Making Public Philosophy
by M. Oreste Fiocco
In a sense, philosophy is a subject matter. In this sense, philosophy comprises a canon of texts and their authors, the discussional “literature,” and a number of topics, including such traditional ones as the general features of the world, how we know the world, and how human persons ought to live or treat each other. In another sense, though, philosophy is not a subject matter. In this second sense, philosophy is an activity, something one does, rather than the material one reads. Philosophy as an activity has, then, no constitutive subject matter – no more than does baking a loaf of bread or riding a bike down a trail.
Philosophy as an activity is critical thinking, where this involves reflecting on something so as to understand that thing. Some of the things we aim to understand are claims, representations of the world (e.g., philosophy is not a subject matter). Many, however, are not. One might aim to understand, say, an event (e.g., the US Capitol riot), a process (e.g., bees making honey) or an object (e.g., an internal combustion engine). To understand a claim involves assessing its meaning, truth, or grounds; what it presupposes; what follows from it (alone or given certain assumptions). To fully understand something that doesn’t represent the world but is more substantially part of it involves appreciating more exactly what that thing is; the ways in which it must be just as it is; the range of ways, if any, that it might be different; what it does; how it interacts with other things. Critical thinking is what enables you to find the “box” that we’re often urged to think outside of; it helps you see how the box is made and why it might seem inescapable. It also can reveal how to disassemble the box in order to create something more useful.
I think the second sense of philosophy characterized above, perhaps the less familiar one of philosophy as an activity, is primary and is by far the more important of the two senses characterized. It is the primary sense of philosophy because it is the activity of critical thinking that yields the philosophy read and discussed as a subject matter. Certain writers’ critical thinking produced the texts in the canon and what have become the traditional “philosophical” concepts, theories, and problems. Philosophy as the activity of critical thinking is the more important sense, because recognizing and practicing this activity is invaluable: thinking critically about one’s situation and the things around one can change one’s life. Critical thinking can change one’s life for the better even if one has absolutely no interest in what is often taken to be the whole of philosophy, namely, the subject matter, philosophy.
I also think that understanding, via critical thinking, more worldly things, rather than claims about the world is the more significant and valuable skill. Knowing what claims mean – so you can engage in meaningful dialogue – and what claims follow from others – so that you are not misled by what people are trying to sell you, literally or figuratively, are certainly useful. But so much of what matters in our lives is not a claim, nor representational at all. While knowing what is presupposed by the claim racism is wrong is important, knowing what racism is and how it is present in society and how people might oppose it is much more so. Knowing how to oppose racism might lead to redressing injustices in society, whereas knowing what any claim concerning racism presupposes will not.
Despite the importance of philosophy as an activity (i.e., critical thinking), philosophy is almost always taught as a subject matter, often via the canon, focused on the concerns and thoughts of thinkers often long dead. Even when taught with a more contemporary focus, on “cutting-edge” issues and the work of living philosophers, philosophy taught as a subject matter focuses on what others regard as worth caring about. The issues that inspire others to do and write philosophy might not be meaningful to students of philosophy – those issues might not touch their lives at all. The few courses available devoted to critical thinking are, almost universally, ritualized examinations of informal fallacies (e.g., faulty analogy, ad hominem argument, false dilemma, etc.) or of simple systems of deduction. Such courses, when not concerned with engaging worldly things, try to teach one to infer correctly, not to think critically: incisively and insightfully.
There is an urgent need to make philosophy more accessible, to bring it out of academia and make it more public. But if the philosophy that’s made public is just a bunch of other people’s esoteric and abstract ideas, it won’t do much good. On the other hand, thinking critically about the things around us is the most practical and transferable skill, much more useful than the mere awareness of – or even reflection upon – other thinkers’ ideas. The more people who have and hone this skill of world-directed critical thinking, the greater the likelihood that we will be able to solve problems crushing and killing us.
Motivated by a desire to expose the greatest number of students (especially from less advantaged backgrounds) to the best of philosophy – the activity of critical thinking directed at understanding whatever things perplex or threaten or move one as an individual – I founded TH!NK (https://www.humanities.uci.edu/humanitiescenter/think) in 2015. The program introduces philosophy as an activity to adolescents in public elementary schools. Each year, I and a team of graduate students go into a number of schools for four consecutive weeks to do philosophy, for an hour, with small groups of students. Philosophy is presented as critical thinking, not a set subject matter. Indeed, no familiar, traditional “philosophical” texts are used in the program. Instead, we read a poem or fable or short story – or just look at a picture – and engage this “text” critically. I do TH!NK to teach young people that philosophy is an activity that can improve each of their lives and their communities, by examining, in a deliberate, purposeful way, the things they care about. I believe that every child starts out as a philosopher, moved by the novelty and wonder of the world to ask questions. Students, though, as they grow, are led away from critical thinking by standard curricula that demand that they just know what they are required to know, rather than question, and thereby learn, what they need most to know.
The primary goals of TH!NK are doing philosophy with students, enabling them to pursue it on their own, showing them that philosophy is a most practical activity – and trying to get them to see that critical thinking can have transformative powers. To support these goals, TH!NK also attempts to help students appreciate intellectual confusion. If one is really thinking critically, one will soon get confused. One will then lose track of the question one was asking or no longer feel its significance and, as a result, have no idea how to proceed. Feeling confused is unpleasant and hurts in a distinctive way. Many people who have witnessed confusion or have experienced it themselves regard confusion as a bad thing, associating it with ignorance, stupidity or being a novice. Consequently, most people, regardless of age, try to avoid it. Confusion, however, indicates that one is progressing towards a vantage at which one has never been. Embracing and resolving confusion are key to seeing past what one knows (or takes oneself to). (For more: https://blog.apaonline.org/2022/04/29/truth-of-confusion/) Confusion is, therefore, a difficult state that one should welcome, rather than shun. Being confused is a good thing and I not only want students to know it’s okay to be in that state, but also to encourage them to get there!
As a metaphysician and epistemologist, I am frequently confused. My scholarly work is directed at illuminating what existence is; what a thing – anything at all – is; what the world is; what the structure of the world, in the most general sense, is; what time is and how it contributes to the structure in the world; and how one engages the world, or the things in it, so as to be able to obtain insight into any of these phenomena. Given that I take the value of philosophy to be its being a critical activity that can enhance the life of one who takes it up, none of this work is pertinent to what I do with TH!NK. I certainly do not try to teach the students who participate in the program what I take existence to be. The opposite, however, is so: what I do with TH!NK influences my scholarly work. Talking with young philosophers has made me think about the nature and limits of inquiry, and to seek a universal point, beyond disagreement, from which we can all examine the world, and from which we can resolve what seem to be intractable differences.
Recently, some philosophers have tried to make academic philosophy more inclusive, sometimes by expanding the canon, finding thinkers from underrepresented groups whose work has been neglected, and studying that work. This is worthwhile, but does not address the deeper problem: academic philosophy, given the constraints in place to even approach it, is an exclusive, exclusionary practice. Thus, I think taking philosophy to be the activity of critical thinking presents a better way to make philosophy – and, eventually, even academic philosophy – more diverse and inclusive. This way gets people to see philosophy as an activity they already know how to do or can recall from when they were younger. Then they can be philosophers (again) and think critically about what’s most important to them. Once many more people can think critically – that is, philosophically – we’ll be able to work through disagreement and dogma… and maybe avoid catastrophe.
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