The force of presentation: Policing modes of expression and gatekeeping the status quo

There has been a lot of discussion lately on the philosophical canon which circumscribes what one must read, teach and write about. Its lack of diversity and the consequences of this lack are starting to be understood. It is also well-known to the philosophical community that there is a very specific way in which philosophical work must be presented. In this sense, the way one should write to communicate one’s philosophical work is also highly canonized, but this has been given less attention. In fact, the way philosophical work is presented can be seen as constituting a genre, in the sense that there is a tradition of writing philosophy in a specific way (Ferell, 2002, p. 6). In this paper I want to draw attention to this canonization and how it limits philosophy in ways that harm it.

Philosophy, at least in its Anglo-Saxon Western tradition, has been mostly characterized by dry and scholastic writing. As a result, there has always been tension with people who, tried to break away from this tradition and offer diverse presentations of their philosophical thinking. This led to philosophy at different times in its history being presented in the form of treatises, meditations, summae, commentaries, series of aphorisms, dialogues, and confessions written in first person. In fact, a number of people who have broken with the traditional mold we know today as some of the greats of the history of philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, Nietzsche, Pascal, Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. These names come from a time in which philosophy was not professionalized and institutionalized in the way that it is today in modern universities, and many of the philosophers of the past that are included in the western canon today, including some that remained within the usual mode of presentation in philosophy, did not hold university positions. This may be one reason that different styles were open to them; because not only did they not have to fit in a world of professional philosophy (indeed, one wonders whether the above thinkers would be accepted in academia today) but also, as Martha Nussbaum (2017) has noted, since they wrote for a public audience they had to make their content accessible to their readers (p. 219). Nonetheless, despite the fact that philosophy in its history has been more diverse in terms of its presentation than it is today, Agnes Heller (2012) is right to point out that its borders, though elastic, still existed (p. 20).

Today, rather exceptionally in the history of philosophy, philosophy is an academic discipline. In order for philosophers to get a job and advance in their field they need to adhere by the standards set by the profession. This has led to the presentation of philosophical work being rigidly formalized. Though there are the occasional philosophers whose writing style is a pleasure to read, there are strict rules about the format and writing style that lead to the papers and books that we, in the analytic tradition, know as typical in philosophy: argumentative, dry, often about minor points in an area of philosophy and often lacking a broader context. This results in dense and technical papers that are difficult to follow – and sometimes even boring – to people who are not experts in the particular niche of the field that these papers or books are addressing. We are, in fact, trained to write this way and leave behind, either completely or for other endeavours, other ways of presenting our philosophical thinking. There is a sense in which it is assumed that learning how to write in this manner gives one a privileged access to philosophical understanding and this is the only standard that is accepted as counting towards publication, promotion in the field and to, more generally, being accepted in the philosophical club. So philosophy must be written and it must be written in a very specific way addressed to our professional in-group.

This style of writing is meant to be more ‘scientific’; more rigorous than other styles of writing, impersonal, based on explicit argumentation, demonstrative reasoning and including the dissection of terms and the use of philosophical jargon. Instead of being modeled on other kinds of expression, the starting point of philosophy lately seems to be scientific reasoning. This has limited philosophy to academic papers, books (monograms or anthologies) and lately, though very rarely, posters, with other genres or forms of expression being ignored, or purposely avoided. Though philosophical ideas and arguments can be found in films, in fiction, in blogs and other (public) media, there are still people who will insist that in order to do “serious” philosophy, and to be a philosopher, one must do it in the form of an academic article, or a longer treatise.

There is nothing inherently wrong with papers written within this traditional presentation mode, and philosophy is a very difficult and highly technical subject. Since the nature of philosophy is to explore our foundational assumptions and the limits of our understanding of reality, technical papers on, say, science, logic, consciousness or mathematics will be part of philosophy. But precisely because philosophy is about challenging our most deeply rooted assumptions, philosophy must also be open to challenging its own preconceptions, including about what is and is not philosophy. That is, it should not dismiss the possibility of different forms of philosophical presentation from the start but, rather, should be open to finding philosophical expression wherever it might exist.

