What is philosophy? What are the mysterious people called ‘philosophers’ doing, and what is their role in human society? In this paper, I do not aim to answer these questions definitively. Instead, my goal is to explore the question itself. What do we mean when we ask what is philosophy and what is the role of philosophers? What do we want to understand?
At first glance, the matter appears straightforward. We are seeking a definition of philosophy to understand what it is and can find an answer in various dictionaries and encyclopaedias. If we follow this path (and we certainly can), the question will be answered, and we will have a definition of philosophy, shaping our understanding of what it is and what philosophers do. Case closed.
It is precisely at this point that I want to reopen the case and, hopefully, help keep it open enough to allow for a developing discussion about the question that resists a definitive answer. If philosophy has something to do with thinking, then positing a final definition stops the flow of thought and leaves philosophy with nothing to do, at least in that area which was finally defined. A hypothetical world where everything is considered as finally defined and, thus, any further reflection is deemed superfluous is, in my view, dystopian and, at the very least, numbingly boring.
Therefore, unless philosophy wants to self-destruct or veil itself in obscurity, ongoing thinking about the question ‘what is philosophy’ reveals a necessary tension that keeps the thought process flowing – we want to understand what it is, and we want it to remain open for development and transformation. I propose that we can unpack this tension and better grasp its implications by approaching it through the concept of ‘identity’ rather than definition. As I will explore, the notion of ‘identity’ is broader than ‘definition’ in that it can offer more open-ended ways of thinking about the question. In contrast, the concept of ‘definition’ implies a closed-ended project aiming to ‘resolve’ the question, thereby eliminating the very tension of thought necessary for philosophy.
Following this open-ended path, my paper will look at how the relational approach to philosophy’s identity is more helpful in accounting for the productive tension of thought, accommodating both calls for and philosophy’s claims to social relevance in the context of increasingly complex problems we are facing globally. I will finish with a suggestion that we can think of the relational identity of philosophy in terms of its contributions. Specifically, referring to Sartre’s idea of absence as a relation in the human (intersubjective, social) reality, I propose we can think about philosophical contributions in virtue of relations to other areas of human endeavour and, in particular, the absence of such contributions.
For example, we could ask the following questions: What kind of contribution to the mutual discussion with others would make us think of it as coming from philosophy? What would the absence of such contributions reveal about philosophy’s position in relation to other areas of human endeavour? If the present paper is seen as a contribution to the discussion of the question ‘what is philosophy’, what makes it a philosophical contribution? Importantly, what do our answers to these questions reveal about our existing assumptions (and expectations) concerning philosophy?
Two approaches to ‘identity’ and philosophy
When I want to know what something is, how do I proceed? I can start listing that thing’s characteristic attributes, uses, and functionalities. If I wanted to upset Plato’s Socrates, I could offer examples of that thing’s instantiation, its manifestation in actual situations in life. Following Aristotle, I might focus on the four causes describing the thing (its material, efficient, formal, and final causes) or, following many thinkers of the Scientific Revolution in Europe, I can declare that formal and final causes are superfluous in my study of that (natural) thing and that knowing its material and efficient causes is enough to know what it is. There are and have been many ways of thinking about things’ identities (what they are and how they remain what they are), and each has its historical context. Simon Glendinning (2011) proposes that we can group these different ways into two approaches to understanding identity: intrinsic and relational.
An intrinsic identity approach requires that a thing has certain features that make it what it is and that these features (or enough of them) remain present for it to continue being what it is. On this account, the thing’s relation to anything else in the world (and the world’s relation to it) is irrelevant to its identity. A final definition of philosophy that claims to determine what it is irrespective of its social-historical situation would fall under this approach. As I will argue later, this has been philosophy’s way of identifying itself for most of its history (in European traditions). A relational identity approach incorporates the thing’s relations to other things into its identity. For the thing to be and remain what it is, it must maintain its specific differences from other things within a general structure of relations. On this account, identity is ensured and endures in terms of occupying a particular and persisting position in what can be thought of as a coordinate system.
