What involves thoughts whenever you hear the phrase “thinker?”
For a lot of, it’s nonetheless the picture of the smart, remoted thinker doing philosophy on his personal. Such a picture has lengthy gripped fashionable creativeness. It permeates abnormal concepts about philosophers, calls to thoughts the likes of René Descartes (greatest identified for what has come to be referred to as “armchair philosophy,” completed in solitude), and likewise stays ubiquitous inside our self-discipline. For instance, the concept “actual” philosophy is individualistic—that it might probably or ought to be completed on one’s personal—continues to be mirrored in skilled expectations and evaluations, the place markers of success are too typically restricted to solo-authored work that’s been completed on one’s personal, ideally, from their armchair! The thought is that “actual” philosophy worthy of the title is summary, goal, and the product of remoted genius. The corollary is that philosophy that doesn’t match this mannequin—for instance, philosophy that’s collaborative, interdisciplinary, utilized, or sociopolitically engaged—isn’t actual. That’s to say, it isn’t as rigorous, and as a consequence, isn’t and shouldn’t be valued in the identical manner or to the identical diploma.
However why ought to this be the case?
One want solely flip to the ancients to see clear fashions of philosophy creating in neighborhood, by means of direct dialogue with others. The truth is, the phrase dialectic, from the traditional Greek dialegesthai, means “to converse with,” and is central—each virtually and etymologically—to the philosophical enterprise. And if we fast-forward to the current, philosophical progress remains to be made by means of dialogue, disagreement, and revision, all of that are most profitable in and thru dialogue with others, be it at conferences, workshops, within the pages of journals, in our school rooms, and even in parks, bars, espresso outlets, and generally round our dinner tables. To do philosophy properly and responsibly requires that we take heed to and take critically challenges, incorporate critiques, ask questions of others, and revise and replace our views in response.
Philosophy is, at its core, a workforce sport. It’s one thing we do and advance, collectively, in communities, no matter whether or not that is one thing we’re fast to acknowledge or totally respect.
And but, skilled requirements—what’s anticipated, celebrated, and rewarded—nonetheless are inclined to middle the work of people (learn: solo-authored manuscripts, articles, and talks). Typically, our institutional technique of evaluating skilled “success” can not correctly accommodate analysis that’s been undertaken collaboratively, significantly as a result of we’re evaluated, in the beginning, as people. (Descartes’s legacy of the atomistic, individualistic, rational deliberator nonetheless looms massive.) Moderately, then, many philosophers proceed to shrink back from extra overt types of collaboration and co-authorship, and lots of junior students are suggested towards it.
This, we imagine, is a mistake. Or, on the very least, it ends in misplaced alternatives for what could possibly be fruitful collaborative experiences that yield distinctive and attention-grabbing philosophy.
Regardless of widespread renunciation of collaborative and co-authored work in philosophy, and the snail tempo at which institutional {and professional} norms are shifting to accommodate these practices when and the place they occur, we imagine that there’s deep worth in doing philosophy collectively. In what follows, we spotlight a number of the epistemic, social, and private advantages of philosophical collaboration. We argue that the occupation—and we particular person philosophers who comprise it—can be higher for extra totally embracing philosophical collaboration and co-authorship and for creating extra areas, alternatives, sources, and metrics for meaningfully supporting it.
To spotlight the epistemic, social, private, {and professional} advantages of collaboration and co-authorship in philosophy, we’d prefer to mirror on our personal expertise collaborating and co-writing over the previous eight years. We strongly imagine that our collaborative tasks have benefitted from doing philosophy collectively, and we hope that reflecting on our collaboration introduces and amplifies one mannequin for the way different philosophers can expertise the advantages and joys of collaborative tasks. We additionally hope to push the needle towards interested by how we are able to collectively problem what we take to be the overly individualistic normative {and professional} paradigms, expectations, metrics, and requirements of our self-discipline.
Our collaborative relationship started in 2013 once we have been in professor (Lauren) and pupil (Heather) roles. We flag this to acknowledge that usually our college students might be priceless interlocutors and equal individuals in philosophical conversations, not simply passive vessels onto whom professors impart information. Shortly after Lauren joined the Philosophy Division on the College of Louisville, she met Heather, who was ending up their undergraduate diploma in biology and philosophy and was entertaining the considered pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy. The next 12 months, Heather had the privilege of starting graduate work in Well being Care Ethics in the identical division. Throughout that 12 months, Heather took a graduate seminar, Foundations of Bioethics, with Lauren, and it was there that the seeds of our collaboration have been planted. Over the course of the semester in school, workplace hours, and an prolonged set of animated marginalia commentary on Heather’s assignments, we engaged in heated discussions and critiques of Beauchamp and Childress’s seminal textual content, Foundations of Biomedical Ethics. Particularly, we have been each struck by their vastly underdeveloped account of hurt in medical contexts. Collectively, we developed our ideas on the assorted methods during which quite a lot of medical injustices and harms usually are not captured by their slim conception of hurt.
