Impact and Engagement for Early Career Philosophers: Part III

"History of Philosophy: Podcasting the B Team"

by Peter Adamson

Almost exactly five years ago I launched a podcast entitled “The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps,” mostly because I listen to podcasts myself and wished that such a thing existed. I was listening to a lot of history podcasts, which have the advantage of being able to move slowly and linger over detailed accounts of people, events and cultures. I thought it would be great if someone were to cover philosophy like that, rather than leaping from one famous author to the next, as we usually do when teaching at university level, and without leaving out whole cultures (so far, in part with the help of co-authors for the scripts, I have covered Islam and India in addition to European thought, and will soon be tackling Africana philosophy). Arguably, this was a case of moving too quickly from “someone should really do that,” to “I should do that”; though I realized the podcast would be a lot of work, I underestimated how much of my time and energy it would take up. Still I certainly do not regret having embarked on it, and would encourage any academic to think about what sort of public outreach they might be in a position to do – if nothing else, the feedback you get from a audience beyond the academy makes it worthwhile.

You might wonder, though, why it was this particular message I wanted to disseminate in podcast form. Why try to convince people that you can’t properly understand the history of philosophy without understanding so-called “minor” figures? I sometimes like to think of them as the “B team,” authors who leap to no one’s mind when they think of a list of famous philosophers. Not that fame is a decisive criterion. Some towering figures in the history of philosophy are largely unknown in the English-speaking world, simply because their seminal achievements were in non-European traditions – for instance Gautama, founder of the logical Nyāya tradition, or Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, whose ideas shaped centuries of philosophy in the Islamic world. Rather, I have in mind figures who made a relatively modest impact by the standards of their own tradition. What is the point of reading and studying such authors, never mind including them in a podcast?

There are at least four reasons. First and perhaps most obviously, even if you think the historian’s sole task should be the study of philosophical giants, you should still pay some attention to the dwarves surrounding them. A major figure like Kant was reacting to other households names like Hume, but also to a wide variety of contemporaries and past thinkers who are now forgotten by all but specialists.

My second point goes hand in hand with this one: studying the history of philosophy is not only a matter of learning about key figures, but also involves learning about key ideas. And sometimes, those ideas were first put forth (though perhaps not most powerfully put forth) by “minor” thinkers. If you are teaching a course on late ancient Platonism, you will probably begin by setting out the cosmic hierarchy envisioned by Plotinus, who is standardly credited with inventing “Neo”-Platonism. Yet a very similar system can be found in his predecessor Numenius. In fact, Plotinus was accused by his contemporaries of plagiarizing from this so-called “Middle” Platonist.

Third, minor figures often give us a deeper insight into the interaction between the history of philosophy and history in general. If you want to understand the way that political thought in the middle ages was shaped by the real politics of the time, Thomas Aquinas’ student Giles of Rome – who polemicized on behalf of an unpopular Pope – is a more informative witness than Aquinas himself, even if Aquinas is no doubt the deeper political thinker.

Fourth and most importantly, it is not actually so clear who is minor and who is major. I’ve just mentioned Aquinas, and he is certainly a major thinker. But was he truly more significant than his teacher, Albert the Great, who represents a major turning point in the revival of both Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism in Latin philosophy? You might retort that Albert is not really a “minor” figure (after all, his middle and last names are “the great”). What then about Thomas Bradwardine, who played a central role in the mathematicization of physics in the fourteenth century and anticipated ideas about human freedom and morality that would come to the fore in the Protestant Reformation? What about Marguerite Porete, who actually died for her radical teaching about the will and its transcendence above virtue in a loving union with God?

In fact, it might be better to be somewhat more modest, and admit that unless we happen to be thoroughly specialized in a certain period of philosophy, we are not even in a good position to sort out the “A Team” from the “B Team.” A better plan is to be open to the contribution of any thinker to the history of ideas, realizing that like any story, the story of philosophy’s history is told most informatively when nothing is left out.

For the first two entries in this series compiled by Emily Thomas (Durham University), see here and here. 

Comments

[Mark Z]

Peter, It is a great series. I love listening to it.