and death” because the soul can only operate at 100% philosophical efficacy when it has escaped the distracting and deceiving influences of the body.Footnote ³ This has encouraged interpretations of Plato’s Socrates as taking a hard line against the body. This elevation of the mind at the expense of the body has had a significant and lasting effect on the trajectory of Western philosophy. We are now in a position where the modern academic philosopher is predominantly identified as a thinker of the world.

Colleen Zoller’s Plato and the Body: Reconsidering Socratic Asceticism challenges this interpretation of Plato’s Socrates in an effort to undermine this hard-line intellectual asceticism in Western philosophical practice. Denigrating the body and excluding it from philosophical practice erodes our connection to the world. It isolates the philosopher and their work. Just as the Scholastic philosophers struggled to explain how disembodied angels commune with terrestrial beings, without our bodies, we have no means of being in or interacting with the world. Moreover, denying the body also undermines our claim to care about the world. As Zoller warns, “When we devalue the physical, we lessen concern for all that is linked with it—women, people of color, the other animals, and nature itself.”Footnote ⁴

1.2. Making philosophy matter

Academic philosophy matters when it is welcomed into the world of which it speaks, and the way in which the philosopher can better ingratiate themselves into this world is through the act of mattering. This notion of mattering draws on recent attempts to apply the ideas of New Materialism—matter is not a passive thing, but agential, meaningful, and intra-active—to practice-based research.Footnote ⁵ For philosophers to matter, they must acknowledge their bodies as real sites of philosophical activity. This is not a call for more philosophies “of” the body. Instead, we must allow our body its moment in the analysis, production, interpretation, and application of meanings. For philosophy to matter, we have to acknowledge that we philosophise “with” the body.

There are two key ways of mattering:

1. 1. We have to make our research matter. We need to engage with our research in a way that brings it to life in the world of others. This means engaging the sensibilities of the body before we can speak to the mind.

2. 2. We have to make each other matter. We need to find a way to demonstrate that philosophers have always already been involved in the world. We have to treat each other as working in and caring about the world, not abstracting from it.

2.1. Why philosophy matters

Good philosophy draws people into unfamiliar orbits of understanding and practice. It encourages others to engage in their own form of philosophical inquiry. Entering new orbits enriches our collective ability to attend to the most pressing issues of our time. Philosophers matter, therefore, when they do more than transmit knowledge—when they encourage others to do philosophy.

But this is an unenviable task. We break free of the gravitational pull of established beliefs by the propulsion of our own willingness to go elsewhere. Philosophers do not pull people out; they make philosophy matter for others by creating clear and appealing lines of inquiry for them to pursue on their own.

2.2. Making philosophy edible

We make our research matter by respecting its edibility. The edibility of research evokes a worldliness of meaning that necessitates embodied engagement. Mouthing babies are perfect examples of both literally and metaphorically taking a bite out of everything. Their growing sense of what is and is not edible is both the means and consequence of their embodied engagement with the world.

Philosophical practice is no different. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th-century nun, playwright, and distinguished poet, famously argued that philosophy happens in the kitchen.Footnote ⁶ Her almost alchemical account of the frying of eggs in butter, oil, and syrup evokes an ontological dimension to cooking.Footnote ⁷ Sor Juana made her work matter by respecting its edibility: she located it in the world and predicated its discovery on her embodied engagement. More importantly, she presented it in a way that invited others to draw on their own embodied experiences as analogues to make their own sense of the world. We call this analogical reasoning.

2.3. The physical labour of analogical reasoning

Plato’s Socrates was a master of analogical reasoning. He drew on everyday phenomena, such as leaky jars or being in a cave, as relatable points of reference to help his interlocutors grab hold of his abstractions. “But Socrates, what do you mean by the difference between appearance and Forms?” “Ah. Imagine yourself trapped in a cave. All you can see are the shadows on the wall cast by objects outside the cave. These shadows are the appearances. The objects casting the shadows are the Forms.” These analogies give material purchase to the abstract. They provoke a sense of worldly familiarity in us, and then invite us to draw on our own embodied experiences to make them meaningful.