Because philosophy includes so much more than such abstract argumentative thinking, and because it is not science, nor is it like science, to model it on science is problematic. The aim of philosophy is not to construct a body of facts about the natural world, as is the aim of the sciences. Philosophy aims at conceptual clarity and a more general understanding of things, one that reveals connections – as Sellars (1962) has said, its aim is “to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term” (p. 1). Philosophy is also distinctive because it exists in the background of all of our lives, which is why Mary Midgley compared it to plumbing, and it is characterized by the generality and fundamentality of the question it raises, which do not fall within the purview of science. Because of its vast subject matter, it is also very heterogeneous, so trying to put all of it in the same mold cannot do it justice. Midgley (2018) sums it up well when she writes that philosophy

is all about how to think about difficult cases – how to imagine, how to visualize and conceive and describe this confusing world, which is partly known by report, in a way that will make it more intelligible as a whole. It is a set of practical arts, skills far more like the skills involved in exploring the unknown forest than they are like the search for a single buried treasure called the Truth. And because of this it is far more concerned with the kind of questions that we should ask than with how, at any particular time, we should answer them (p. 50).

Martha Nussbaum (2017) notes that philosophy begins with the Socratic commitment to careful and explicit rational argument and transparency of speech and that it should be written in a way that is accessible to anyone who makes an effort to understand it – that is, it should not only be addressed to an elite (pp. 218–222). It is true that philosophers employ reason in order to wade through philosophical problems, and though philosophy does not begin with Socrates, contemporary analytic philosophy is largely modeled on Socratic argumentation – which, as Rónké Òké (2021) has argued, is also the source of the highly antagonistic and combative culture of professional philosophy (p. 142). But, to fall back on Midgley (2018) again, reasoning includes many activities beyond just argumentation. One can suggest ideas, propose them, compare them, ponder, wonder, brood, speculate, doubt etc. (pp. 156–157) Reasoning, like philosophers and like their audience, comes in many shapes and forms, and when you aim at the understanding to which philosophy aspires there is no good reason why philosophical reasoning should be limited in its form of presentation. And though reason has traditionally been seen as existing in opposition to the emotions and imagination, there is ample scientific evidence and philosophical work today that shows that holding on to this dualist paradigm is mistaken (Bortolotti, 2015; Damasio, 1996). Reason can work with and through different kinds of cognitions and thus can be expressed in different ways. If we think of philosophy in these terms, circumscribing the allowed modes of presentation in philosophy goes contrary to the very nature of philosophy which has a very broad subject matter and does not have a set method of inquiry.

In this sense, constrictions on the allowed forms of presentation of philosophy serve as gatekeepers of the status quo of philosophy, as does the required use of philosophical jargon which can be intimidating to people that would otherwise contribute to, or engage with, philosophy. By strictly circumscribing the mode of presentation of philosophy one circumscribes how philosophy should be done and, as a result, what counts as philosophy. This could be seen as falling within what Kristie Dotson (2012) has called the ‘culture of justification’ that pervades US professional philosophy (and the analytic tradition of Western philosophy more generally) that requires that we contribute to, and teach, philosophy in accordance with the established conception of philosophical engagement (p. 6). It is also a form of exceptionalism in which certain ways of presenting one’s work are excluded based on the (historical) privileging of one mode of presentation over others (p. 12).

Of course one can object that this is what is required to do philosophical work, and to claim otherwise is to question the expertise that is necessary to be a professional philosopher. This objection does have something to it. To acquire philosophical expertise requires a lot of hard work and skill. It takes time to acquire the ability to break down claims, identify and evaluate assumptions, empirical evidence and arguments, to draw distinctions and find connections and it also takes a lot of time to master the literature. And because it’s the nature of philosophy to raise questions that are relevant in people’s lives and on which people voice strong opinions, professional philosophers often feel the need to gatekeep their discipline and to define what is and what is not philosophy as well as who is and who is not a philosopher.

