The Amateur Philosopher

This is a continuation of the story begun here. There’s still more to go; although I talk about making the decision to leave academia in this post, I’m going to devote another post to what the transition out of the academy was like and to how it appears in hindsight.

In November, the weather turned sour (I’m a California boy, born and raised, and I was rapidly discovering that great lakes winters–indeed, great lakes autumns–were not for me). I started missing my girlfriend quite painfully. And actually being a working philosopher, out in the field, was just not all I’d hoped it would be.

The thing is, I’m not–have never been–a voracious reader of philosophy. I stumbled on the occasional article or book that was actually a pleasure, but overall I found secondary research nothing but a chore. I only got occasional and mild pleasure from writing about it. And as a teacher, my skill was indifferent at best. (It’s better now, if I do say so myself, partly from additional experience and partly because technological changes have very much favored my preferred teaching style; I find myself regularly marvelling at the fact that people managed, for thousands of years, to impart information in a lecture format without the use of PowerPoint.)

All this would seem to make academic philosophy a fairly poor career choice. But I had maintained the belief that I loved the field because I loved–was wildly passionate about–talking about philosophy (not lecturing about philosophy, mind you, which is an entirely different activity; I’m talking about a real conversation, with all proper conversational give and take). Philosophical conversations were the ultimate in adrenaline rushes. I’ve never actually tried cocaine, but I’ve read descriptions of those first few highs, when the drug is still a pure pleasure, before it becomes mere spackling for a gaping hole of jones–and that’s what I’m talking about. A sudden access of energy, of life, a complete, almost physical engagement, a tingling of the senses. Adrenalin and endorphin coctail, higher than any runner’s high. I’ll come back to this later.

But for now, the point is–professional philosophers, by and large, don’t actually spend all that much of their time talking to each other. The days of Russell and Wittgenstein hollering at one another about purported elephants across a seminar table are long gone–if, indeed, they ever really existed, even in the time of Russell and Wittgenstein. I’ve heard of one or two exceptions to this–Rogers Albritton comes to mind as a philosopher who made his career almost entirely through the spoken word, publishing five papers and no books in his lifetime, but inspiring literally hundreds of “(personal conversation)” footnotes in the works of others–but these exceptions are so rare as to do little but highlight the rule they violate. Philosophy–like any humanity, really–is a lonely business. And this is exacerbated when you’re temporary faculty, because temporary faculty aren’t, really, ever part of the community of the department in which they find themselves; they’re mere passers-through, and are seen and treated as such.

And one morning, I found myself, sitting alone, waiting for the start of the Lewis White Beck Memorial Conference (hosted by the U. of R.), and all of this hit me at once. It occurred to me that I hadn’t really been enjoying myself as a philosopher–not in several years–that what it had been to me, mostly, was a source of misery: worries about my own role in the field, about whether I was good enough to make it, about what “making it” would even mean…not to mention the fact that it had stranded me in a strange city, to which I would otherwise have had no interest in moving, away from people which I would otherwise have had no interest in leaving, and in a group of people who didn’t have a terribly strong interest in me.

And, through some odd twist of chance, buried between a couple of philosophical papers, a guy delivered a presentation with a title something like “Careers for Philosophers Outside Philosophy.” I’m afraid I don’t remember his name–a fear ameliorated by the fact that I’m quite sure he doesn’t remember me at all. I don’t even remember the details of his talk; I didn’t find any of them, or any of the career paths he suggested, particularly inspiring. I only remember two things: He and I did not take to each other, either immediately or at the post-conference dinner, and yet he had a phenomenal influence on me, because during his talk, I had a thought that I had never really dared to think before: I don’t have to do this. I could chuck it all, pretend the last six (11? 23?) years had never happened, and build a brand new life for myself. I didn’t leave that day committed to leaving philosophy, but I did leave with a head full of new and strange thoughts, and a copy of the LSAT registration booklet that I picked up in the building lobby.

And, after agonizing about it for a couple more weeks, I made my decision–I would just do it. Why did I make the decision? Well, I can tell you what I said then. “I love philosophy. But I just don’t love philosophy enough–not enough to put up with the payscale, or the job insecurity, or the absence of any control over where I work or live. And I’m not happy with the feeling of being ‘always on’…of feeling that, 24-7, I at least should be thinking about my work, for some version of should. I want something I don’t always have to take home, something that, while I might not love it as much, will enable me to enjoy the rest of my life to more than make up for it.”

That was what I gave as my reason for leaving philosophy, and that, ultimately, is why I didn’t apply to any law schools, though I took the LSAT, wrote my essays, and even sealed and stamped the envelopes. (I didn’t think I’d be happy in corporate law, and the other forms of law struck me as having all the same problems I wanted to get away from.) Was it a good reason? It certainly could have been, for some people. Maybe even for me–although it’s worth noting that I’ve ended up in a career (consulting) with only moderate job security, little control over where I live (although this is balanced out by the fact that I like the place it forces me to live in), and does not lend itself to being left in the (for me, usually home) office at the end of the day. (The payscale is definitely an improvement…but it’s not as much of an improvement as you might think, especially when you adjust for cost of living.)

Was it the real reason? I know that even less. I actually suspect not. I think my real reason, at the time, was a combination of a number of things of which the above played only a small part. I think there was a pretty strong, though quite irrational, feeling of “taking my ball and going home,” as if somehow I could spite the field that I felt was giving me a raw deal. I think there’s a good chance that there was an unadmitted fear of going on the job market again (which I would have to do, that very year), that it would confirm what I already suspected about my worthiness as a candidate. And I was very much in love with my girlfriend, who was shortly to start graduate school herself, and feared the “two-body problem” that so many academic couples face. (I do want to make one thing clear here, though. Whether or not I was motivated by a desire to be with her, the decision was mine–not hers. She was so worried about the possibility that I would leave the field “for her” that she made me promise that that wasn’t my motivation, and I answered, with what I thought was honesty, that it wasn’t. If, in fact, it was, it was a mistake–that relationship did not work out, in the long run–but it was 100% my mistake, and no responsibility for it attaches to her.)

But one way or the other, I made the decision. I informed my chair that I wouldn’t be applying for the 2-year extension to my position, or indeed any other academic job.

The remainder of the year was extremely strange. It had the feeling, more than anything else I’ve ever experienced in my life, of running out the clock. I was living in a place that I knew I was going to leave (and where I had no roots to tie me to the past), working at a job with no possible bearing upon my future. The disconnect between what I spent most of every day doing and what I saw as my actual life was surreal. I apologize, by the way, to my students that year, particularly my students in the spring semester. I didn’t deliberately slack off–I had a contract and enough of a sense of duty to prevent that–but if, as I imagine, I occassionally seemed far away, it’s probably because I was. I was circling 20,000 feet above the beginning of my real life, waiting for air traffic control to give me the go-ahead.

To be continued.