As I started to answer your request, Maryellen, to speak about how I orient myself in philosophy, I discovered myself studying concerning the notion of a culture of mass shooting as an aesthetic interest. This is likely to be among the many deadliest types of slickness on this planet now. But what are we to say concerning the slickness of so many politicians or of capitalists looking for to use alternatives whereas avoiding accountability for social justice?
The title that I give to this piece comes from a dialogue that I used to be having with somebody fighting social alienation final 12 months. He was feeling remoted from others, dogged by standing nervousness, and not sure of himself. He grappled with fixed self-pressure that oscillated between feeling that he needed to hustle his enterprise and indignantly wanting to flee into mysticism.
In our discussions, I criticized slickness—a phrase that the artist Misty Morrison has used within the context of the skilled artwork world of MFAs. Apparently, the notion caught with the particular person. Late final fall popping out of a protracted meditation retreat one weekend, this interlocutor discovered one expression rising to the floor of his thoughts: “in opposition to slickness.”
I’m echoing that title as a result of I hope that individuals like that particular person succeed of their wrestle to cease reproducing slickness and handle to be extra messy and actual as folks. Whereas it will assist them develop, it’s additionally necessary for philosophy. I strongly imagine that the very best moments in philosophy will not be slick and that each skilled and public philosophy in the present day are affected by numerous types of slickness.
I’m going to depart from typical tutorial follow and never outline “slickness” right here. Somewhat, I’m going to make use of it in context all through this quick piece, leaving the matter to dialogue at a future date because the case could also be. I’m additionally going to write down a reasonably quick piece, not like the intentionally long-read items which have been printed on this weblog as a part of Into Philosophy. In fact, that co-authored sequence is in some ways a tacit polemic in opposition to slickness and for a special form of polished craft, one attuned to human realities.
Wanting again on thirty-five years in skilled philosophy, counting the gradual professionalization of school and graduate faculty, it’s apparent to me that the moments value remembering are resolutely not slick. They embrace (1) messy dialogue teams, (2) lessons the place we bought stumped or misplaced collectively, (3) occasions when writing itself was fascinating. To remain oriented in philosophy, I’ve discovered it essential to recollect and to worth these sorts of issues.
Messy dialogue teams
I’ve written about these elsewhere in relation to climate despair and unjust policing. The teams that I take into account are ones the place, over time, folks truly bought previous their egos sufficient to look collectively into what Martha C. Nussbaum calls, in The Fragility of Goodness, “necessary human issues.” These teams couldn’t be slick, as a result of folks needed to be susceptible.
However vulnerability shouldn’t be one thing one simply dials up. It’s pretend to strive to take action, as some New Agey environments do. For folks to open up, they’ve to come back to belief one another. Within the context of fluid neighborhood teams, this takes a sure looseness and modesty to the setting. If folks present up fronting their polished selves, folks get defensive and shut in. The teams as an alternative should be inviting and hospitable in a low-key manner.
Such an ethos impacts dialog for the higher. As a substitute of tremendous tight arguments, one will get folks questioning collectively and slowly creating a reasoned place by way of piece-meal objections, variations of perspective, and—primarily—the spirit of the room steadily coalescing round folks attempting to know one another.
Slickness goes out the window right here, evaporated or thrown away. As a substitute, the room goes heat. For such a socially helpful state of affairs to acquire, folks have to work to make the room accountable to everybody who exhibits up sincerely attempting to be there with others. And such accountability to everyone seems to be simply not slick. It might’t be. It needs to be stable and leafy like a large limbed tree.
Courses the place we bought stumped or misplaced collectively
Mark Fiocco has written superbly about how hard and immediately unproductive questioning can be. Once I consider unslick and exquisite lessons, I’m considering of lessons the place we bought misplaced in questioning vital issues. What I particularly keep in mind is letting the category spill over into time past it.
A category like that’s fairly completely different on the floor than the dialogue group I beforehand talked about. The category is kind of targeted, extra regimented in its consideration to epistemic norms. It usually includes a primary hierarchy surrounding the instructor(s). Nonetheless, it’s not slick.