But from this it doesn’t follow that the format in which such thinking is presented must be narrowly circumscribed as it is by the way academic philosophy is currently structured. Taking up philosophical questions and addressing them in a philosophical manner can take place in many different forms and there is nothing inherent to philosophy that makes philosophical insight approachable only in one way. In fact, precisely because many of the questions philosophy takes up have this universal appeal, or are framework questions in different disciplines, it cannot be ruled out that people taking up these questions in different ways in a serious and systematic manner may contribute insights to philosophical thinking. That doesn’t mean that anyone can or will do it, or that anyone taking up such questions will contribute to the field, but it means that we should not dismiss a priori that this could be possible. More than this, the present homogeneity in presentation that is the status quo in philosophy and which is the result of the professionalization of philosophy may be stifling individual creativity and forms of expression that could produce unimaginable results.

There are many different ways that one can contribute to philosophy – from literature reviews to raising a new question, from making a distinction that is useful to a problem to applying a theory to a real life problem and so on. Sometimes one can explicitly argue for or against a position in the usual established manner but questions about meaning, language, consciousness etc. can be approached in a variety of styles not limited to the written medium or to a particular style of presentation. ^[1] One can offer a different perspective, or explore, study or just present a number of different perspectives in the form of a dialogue. An insight, like a counterexample to an accepted analysis, can be offered through a cartoon or a performance, with an argument explicitly put forward, or implied, or one can provide important criticism to help us think differently regarding a certain position through a commentary or a review. Such things can serve as illustrations of philosophical ideas, but they can also be forms through which their creator engages in philosophizing and the product of this engagement can act, like a traditional paper, as an invitation to a dialogue within philosophy. Particularly when one wants to offer an entirely new perspective, a new way of looking at and thinking about a problem rather than just arguing for one position within an established framework, media that appeal to the imagination can be particularly effective and useful. But the conformity of style that is imposed on philosophy today (and its related conformity of content) excludes philosophers who may not want to, or cannot effectively, present their work in this way, and it also excludes people who may have something to contribute to philosophy but would rather do so in another way. ^[2]

Today we have a number of media that can be used for philosophical purposes with fascinating results. For instance, philosophy can be done through YouTube videos as Natalie Wynn does in ContraPoints (even though from what I understand she is not interested in professional philosophy). Wynn’s video on Pronouns can be an example of philosophy done in an unconventional medium for philosophy and the fact that she presents it in video format because, as she has said, she likes “mood lighting and set design,” should not be a reason to disqualify her contributions as philosophy. Instead of seeing the video format as a distraction from her philosophical arguments in which the form is more important than the content, we can see the form, or presentation, as integral to the very compositional logic of the integrated work. One can bring to mind here other philosophical work in which the form and the content work together: Nietzsche’s polemical Twilight of the Idols and Kierkegaard’s imaginative writing are famous instances of works whose form embodies the philosophical criticism they are making. (Lavery, 2007) So it is not necessarily the case that video media platforms favour style over substance. In fact, what Natalie Wynn does in her series of videos is not new – except the medium in which she does it. She makes dialogues (in which characters represent different philosophical perspectives) or soliloquies to present a position on a philosophical topic and to argue against a different position which is something which has been done repeatedly in the history of philosophy.

Bringing together logical rigour with expressive and imaginative creativity can lead to more complex thinking and to works with multiple levels of meaning that can lead to new ways of approaching and understanding philosophical topics. In this sense, allowing for different ways of presenting philosophy is an opportunity to explore different ways of doing philosophy, and work in different formats and styles can be a legitimate form of philosophical expression that can even count as impact if original philosophy is being done. It can also have important impact in societal terms too – for different ways of presenting philosophy might be more approachable to different people. In fact, if we think in terms of public philosophy, Wynn’s work is uniquely suited to a younger audience and, indeed, her influence is perhaps more far-reaching among that audience than that of most academics.