I believe that this type of analogical reasoning is a form of physical labour because it draws on embodied experiences. When imagining myself stuck in a cave, I can almost feel the qualitative difference between shadows and the objects casting them. I am invited to inhabit the cave and navigate the logic of the analogy through my body.

This physical labour is more than a rhetorical flourish to engage non-philosophers. It is fundamental to philosophical inquiry. As philosophers, we make philosophy matter for ourselves by invoking our own embodied experiences to make sense of the world. The more time we spend filling other people’s philosophies with worldly experience, the more edible that library of meanings becomes. We cultivate expertise. We make philosophy matter for others by first acknowledging this fact. Only then will we remain aware of the need to provoke in others the same call for embodied, analogical reasoning that we allow for ourselves. To engage their minds, we must first speak to the sensibilities of their bodies.

3.1. Philosophy’s reputation

Identifying philosophical practice with thought has two effects. First, it narrows the scope of philosophical inquiry to questions about what other people think about the world. Second, it presents philosophers as operating from an otherworldly perch, free from the concerns of the real world. Both reinforce the false reputation of philosophers as engaged in “purely academic” work. The onus is on us, philosophers, to correct the record.

3.2. Geophilosophy and inhabiting the Earth

In Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Friedrich Nietzsche offers a way of making philosophers matter. He is confronted by a problem: How do we make the pre-Socratics relevant to 19th-century sensibilities? Why care about Thales when we have Newton? For Nietzsche, “the only thing of interest in a refuted system is the personal element. It alone is what is forever irrefutable.”Footnote ⁸ Personality becomes an expression of philosophical meaning. Nietzsche’s task is not to provide a theoretical exposition of an allegedly failed system but to grant us a glimpse into their personalities as essential features of their philosophy.

In a recent talk on Geophilosophy at the University of Dundee, Didier Debase invoked Nietzsche’s appeal to personalities to argue that a philosopher’s way of inhabiting the Earth is a valid object of philosophical inquiry:

Geophilosophy accepts two things: philosophy is a contingent phenomenon that emerges from the Earth, and the way a philosopher inhabits the Earth is part and parcel of their philosophy. As Debase later puts it: “If you want to know who is Heraclitus, you have to see how he inhabits the earth of the Ancient Greeks.”Footnote ¹⁰

3.3. Getting in the room with Merleau-Ponty

One way to make philosophers matter in the sense intimated by Nietzsche and Debase is to acknowledge their embodied status. The weight of embodiment can knock philosophers off their otherworldly perch. Engaging with how a philosopher inhabits the Earth while practising philosophy can broaden our understanding of their work.

A good example is Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. In it, Merleau-Ponty develops an account of embodied subjectivity. He famously claims that the body, not the self, is the true subject of perception.Footnote ¹¹ We can engage with Merleau-Ponty’s claim in two ways.

Traditionally, we analyse the substantive claims of the text. What did Merleau-Ponty think about the body? What arguments did he make? Can we check the empirical veracity of his underlying premises? There is, however, another dimension to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. We can get in the room with him. In doing so, our inquiry expands from “What did Merleau-Ponty think about the body?” to “What did Merleau-Ponty do when engaged in philosophical inquiry?” We then see that Merleau-Ponty not only thinks about the body but also recruits it as a method of critique. Rather than getting caught up in the ongoing debate as to whether empiricism or intellectualism better explains perception, Merleau-Ponty takes his own body for a test drive to see which side of the argument, if any, better comports with reality. Getting in the room with Merleau-Ponty opens us up to this practical side of his philosophy.

To make each other matter in this sense, we need a smidge of irreverence. We have to intrude on each other’s lives. Like the apprentice carpenter who watches their teacher at work, we too must place ourselves in the room with other philosophers. We are the spiders that keep the exiled Spinoza occupied, the hidden nanny-cam keeping tabs on the lotus-positioned Descartes, or the annoying intern nibbling at the heels of Latour, clipboard and pen in hand.