The principle cause why comes out within the accountability that I discussed a second in the past. A philosophy class that will get misplaced in determining what issues in it needs to be accountable to the issues themselves. As a matter of ordered reasoning, it has to create an setting of duty. Attending to the issues themselves, persons are accountable to work collectively to pay attention to one another, maintain disagreement, and—paradoxically—get clearer as they get extra stumped by the issue at hand.
As soon as once more, we see vulnerability of a special type, exhausting gained by way of acts that result in belief between folks. In such lessons, folks have performed the work, so to talk, of being each attentive to the widespread object of the category and considerate with one another. We additionally see thoroughness. That is one thing neighborhood dialogue teams manifest another way. Courses that get misplaced collectively in figuring issues out are thorough by way of a form of systematicity generated from the issues themselves and the dedication to be taught in an ordered manner with and thru each other.
Such thoroughness is anti-slick. The slick lessons can be ones that simply gained’t go there (some line of questioning or custom of considering) as a result of it’s indirectly too messy or unlikely to provide instant rewards. There are slick lessons on the market—maybe any class that finally ends up too neatly packaged and too geared toward being cool or leading edge. However they’re a waste of time, though they have an inclination to seduce folks.
Occasions when writing itself was fascinating
Writing is such an artwork of perfection that the temptations of slickness are robust with it. The publishing trade is slick, too, whether or not one speaks of essentially the most main tutorial presses, the so-called “popularizing” presses, and even the boutique elite presses of literary tradition. Advertising is slick. Cash-making is intelligent. There are each inside and exterior dynamics that are inclined to stress writing towards slickness now.
However they need to be resisted. The occasions I take into account had been ones the place I might really feel myself rising as an individual by way of some a part of the writing, both cognitively, in how I approached my inclinations, or with respect to my sensible and social “sense of life”—one other Nussbaum fragment from Love’s Information. To write down in order each to talk and to develop turns into the straightforward and troublesome activity, a form of good humbling that one returns to repeatedly utilizing the instruments of language and typing.
Within the context of a society that appears for data manufacturing, novelty, or sophistication, to write down in order to speak and to develop could seem breathtakingly naive, even indulgent. However it’s value asking why we should always settle for such social alienation. That we now have realized one thing is a mark of getting acquired some data. That we are able to talk is human decency. Why ought to the query then be, does it promote?
Good—not less than, accountable—relationships
The factor that I’d most convey to of us making their manner by way of skilled philosophy is that forming good relationships alongside the way in which makes the method essentially the most sustainable and flourishing. It’s additionally simply the appropriate factor to do. In fact, the query is what a “good” relationship is. Is it one the place you rating by way of it, or one that’s fluidly transactional?
No. It’s one the place the persons are in any case accountable to one another as folks with lives of their very own and reliably worth such primary social issues as fact and truthfulness (in Bernard Williams’s conceptions of those phrases), being an actual particular person first, and having some considerate and thoughtful generosity. Shouldn’t this stuff be straightforward to search out?
However societies and professions might be actually twisted. Robert Jackall, in Ethical Mazes, foresaw slickness with out ever utilizing the phrase, as he studied the function of what Karl Manheim referred to as “self-streamlining” in company managerial cultures within the USA of the Nineteen Eighties. In worlds of what Jackall later referred to as “organized irresponsibility,” it might appear safer for the person left on their very own to keep away from any friction and to vanish by way of the system as one climbs to success.
Forming good relationships, nonetheless, is a form of fixed friction. They take time and loyalty, particularly when issues get tough. One should work by way of conflicts to have good relationships. They can’t be merely non-compulsory or transactional based mostly on comfort. On the middle of relationships needs to be real and pervasive respect for each within the relationship. Which will even imply opposing the system for the sake of those you respect.
I dream of a career the place we converse of people who find themselves deep and relational because the true bad-asses, not the people who find themselves mental wizards. True, we’re right here in tutorial philosophy utilizing our minds. However Plato and Aristotle settled this matter hundreds of years in the past: a thoughts with out character is a mistake. We’re right here largely as a result of we all know learn how to use our minds. However what about our characters? And the place do they present themselves? In relationships.
