THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PHILOSOPHERS

Steven James Bartlett

Now and then during philosophy’s long history, philosophers have bemoaned and sometimes even deplored the fact that the discipline has made little if any significant progress. Often it has been philosophers with scientific or mathematical training or background who have pointed to this shortcoming—men such as Bertrand Russell, Rudolph Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Edmund Husserl.

Russell’s famous line from his Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy is known to most philosophers: “Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.” More recently and even among a few analysts and philosophers of language, who have generally not been attracted to the banner of “scientific philosophy,” we find similar despairing commentary on philosophy’s failings. For example, Herman Philipse commented: “The aspirations of philosophers of the past to transform philosophy into a decent scientific discipline, when collected in a historical survey, now seem to us nothing but a boulevard of broken dreams.” (Herman Philipse, “Can philosophy be a rigorous science?” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 65, 2009, 155-170; quote from p. 163)

At greater length, P.M.S. Hacker has written:

[I]f one asks a philosopher for even a single book that will summarize the elements of philosophical knowledge—as one might ask a chemist for a handbook of chemistry—he will have nothing to present. There is no general, agreed body of philosophical knowledge.... [I]f we examine the history of modern philosophy, it appears to be a subject in search of a subject matter....

            This should give us pause. How can it be that after two and a half thousand years of endeavour philosophy has still not reached the status of a science, has no agreed subject matter, and has no fund of philosophical knowledge? How is the poverty of philosophy, construed as a cognitive discipline, to be explained?...

            The promise that after two thousand years of irresponsible adolescence, philosophy will at last produce a flood of truths and well-founded theories—tomorrow, has been made, and proven empty, far too often to carry conviction. (P.M.S. Hacker, “Philosophy: A contribution to human understanding, not to human knowledge.” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 65, 2009, 129-153; quotations from pp. 130-131, 134)

Observations like these, confirmed by the author’s own half-century of experience in philosophy, allow one to draw three plausible alternative conclusions about the discipline’s lack of progress:

• philosophy has in fact, during its long history, simply failed to offer much, if anything, of real substance in the way of results of lasting value that can be built upon by subsequent thinkers;

• it is an unrecognized and fundamental mistake to apply the yardstick of “objectively valid results” to philosophy; philosophy should rather be viewed—and accepted—as a socially and academically authorized platform on which to develop and propound personal beliefs about virtually any topic; or

• we simply need to summon still more patience, taking a long view that two and a half thousand years are really not enough to judge a discipline’s potential for success.

(We should mention a widely recognized consolation of philosophy: that its study can help students develop skills in critical thinking. However, even if true, this valuable secondary benefit may not justify the existence of philosophy as a separate discipline, since the study of logic, mathematics, rhetoric, law, and other subjects yield similar intellectually bracing benefits.)

Consider, then, the above three alternative views of philosophy: the criticism of its historical failure, its social and institutional endorsement as a platform for expounding personal beliefs, and the call for more patience. Whether a failure, a platform, or a plea for patience, what philosophy is or should be will largely be determined by personal taste, prevailing fashion, or hard-to-break habits—and there can be no rational arguing with taste, fashion, or habits that people resist breaking.

Instead, with a background in philosophy and clinical psychology, I’ve found it natural to bring the two fields into close contact, and to ask, What is it about the psychology of philosophers which has resulted in the phenomenon that Russell, Reichenbach, and others have found disappointing about philosophy, but which encourages humanists to embrace philosophy as a forum for their preferred beliefs?

I have not seen this question considered with seriousness or detail in the literature, and so offer what I am convinced is an adequate, if not complete, explanation of why philosophy does not make—and does not wish to make—constructive progress. Three papers, which if read in tandem, provide, I think, a clear answer to this question. Philosophers who are interested in this form of self-understanding may wish to read these interrelated papers in the following suggested order:

“Philosophy as Ideology” — for a copy, click here

“Narcissism and Philosophy” — for a copy, click here

“Psychological Underpinnings of Philosophy” — for a copy, click here