This does not mean that if we broaden the allowed styles that philosophy can be presented in then anything will be acceptable as (good) philosophy. Just because we allow different ways of expression doesn’t necessarily mean that superficial work will make it through any more than sometimes happens now, nor that work that is not philosophical or is lacking in depth will be considered to be philosophical thus encroaching on our territory. Criteria can be set for content to be philosophical in the way relevant to the style and medium presented and each work should be assessed on its own merits based on whether (and what) it contributes to the philosophical enterprise. In this sense validation can be retained, without though the constrictive definitions of how one must contribute. ^[3]

In the past few years there has been an increase in people’s interest in philosophy and philosophical ideas ^[4] and there has been a move by some philosophers to communicate philosophy more broadly, through blogs, popular articles, podcasts and videos. This is usually seen as an ‘extra’ to serious philosophical work and not taken to be original contribution (whatever that is taken to be), mostly because it is assumed that only pieces of public philosophy can be presented in this way. It is also a relatively common practice to use a variety of texts from different genres when we teach philosophy, and in some philosophy departments students, mostly undergraduates, are given the opportunity to explore a philosophical question, in different formats – like podcasts, dialogues, monologues, films, videos, poems, performances etc. that are then philosophically analyzed by drawing connections to the literature. ^[5] Yet it is still the case that we primarily train students to produce work in the standardised argumentative form. This is the case partly because professionally speaking, for instance in conferences and research activity, going beyond the usual paper format has not really been allowed other than in the rare journals that allow submission in a variety of forms, so ultimately students are steered away from such modes of expression. There have been very rare exceptions however, that show that unless we police forms of expression and retain a negative attitude towards them, broadening philosophy is both possible and can lead to surprisingly good results. ^[6]

Remaining within the acceptable format is easier in the sense that we do not have to think about and work in a different format than the one we are used to, because different contexts need different kinds of thinking and that often requires going beyond one’s comfort zone in a number of ways. In this sense, the narrowing of the allowed ways that philosophy can be presented can also lead to intellectual and creative laziness both for the writer and the reader of philosophy. For, after all, it is easier to work with a ready-made template and be able to quickly dismiss what does not conform to it than do the extra work that would be needed to engage with other formats. The current professional writing style of dry argumentation is meant to be clear and straightforward, at least if you have been rigorously trained in it, while deciphering what a dialogue, poem, performance, film, fable etc. means is a difficult task, and one that not everyone is naturally good at – especially when one has not been trained in it. But once again, this is not a reason to exclude, or consistently discourage, people who naturally express themselves like that or are by nature good at understanding such writing. We tend to forget that we spend a lot of time toiling over texts written in the standard writing style but we do not make the same effort to decipher the reasoning in, or the point of, texts that are not part of that tradition or form. Yet not everything needs to be spelled out, and expecting it to be (which it rarely, if ever, is) is a form of laziness as well as exceptionalism. If, that is, it is indeed easier for everyone to teach and learn to write in the argumentative style common today, which I doubt is the case for many people.

One might object that characterizing the stylistically homogenous approach to academia as laziness can be seen as ignoring some of the benefits (in terms of efficiency) of such homogeneity. ^[7] That is, one could argue that philosophy is already a field in which there is little consensus about what the correct answer to age-old philosophical questions is, and allowing for even more formats may add to this confusion while also creating additional work for already overworked academics who will be required to research a wider variety of media.

I suspect that being worried about consensus is part of modeling philosophy on science. But in philosophy where we think about non-empirical, framework questions and we are required to think through problems in order to get a clear understanding of them, having different views might actually be a sign of health in the discipline rather than failure. Instead of efficiency being a reason to dismiss this proposal we should embrace the complexity of our discipline and allow more ways of expression if there is the possibility of increasing our understanding, even if it makes things more difficult than they already are. More generally, growth in a discipline need not come easily – either individually or collectively. The proposal to expand the acceptable modes of presentation in philosophy requires creativity and inventiveness and this may make it more difficult for some people to produce good philosophy in different modes of presentation – after all, doing what Natalie Wynn does and making a success of it is incredibly hard. But philosophy is very hard to do and there is no claim being made here that expanding the acceptable modes of presentation will make it any easier to produce good philosophy. Rather, the claim is that if we allow different modes of expression then the diversity of philosophy will increase because people who are capable of producing it but are currently excluded, or discouraged, from doing so will be allowed to contribute.