Resolutely avoiding success
The very last thing on my thoughts is the paradoxical notion that the appropriate factor to do in skilled philosophy is to keep away from success. This not solely sounds silly; it sounds privileged and unjust. A number of folks by no means even come into the career as a result of it trains folks in off-putting, sexist, biased, and albeit colonial methods. Sure, issues are altering. However it’s not straightforward to kind good relationships when the folks round you’re oppressive! And to reach the context of a career that has traditionally marginalized all kinds of individuals is an achievement, even an act of energy for folks, proper?
Sure. Furthermore, the career of philosophy shouldn’t be completely corrupt. It has many virtues, and it has constructed up a lot of intergenerational, world practices which are largely sound or socially helpful in non-cynical methods for doing good issues. To succeed by the virtues and within the practices have to be a very good factor.
What I imply by avoiding success shouldn’t be looking for it as a result of one is concentrated on different, higher issues. The avoidance here’s a matter of the place one places one’s consideration. The place I grew up, folks used to speak about “holding one’s eyes on the ball” (i.e., in a sport). This may need meant successful for some coaches. However they had been fallacious. What made the sport was the play, and to play properly for the sake of the sport meant typically not specializing in the ball however on the sector, and, furthermore, not obsessing about successful however fairly about doing the very best one might within the sport. (Do you hear the echoes of rising and speaking on this?) The principles arrange successful and dropping, however the excellence seems within the play inside them, not at their terminus.
What are a number of the different, higher issues within the language sport {of professional} philosophy? They embrace the non-slick good issues I’ve gestured to on this quick piece, they usually embrace good relationships. They even embrace methods through which, as professionals, we’re poised to see past the career to what is better than philosophy. What’s successful in philosophy, even?
I want success for everybody who deserves it, which means that they’ve succeeded by virtues and good practices to be proper for roles with duties and even to be worthwhile for public consideration because of their good work and, typically, their righting of historic injustice within the career. However I don’t suppose that I ought to focus on success. I feel that I ought to resolutely take note of the non-slick good issues of human life as I labor in our career. I ought to consider my very own development as an individual as I examine issues that strike me as being value finding out on this planet. I ought to consider others and the way they’re faring.
Oration for my slick brothers
Now, Braveheart Gillani and I are at the moment co-organizing a examine group by way of the Baker Nord Middle for the Humanities right here in Cleveland referred to as Queering Masculinities. Because of it, we’re starting quarterly discussions on the LGBTQ Middle of Higher Cleveland on gender touring, as we name it, with a give attention to queer masculinities. I wish to finish this temporary publish—with thanks, Maryellen—within the spirit of that group with an tackle to slick brothers that I’ve identified. Slick sisters are welcome to journey over and determine too with what I say. Perhaps that’s one other dialog.
O my slick brothers, why do you do it? Are you not cool sufficient already? Will you show to your self that you're worthy if solely you shine extra brightly in mirrors? Or perhaps it's insufferable—to be so susceptible to disgrace and humiliation on this relentlessly aggressive society? As soon as I used to be snorkeling off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and noticed a brown shark, a small one, solely six toes or so in size. It was off within the distance, and I used to be so stunned that I shouted underwater by way of my snorkel. Then, in that immediate, the shark was gone—sooner and extra highly effective than any residing factor that I've personally seen within the water up shut. I perceive why it's consoling to liken oneself to the sharks. Their minds are so slender on just a few, discrete issues, it appears, and once they act, they plow by way of the shallows prefer it was nothing. To achieve success like them within the waters of the career is to be half-god. However we're creatures refined another way. We succeed by rising internally, which is to outgrow success. Then different issues are our pace, bearing, and energy: the slowness with which we wait on issues that matter, our skill to present room round a thought, and our capability to persevere by way of hardships by being actual with one another and ourselves. O my slick brothers, you too deserve a life.
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The aim of the “Navigating (Dwelling) Philosophy” sequence is to gather experience-based explorations of philosophy’s private, institutional, and disciplinary evolution that may assist younger lecturers and college students navigate philosophy in the present day. Should you can be fascinated by collaborating within the sequence or wish to nominate somebody who suppose can be a very good match, please get in contact with us by way of our submissions form.
Jeremy Bendik-Keymer
Professor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve College, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A., land of many older nations