These vibrant discussions led us to co-author a paper, which we have been invited to current collectively on the annual assembly of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology (SSPP) (2016) and once more on the 2016 assembly of the Kentucky Philosophical Affiliation. Working collectively, it turned clear that we had a terrific dynamic for pondering, writing, and presenting as a workforce. Our discussions about hurt and injustice in medical contexts started to maneuver in lots of instructions, and, as this stuff typically go, grew right into a collection of paper tasks. Over the following few years, we wrote a number of articles and chapters collectively (see here, here, and here), solely to have one other thinker level out that “it looks as if you’ve gotten a ebook undertaking occurring!” (Thanks, Veronica Ivy, for the boldness and inspiration, and for seeing one thing that we ourselves didn’t!) Although it took a buddy to level it out to us, the years of pondering, talking, and writing collectively had blossomed into one thing extra sturdy and complete than both of us (individually) would have arrived at.
Certainly, we did have the makings of a ebook—one which can be printed later this month with Oxford College Press, referred to as Microaggressions in Medicine. This can be a ebook that we’re each immensely happy with, and which, importantly, would by no means have come to be if not for our collaboration. Considering and writing collectively—texting compulsively about new concepts and methods of resolving issues in our ever-developing arguments, to the purpose that we have been pondering of calling this weblog submit “ write a ebook collectively by texting”—even towards the backdrop {of professional} and institutional norms that don’t all the time help or worth such collaborative endeavors haven’t solely been key to our success, however have additionally introduced us immense pleasure and laughter within the course of. In our expertise, philosophical collaboration can result in epistemic, social, private, {and professional} advantages. Allow us to briefly think about every in hopes of reinforcing the worth of doing philosophy collectively.
Epistemic advantages
An essential perception from feminist philosophers of science and feminist epistemologists is that every one knowers are socially, politically, and epistemically located. As such, and as feminists have lengthy been arguing, the sorts of questions we’re inclined to lift, what we’re able to know, and what we finally come to know in regards to the world are a operate of who we’re, what identities we occupy, and what lived experiences we’ve had. As a result of all of us as people are partial and restricted epistemic brokers, constrained by options of our personal identities, experiences, and worldviews, all of us have epistemic gaps and limitations. With out transferring past ourselves and fascinating with others who’ve totally different identities and experiences, we could by no means come to note, develop, or totally respect these gaps, not to mention ever hope to fill them.
In a collaborative means of inquiry, these with whom we’re engaged in philosophical reflection will help us come to see, perceive, and respect issues we would not be able to see, perceive, or respect on our personal. When there are extra views and experiences engaged on a single drawback or concern, there’ll doubtless be fewer unfilled gaps (and naturally, we should additionally all the time draw on views and experiences exterior of particular collaborative dynamic by means of our analysis, quotation, and dissemination practices to be able to deal with different potential gaps which will stay).
The upshot is that every of us begins our inquiry as a thinker, thinker, and researcher from a vastly totally different place to begin, with totally different intuitions, assumptions, insights, and experiences. These various beginning factors form how we come to an issue, concern, or query in philosophy and what instruments we’ve got at our disposal to attempt to work by means of it. That is significantly salient relating to socially and politically engaged philosophy. Once we work collectively as a workforce, we broaden the gathering of epistemic instruments on which we are able to draw to deal with advanced, multifaceted issues.
Social advantages
Philosophy is, or should be, a social exercise that’s completed in widespread with others. It entails every kind of social phenomena: asking and answering questions of each other, elevating challenges and critiques, and likewise issuing reward, recommendations, and compliments. All of us depend on the engagement, critique, and reward of others to various levels in advancing our philosophical work. Nevertheless, collaborating and doing philosophy collectively takes this social dynamic to the following degree, creating alternatives to forge extra sturdy philosophical friendships and communities. In our case, by means of our work collectively we’ve come to see ourselves not solely as collaborators and colleagues, however as associates who’re deeply engaged in shared tasks that we each worth. Accordingly, we undergo the ups and downs which are so widespread to the tutorial and analysis course of collectively, as a workforce. We help each other, enhance each other, and when issues go properly, share in one another’s joy as friends (making Aristotle proud). We have now discovered this to be extremely rewarding: philosophy as constructing and strengthening the bonds of friendship.