It is in philosophy’s interest to expand the ways that it is presented, because not doing so not only limits who can participate, it also limits who it attracts and so how far-reaching philosophy can be. This impoverishes philosophy because it can deprive us of insights and perspectives that could be important and enlightening contributions and it also serves as an obstacle to bringing philosophy to the general public. Opening up the audience of philosophy is in philosophy’s interest because, firstly, people are given a chance to learn from it and about its importance – which could have other effects, like increasing enrollment in philosophy classes and possibly saving philosophy departments from closing down. In addition to this though, by increasing the audience of philosophy we increase the possibility that more people that might have something to contribute will come into philosophy.

Ultimately, we cannot know in advance what kinds of formats can produce (good) philosophy. We should take inspiration from Mill (1978) and allow for ‘experiments in presentation’ so that we open philosophy to different perspectives and ways of doing things (p. 54), thus extending our sense of what possibilities there are for philosophy by considering the contributions made in different formats. Though such diversity (which should be understood here as diversity of expression and method to include literary approaches, different media, public philosophy etc.) may not necessarily guarantee better philosophy, it opens up possibilities that might be excluded by the stereotypes we have and can make philosophy more interesting and creative. It is also very important that we become aware of how contingent historical factors, like the fact that recently philosophy has been confined to academia, can narrow enquiry and not be trapped in one way of doing things as if that is the only way in which it can be done. In the current status quo, publication standards have narrowed the scope of what we do, and I think this comes to the detriment not only of what philosophy can offer to the world, but also of philosophy itself. Yet the history of philosophy has not always been like this and it need not be so now. Introducing a more creative element in the representation of philosophy should be allowed beyond only public philosophy and should also be allowed to count as ‘serious’ academic work. There are many possibilities that are not only fun (a word not usually associated with philosophy but that could be) but also important to explore because they may bring about new ways of thinking.

In a sense, the professionalization of philosophy has made philosophy more democratic because it has allowed people without independent means to spend their lives doing philosophy, while prior to the 19th century most of the well-known philosophical figures were unconnected to academia and could afford to spend their lives engaging in philosophizing. ^[8] This, however, came at a price because the professionalization of philosophy in the 20^th century has narrowed the scope of philosophy and thus its relevance. In the end we will have to wait and see, but I suspect that just as opening up philosophy to different voices expanded the content of philosophy and the questions that were raised (e.g., as the metaphysics of pregnancy was introduced when women were given more of a voice in philosophy, and standpoint epistemology was introduced when women and other minorities were) allowing for a broader way of presenting philosophy could possibly broaden the questions that are raised – for instance topics that are not related to reason so strictly could be given more prominence, like humour and art.

There was once a time when fine dining was only French cuisine. When some people dared to redefine fine dining and started bringing in more diverse elements, styles and techniques into it, fine dining started to change and as a result it became infinitely more interesting, colourful and tasty. William James once said that philosophy is the unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly. If we think of philosophy in terms of fine dining – fine thinking – it can benefit tremendously from allowing more modes of presentation. Philosophy is about the world and our being in it, a world that is incredibly complex and variable and though philosophy has always had a liberating function and it challenged the status quo, today it is stagnant, conservative and constricting. In the end, the discussion about the way philosophy is (allowed to be) presented is tightly connected to the question of the nature and purpose of philosophy itself. If philosophy requires self-examination and examination of our assumptions and presuppositions, it constantly needs to be examining itself too. And if philosophy is about exploration and innovation, if it is about thinking more clearly in order to do better, then we should not limit the possibilities of how it should be practiced.