Question Is it that philosophy is competitive or is it just the way in which we (as humans) have come to be in general that is competitive? I'll try and spell out the distinction. My professor seems to vie for his idea. Descartes defends his position. Hobbes attacks Descartes' idea. Spinoza attacks both. There are dissertational "defenses". These are just a few examples of competitiveness in philosophy. Are humans just competitive? But if we are trying to get at truth, how does competition help? I can't understand why I feel the need to be the smartest person in my class. If I am not, I feel anguish and despair. Is it that anguish and despair come from losing and philosophy for me is just a competition and for other people it is not that way at all? But that is not true. Does philosophy harbor competition, and if it does, is it intrinsically flawed? Would art be a better way to get at truth? But art is competitive too! Is existence, then, a Schopenhauerian nightmare--endless striving to overcome, when you can't overcome yourself (as a competitor) how do you find time to even think about any other issue? Is my thinking somewhere flawed? Is there anything in life that I don't need to struggle for?

Accepted:
October 21, 2005

Comments

As with any other academic discipline, limited resources (salary pools, tenure, endowed professorships and the like) make for competition. I doubt that philosophy as a field is more competitive than many others that are current. Further, when in the past philosophy was practiced outside of universities, competition could also be discerned just as was the case, at that time, in mathematics, astronomy, and other emerging fields. (Just think of how much European jealousy Ben Franklin provoked with his advances in the study of electricity.) However, I don't see that any of this justifies Schopenhauerian pessimism. Rather, the pervasive endeavor to improve on the work of others is, at least in some cases, motivated by the drive to get better answers to enduring questions. I don't see anything inappropriate about that. Of course it is possible to get caught up in the chase, and to get obsessed with what, in at least one translation, Plato refers to as "outdoing". On the other hand, a nagging dissatisfaction with current orthodoxy can be a great catalyst to new discovery. Better that, even with the occupational hazard of competition, than settling for received opinion, yes? (By the way, perhaps your need is not to be the *smartest* person in the class, but rather to do the very best you can in advancing inquiry.)

Here is one reason why one limited form of competition in philosophy (and many other areas of inquiry) is good. Faced with a philosophical problem, our best bet is to propose a possible solution, criticise it, and on that basis to try to improve it, or improve on it. But almost all philosophers are better at criticising other people's ideas than their own. So competition yields an epistemic advantage.

Karl Popper proposed this kind of methodology of 'conjectures and refutations' as the key to inquiry, especially in science. Although there is a lot I would criticize (sic) in Popper, I think he is right to emphasise the importance of trying to find the weak points in the best ideas people can come up with.