Hi Derek, 

Thanks for the response, I take it that these sorts of discussions are better than unfocused mud throwing or wild firing. I’ll take matters in reverse order. Philosophy, or philosophical criticism, would of course be vital to the criticism of cultural, social, political and economic norms. One of the things I take out of a reading of certain key figures in European philosophy is the importance of cultural criticism. Particularly turning the critical eye on your own culture and those aspects of it that you most closely identify with, which for the philosopher includes the norms of philosophical praxis and so rapidly leads us to auto-critical work. Here you cannot presume the good of the object of criticism – we don’t want apologetics. Philosophical auto-criticism is important because to fail to take up (and strongly take up) the task of criticising the practices with which you engage is to fail to be self-reflexive and implicitly to insist that the matter has been settled once and for all. Nothing is more culturally and intellectually stifling that the insistence that a matter has been settled, the insistence that something is beyond criticism. I think Continental philosophy has paid a lot more attention to this type of auto-criticism than analytic philosophy, which pays a lot of attention to the criticism of specific arguments but, once its own orientations were established in the early years, has not paid so much attention to the criticism of its own orientations. Of course some philosophers in the analytic tradition do have some critical interest in ‘the other side’. But here its no good focusing all of your critical energies on an externality, some of it ought to be turned back on yourself.  Some do this, I take it that thinkers like Rorty, Brandom and McDowell have done a very nice job of this sort of thing – which resulted in Rorty becoming something of a whipping boy in some circles. In any case philosophy is part of culture (it does not stand above it, it cannot stand above it), we ought to philosophically question the norms and practices of our own culture – as such part of the task is philosophical auto-criticism. So, philosophy is part of the “solution” but also might be part of the problem – you have to look to know and you wont know until you look. 

But,  insofar as certain modes of philosophy have been driven out of philosophy and seek refuge in other departments within the humanities and social sciences (for reasons that might be connected to what I say below) important elements of philosophical criticism might flow from outside of philosophy. I want to remain open to that. Indeed other areas within the humanities and social sciences engage in their own culture-critical enterprises and so are already critically engaged without having to have philosophy come on the scene. Further, insofar as philosophy is part of the culture that they criticise they could provide philosophers, amongst others, with critical insight into philosophical practice. Although certain folk seem to think this idea utterly preposterous, some feel that they have very little to learn, philosophically, from English literature, sociology, gender studies, history or whatever. Although the people who I have met who have this kind of view do tend to feel that ‘Science’ has plenty to offer and that THE ONLY kind of interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinary dialogue that can take place is between philosophy and science. Which leads us nicely back to the notion that we require some auto-critical hold on our own practices. 

In regard to the aspects of the social, political and economic context that need to be criticized (so what aspects of our culture need to be criticized): well all those aspects of culture that Continental philosophy has been engaged in criticising. That is the short answer. Here I would just state the obvious, analytic philosophy for the most part does not engage in that kind of work – for the most part it leaves culture exactly where it is, and focuses on theoretical problem solving mostly in subordination to some other ‘higher-order’ discourse (primarily science). This can have secondary impact on culture, society and politics but is not primarily orientated on criticising or problematising the culture in which it operates. Rather it seems accept and accommodate itself to these cultural conditions, it adapts itself to them, as if philosophy had no role to play in changing or reorienting them. Here there is a sense in which more radical criticism might see that mode of philosophy as complicit with the status quo in having abandoned social and cultural criticism almost completely (poor old Socrates). By status quo I mean, in part at least, an unsustainable culture of consumption that has been founded on the blood and sweat of the worlds poor. The only answers we see coming forward seem to be mere tinkering, it’s the philosophy of the status quo, no radical criticism. So, if we were all (as individuals) only a little more philanthropic we might be able to feed the globe – answers that address the symptom but leave the cause untheorised. Just to state the bleeding obvious before moving on – the wealth of developed nations was founded on the exploitation of others, our prosperity was founded on injustice and violence and is still largely sustained on injustice. Charity might help, but it is tinkering and leaves the injustice in place, its only benefit is that it does not ask US to change what we do in any significant way, we can remain more or less what we are. If we all gave a little more to charity everything would be okay!!! 

Okay, but that is a little general. In my post I specifically picked out the context in which philosophy operates and so primarily I was talking about the norms that currently shape knowledge production. So, and now I have to be very local in my considerations as I have to talk about the context with which I am most familiar, I think some of the most pressing issues relate to:

1. The way the tertiary sector seems driven by an economic agenda so that what seems most important within the Australian University is generating revenue (making a profit) and capturing market share. Naturally this flows into all aspects of the life in the contemporary university. But to focus on one aspect, it flows into pedagogy so that more and more we serve up sampler courses where nothing very hard is demanded of students (they need to enjoy the product that they are consuming and if its too hard they will not enjoy and so may stop consuming). It certainly flows out in many other ways too, but to remain with this theme: if you are setting up a philosophy curriculum it is better not run courses that ask students to sit down and do close studies of difficult texts, far better have a collection of sampler courses. Far better, in any particular course, to just photocopy a set of articles and offer a Whitman’s Sampler – a collection of attractively packaged, self-contained and easily consumable topics.

2. We see university administration expanding while at the very same time more and more administrative work is placed on the academic. Indeed the administrative side of things seems to be self-perpetuating and self-fertilising. So we see more and more that technocrats are setting the agenda, but they hold the purse strings (this of course relates to point 1).

3. Then there is the contemporary research culture, which within the humanities is primarily driven by government, with some industry linkage. In the sciences there is far more external funding – I know that pharmaceutical companies fund much medical research and so on, and there are a whole range of issues there. But within the humanities we are limited mostly to what we can draw forward from government and the few industry players that can benefit from our work. But, and understandably so, neither the government nor industry are interested in funding people who want to engage in deep criticism of contemporary social, cultural, political and economic norms. I mentioned this in my previous post. But this just seems to favour the sort of work that is conducted by analytic philosophers. If one wants to be a philosopher and if one was a careerist, and I see that most people these days are,  then it would seem that the most sensible thing to do would be to go into analytic philosophy. That is where all the research funding is, that’s your best chance of a career. 

As I am writing this I am realizing that the list could just continue to be extended and that I am just randomly selecting issues. These issues are important but I think that this post is long enough. I think that my first two paragraphs explain my thoughts on the importance of philosophy to the type of cultural criticism I was talking about in my previous post. The latter part of this post is just an initial pass at responding to the first part of your question. But just to be clear, in my previous post I was primarily thinking about the social, political and economic conditions which structure the production of knowledge in contemporary world – to my mind, and particularly in the English speaking world,  these seem to favour those in analytic philosophy over those in Continental philosophy. Which might all just seem a felicitous turn of events. It could be seen (by the unreflective person) simply as culture expressing its values. On the other hand this seems to presume the good of that which needs criticising, the culture that constitutes the conditions of knowledge production, and we cannot simply presume that it is good. In particular we cannot simply assume that it is good because something that we like is prospering from it – that would just be an intellectual failure. But criticising the conditions of knowledge production cannot be the limit of criticism, it is only one part of it and a limited part of it. On the other hand it is often good to turn your attention to those things close to home from time to time – they certainly cannot be ignored. This would be part of a general cultural criticism. One of the keys to thinking forward is to understand the conditions that shape your thinking.