Cultivating these kinds of real friendships can be a manner of resisting the hyper-individualist and hyper-competitive nature of the self-discipline of philosophy and of academia extra broadly. In some ways, the tradition of academia—set towards the backdrop of capitalist “productiveness” norms—incentivizes and rewards people and their lone pursuit of success {and professional} standing. This could push us to concentrate on propelling our personal careers a lot that we lose sight of why philosophy as a social observe issues within the first place. Amongst different causes, philosophy issues as a result of we’re on a shared pursuit towards information, reality, justice, and a greater world—issues we are able to solely uncover, create, and really respect collectively.
Private Advantages
The expectation that one can and may do philosophy alone might be extremely alienating, particularly for many who are already ultimately on the margins of the self-discipline of philosophy (e.g., girls, queer and trans philosophers, philosophers of colour, first-generation and low-SES philosophers, and disabled philosophers, amongst others). For philosophers who stay underrepresented within the occupation, establishing a way of significant neighborhood might be important for one’s continuation and even for one’s very survival. Collaborative neighborhood helps set up the sense that one just isn’t alone, at the same time as they navigate what might be the tough and daunting processes of analysis, writing, inserting papers underneath assessment, receiving suggestions, happening the job market, and many others. together with navigating what could be a overseas, and at instances hostile, skilled world. Having a philosophical neighborhood—particularly a detailed workforce of collaborators—to root for and help you may make it simpler to maintain going within the face of imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and the day by day burdens of being underrepresented. As talked about above, a detailed collaborator can change into a buddy, confidant, and mentor. They will make the philosophical course of extra humane and fulfilling. They will additionally change into a key supporter, serving to one resist the burden of burnout or, at instances, the need to surrender totally. Generally, a detailed collaborator within the occupation can provide us endurance to maintain going and doing the work, together with (and maybe particularly) when the work or course of feels heavy, thankless, or hopeless.
Skilled advantages
Doing philosophy collectively means extra alternatives for increasing the attain of the undertaking (e.g., by using multiple individual’s time, sources, and networks). That is an apparent profit if the purpose is to disseminate your analysis as broadly as potential and have it do issues on the planet (significantly within the case of utilized philosophy). Collaborative work, and the way in which it brings collectively a number of minds, views, social areas, and orientations, permits us to see issues and reply questions in new and broader methods. Furthermore, it permits us to provide you with attention-grabbing and novel options that we or wouldn’t and couldn’t have come to on our personal.
Embracing the advantages of collaboration in philosophy permits us to withstand the limiting skilled norms and expectations (that are notably not discovered in lots of different disciplines the place collaboration and co-authoring are each customary and inspired). It additionally permits us to create new potentialities of what philosophy might be and the way it may be completed, collectively.
In sum, we expect there are sturdy causes to withstand the continued obsession with the parable of the person, remoted, philosophical genius. As a substitute, we should embrace the concept at its core, philosophy can, and maybe ought to, be collaborative, practiced collectively in neighborhood with others. Doing so, we imagine, can result in quite a lot of epistemic, social, private, {and professional} advantages.
The Ladies in Philosophy collection publishes posts on these excluded within the historical past of philosophy on the premise of gender injustice, problems with gender injustice within the discipline of philosophy, and problems with gender injustice within the wider world that philosophy might be helpful in addressing. If you’re thinking about writing for the collection, please contact the Sequence Editor Alida Liberman or the Affiliate Editor Elisabeth Paquette.
Heather Stewart
Heather Stewart is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Oklahoma State University. Their analysis and instructing take an intersectional feminist strategy to analyses of drugs, healthcare, digital applied sciences, and synthetic intelligence, with a specific concentrate on how energy, oppression, and privilege form particular person and collective engagement with these establishments and applied sciences. Their work has been printed in a number of prime journals, together with The Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, and Views on Psychological Science, amongst others. Heather’s first ebook, Microaggressions in Medicine (with Lauren Freeman), was printed with Oxford College Press in February of 2024.
Lauren Freeman
Lauren Freeman is a Professor of Philosophy at University of Louisville; Director of the M.A. in Applied Philosophy; and an affiliated school member within the Division of Ladies’s, Gender, and Sexuality Research. Her analysis considers how members of marginalized teams are oppressed in each apparent and delicate methods inside the context of science, drugs, well being, and healthcare. It has been featured in Nature and chosen because the function article in prestigious well being sciences, philosophy, and coverage journals. She has written Microaggressions in Medicine (with Heather Stewart, OUP 2024), co-edited of Microaggressions and Philosophy (Routledge, 2020), and was editor of The American Philosophical Affiliation’s journal Research in Feminism and Philosophy (2019-2022).