For instance, while being a spouse contributes to who I am (at this time of my life), it does so in an open, relational way – not as something I am intrinsically, essentially or in my ‘nature’, but as a relation that characterises one aspect of my current position in the social system in which I participate. If I get divorced, this relation will alter, and I will change my position so that being a spouse will no longer be part of my (relational) identity. My suggestion is that the relational approach is better suited to thinking about philosophy’s identity because it is more helpful for considering and highlighting both the productive tension of thought required for philosophy and its social relevance.
At this point, it may seem that I am building and attacking a straw man. Is it not obvious that a thing’s position in relation to other things forms an important part of what that thing is, and a significant change in its position has a transformational effect on its identity? Moreover, being socially relevant requires a specific social position, being thus positioned relative to specific social concerns and other things that occupy their positions relative to those concerns. All this relative positioning clearly points towards the relational approach to understanding identity. So why write a paper about it?
Although it is true that many contemporary philosophers view their discipline in such relational terms, it is worth remembering that it is a historically situated development of and within philosophy that is still unfolding today in a variety of ways. In the middle of the 20th century, in Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon had reason to declare that “philosophy never saved anybody” (1967, p.12). Less than twenty years ago, in her 2006 book Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, Sara Ahmed argued that perceiving an ‘object’ as it is ‘in itself’ is an illusion caused by our forgetting that all things have a background, they arrive and are not simply ‘given’. The conditions of their arrival, consisting of the various contacts with others, are inseparable from what the ‘object’ is, its identity: “indeed, the object is not reducible to itself, which means it does not “have” an “itself” that is apart from its contact with others” (Ahmed 2006, p. 43).
Two very recent examples that show a serious engagement with and dedication to a relational approach to philosophy, each in its own terms, are Puncta. Journal of Critical Phenomenology with its inaugural issue published in 2018, and Feminist Philosophy of Mind, an edited collection of essays in this emerging field published in 2022. The first argues that “[t]he critical turn in phenomenology suggests that phenomenology is not merely a descriptive method or practice, but a mode of critique understood as an ongoing process of revealing and interrogating the concrete conditions, institutions, and assumptions that structure lived experience” (Puncta website), and the second describes feminist philosophy of mind as “area of study that investigates the nature of mind with reference to social locations marked by categories such as gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, and ability and/or investigates the nature of social locations with reference to theories about the mind” (Maitra and McWeeny 2022, p.3).
These compelling recent considerations indicate that, although it might appear obvious, the relational approach to understanding philosophy’s identity is a historically situated development that is still in the process of unfolding. Finding ourselves amid it contains the risk of taking it for granted and perhaps being tempted to assume that socially engaged relational identity has always been inherent to philosophy. Therefore, exploring and contributing to this relational development is worthwhile, especially considering the long history of various efforts to define philosophy intrinsically, ‘in itself’.
The ‘in itselfness’ of the intrinsic approach to identity has the character of uncovering the ultimate, universal, timeless truth about the ‘essential nature’ of a thing that is hidden precisely behind all the layers of confusing and misleading contingencies of life, including relations to other things. I briefly offer three historical examples representing the intrinsic approach’s long tradition.
Probably one of the most famous examples is Plato’s Cave allegory, with its ideal of philosophy as the path toward the light of the universal truth and reality by gradually grasping the absolute universals (or unchanging forms) of the “world of being” as opposed to the mere shadows and images of our daily “world of becoming” (Plato in Jowett 2018, pp.1338-1342 in Book VII of The Republic).
During what is considered the Middle Ages in Europe, the 9th-century Arabic philosopher al-Kindi expressed his attitude towards and definition of philosophy as follows: “[O]f the human arts, the highest in rank and the noblest in degree is the art of philosophy, which is defined as the knowledge of things in their true natures, insofar as this is possible for man” (al-Kindi in Adamson 2007, §I.2, AR 95, RJ 9).
