Topics Philosophers

Question On the "about the site" page, reference is made to your cadre of "trained philosophers," and in many questions and answers on the site, the panelists are described as "professional philosophers." These phrases imply that philosophy from a degreed person or one who professes to be a philosopher as a means of earning an income is superior to philosophy from the likes of Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, or Eric Hoffer (all meagerly educated, working-class tradesmen). We know that is not the case, which leads me to the question. If it is not education or profession, then what is it that makes one a philosopher?

Accepted:
August 11, 2010

Comments

This excellent question goes to the heart of the vexed issue of what philosophy is (itself a philosophical question, which has received widely divergent answers in the past 2500 years.) Today, there is a profession of philosophy: in order to enter into this profession, it is nearly always required that one have a Ph.D. (there are exceptions--there are professional philosophers, i.e., philosophers with academic positions, such as Saul Kripke and, I believe, Myles Burnyeat, who do not have Ph.D.'s, just as there are professional scholars of English literature who lack Ph.D.'s--my former colleague at Johns Hopkins University, the esteemed critic Neil Hertz, never submitted his Ph.D. dissertation). This requirement reflects the fact that today, academic disciplines such as philosophy are professions, entrance into which requires certain credentialing. Although all the Ask Philosophers panelists have professional positions and Ph.D.'s, this of course does not imply that any of these professionals is superior to Socrates or Plato or Aristotle or Descartes or Leibniz or Nietzsche (none of whom had Ph.D.'s in philosophy), but simply reflects the fact that the panelists are all, as it were, 'certified', in virtue of their Ph.D.'s, as philosophers. What the panelists do have in common with predecessors such as Plato and Descartes and Leibniz and Nietzsche is the manner in which they treat questions, namely by giving arguments. Indeed, to my mind, what is distinctive of philosophical treatments of topics is that they offer reasoned considerations in support of the claims that they advance. In this respect, for example, one can distinguish certain remarks made in the Sermon on the Mount from philosophical treatments of the same topics. In light of this criterion, it is not altogether clear to me that Franklin, Paine, or Hoffer are indeed philosophers, although they do treat philosophical issues, because they do not advance arguments in support of their claims.