The final example comes from the analysis of the assumptions about the nature of philosophy in the 15th-century Renaissance Humanism. One of the case studies – an exchange between Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and the Paduan humanist Ermolao Barbaro – reveals that both thinkers view philosophy as a contemplation of human and divine matters that requires a strong demarcation between philosophy and daily affairs: “Philosophy is therefore not seen to be dealing with the world of things that are uncertain, arbitrary, and changeable” (Lines 2017, p.288).
Although today, no philosophical research project is likely to receive funding if its objective is to reveal the universal and unchanging principles underlying all knowledge and reality by virtue of philosophy being the first and highest of all sciences, the influence of this long tradition in defining what philosophy is ‘in itself’, apart from the contingencies of the “world of becoming”, can be recognised in the fact that what I have called the relational approach to understanding philosophy’s identity is still an unfolding process (as evidenced by the examples offered) and, therefore, deserves our attention. There are at least two points we can make at this stage.
First, in order to be socially relevant and maintain the productive tension of thought, philosophy needs to be socially positioned relative to (and engage with) other areas of human endeavour that are also orientating themselves in a shared coordinate system. This means avoiding any tendencies to define itself ‘intrinsically’ as something purely ‘in itself’, thus risking omitting the relations that constitute its position or detaching itself from such relations and positioning. Second, as philosophy’s long historical tradition shows, it is crucial to avoid idealising any particular area of human endeavour as the highest, exclusive or universal standard, which carries the risk of maintaining relational identity in a distorted way where others in those relations are construed as ‘means to an end’. In the second part of my paper, I elaborate on both these points.
Stay tuned for the second part – coming next Monday.
keep exploring!
P.S. Thank you for visiting me here on the humanfactor.blog! If you enjoyed this post and are interested in more philosophical content, I invite you to explore the blog, leave a comment, like, and subscribe to get notified of new posts.
Note: This post is part of an essay I wrote for and presented at the recent Society for Women in Philosophy Ireland conference that took place in Maynooth, Ireland on 17 and 18 November 2023. My research for this essay was undertaken while in receipt of funding from the UCD College of Social Sciences and Law Research Scholarship.
Featured image credit: Metal statue of a woman thinking, entitled “la Pensadora” by José Luis Fernández in Oviedo, Asturias, Spain, ca. 1968/1976. By ÁWá – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2179748
References
Puncta. Journal of Critical Phenomenology, viewed 13 October 2023, < https://puncta.journals.villanova.edu/about/editorialPolicies#focusAndScope>
Adamson, P. (2007). Al-Kindī. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. New York: Duke University Press.
Fanon, F. (1967). Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press.
Glendinning, S. (2011). Derrida: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kuzin, V. (2023). What Is Philosophy? Idei i idealy = Ideas and Ideals, 15(1), 11–34.
Lines, D. A. (2017). Defining Philosophy in Fifteenth-Century Humanism: Four Case Studies. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 273, 281-297.
Maitra, K. and McWeeny, J. (eds.) (2022). Feminist Philosophy of Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Massimi, M. (2019). Wilkins–Bernal–Medawar Lecture: why philosophy of science matters to science. Notes Rec.,73, 353–367.
Peters, M. A. and Besley, T. (2019). Critical Philosophy of the Postdigital. Postdigital Science and Education, 1, 29–42.
Peters, M.A., Jackson, L., Papastephanou, M., Jandrić, P., Lazaroiu, G., Evers, C. W., Cope, B., Kalantzis, M., Araya, D., Tesar, M., Mika, C., Chen, L., Wang, C., Sturm, S., Rider, S. & Fuller, S. (2023). AI and the future of humanity: ChatGPT-4, philosophy and education – Critical responses. Educational Philosophy and Theory, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2023.2213437
Plato in Jowett, B. (2018). Plato: The Complete Works. ATOZ Classics.
Sartre, J.-P. (1992). Being and Nothingness: a phenomenological essay on ontology. Washington Square Press.
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