Public Philosophy for the Common Good

This is a guest post by Mike Austin (Professor and Coordinator of Philosophy & Religious Studies, Eastern Kentucky University):

I’ve always wanted to do something meaningful with my professional life (the lack of scare quotes around the term meaningful is intentional!). With all of the caveats and qualifications, being a professional philosopher has turned out to be an excellent choice for me and my family. It’s enabled me to spend my days doing things I love, at least mostly. It’s given me great freedom to pursue questions I’m interested in, as well as the flexibility as a parent and spouse that I’ve really valued over the years. I’m certainly fortunate that I received a tenure-track offer and have found a professional home for the past 15 years at Eastern Kentucky University.

Being a tenured full professor means I have less time for research than I had during the early years of my career. I have a 4/4 teaching load and teach one course every summer. Other responsibilities eat into research time as you progress in your career, at least at a teaching-focused institution. I’ve continued to make scholarship a priority. I’ve also made writing for a popular audience a priority for over 10 years now. I was able to begin doing public philosophy back in 2007, editing a book on running and philosophy. I contributed to several books in the popular philosophy genre, and edited or co-edited several more volumes on popular culture and philosophy. I also regularly write a blog at Psychology Today, Ethics for Everyone.

I think all sorts of philosophical writing has value, from the highest levels of scholarship to the trade publication or blog post aimed at a popular audience. Usually, my scholarly work is the foundation of my writing aimed at a popular audience.

I started doing public philosophy, and continue to do so, because I think philosophy has value for non-philosophers, if done in the right way. So many of the ideas we take for granted can be enlightening and even transformative for the general public. We can shed a lot of light, rather than merely increasing the heat, on a variety of significant or controversial issues.

Beginning several years ago, I started writing some online articles on guns, violence, and stricter gun laws.  Some of these short essays were from a more neutral philosophical perspective. A few of them were more explicitly works of Christian ethics. To be honest, I sort of fell into writing on these issues. Some of the arguments I was hearing in support of the status quo in the United States seemed deeply flawed to me, and the types of religious “arguments” (here, the inclusion of scare quotes is intentional) many who appeared to share my general Christian commitments were offering seemed deeply misguided.

In June of 2017, I was contacted by an acquisitions editor at Eerdmans Publishing. He’d read a piece of mine on God and guns in the Huffington Post and wanted to talk about the potential for writing a smart but accessible book for a popular audience. This book, God and Guns in America, is due to be released in May of 2020.

Many Christians, in particular many fundamentalists and evangelicals, express strong support for the Second Amendment and the status quo with respect to gun laws in America. For many, their views about guns, violence, crime, and self-defense seem to be shaped more by their political party or an NRA slogan, rather than deeper thought or even a close reading of the Christian scriptures. In my book, I offer philosophical arguments that should have broad appeal, as well as arguments from a Christian ethical perspective that are intended to challenge those with Christian commitments. I’m currently the president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, but I consider myself an evangelical in the classic rather than contemporary sense. Think Sojourner Truth and William Wilberforce, rather than Paula White and Jerry Falwell, Jr. I’ve found many Christians and others who are hungry for good arguments that push back against the gun culture in America. And, of course, I’ve encountered many who are strongly opposed to any criticisms of that culture and treat the Second Amendment as if it is divinely inspired.

It is fairly easy to have a conversation about guns with other academics. Most philosophers, at least, regardless of their views, are willing to engage the arguments in my experience. Some segments of the public, however, can be more difficult to engage. But on this issue, and many others, I believe that at least some of us have an obligation to do just that. Academics tend to complain about the lack of critical thought, concern for truth, and reliance on slogans rather than substantive argument in the broader culture. But we don’t tend to do much about it, for the general public, outside of our time in the classroom.

Those of us who have the opportunity and the ability to do so should do more in the public square. While no one wants to follow public philosophical arguments and activism to the end they produced for Socrates, he remains a sound model for many today. The public needs good, accessible, and interesting philosophy which challenges beliefs and practices that need challenging.

Once we’re out of the cocoon, and the pressures that lead us to focus on scholarly publications for tenure and promotion are removed, we should strongly consider devoting some of our time to doing public philosophy. We can bring clear thinking, focused arguments, and, hopefully, model civil dialogue online or in person. Doing this sort of work is one way I can contribute in some small way to the common good. As a professor at a public university, I think I have an extra obligation to do so.

I expect that my ability to be civil will be challenged once the book is published. I’ve had Christians (at least many who appear to be) and secular individuals dismiss me and my positions on guns because (i) I’m a philosophy professor; (ii) I teach at Eastern Kentucky University; (iii) I’ve “gone liberal”—this is meant as an insult; and (iv) I obviously don’t know what the Bible teaches about the right to bear arms and should try reading it; (v) I’m ignorant about guns and what is really going on in this country. I’m sure more of this is to come, and my hope is that I’ll deal with it in ways that are civil and consistent with my own moral and spiritual commitments.

At times I’ve done fairly well at engaging with people on these issues, at other times not so much. I try to ask questions, uncover assumptions, and take a humble and learning posture in my interactions with others. However, there are cases in which I simply ignore people, online at least, when it appears clear to me that they don’t want to have a conversation, but simply rant and repeat slogans or sound bites as if they are decisive arguments. And I’m trying to just ignore the personal attacks. There is something good about simply being silent, about not having to have the last word. I’ve gained a bit of wisdom from my mistakes, I hope.

My writing on gun issues has turned into activism. A few years ago, I contacted Rob Schenck, the subject of an excellent documentary on religion and guns in America, The Armor of Light, which you can find on Netflix. Over the years, we’ve gotten to know each other and last April I joined him and several others in Washington, DC, lobbying several senators. We urged them to support universal background checks and extreme risk protection orders (or “red flag laws”). I learned that twenty-somethings are, in many ways, running the country. They vet what gets to the senators. I’ll be doing more of this in the future, and recently became a senior fellow at The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute, to continue my work with Rob Schenck (he’s the president of the Institute) and others on these issues.

Finally, I’d like to offer a bit of advice to anyone thinking of entering the public square:

1. 1. Find someone who can ruthlessly edit your writing to make it accessible and attractive to a general reader. The help of my editor at Eerdmans was invaluable to me. I thought I knew how to do this, after my own broad experience, but I had (and still have) much to learn.
   2. Interact with normal people, i.e. non-philosophers, about your views. Try to understand what they think and why. Try to communicate what you think and why in terms that they will understand. Get rid of jargon, in written or spoken form. This can be difficult for academically-trained philosophers. It may be the only way we know how to communicate about such matters. But being able to translate difficult philosophy into accessible language is what we often do in introductory courses. We can put those skills to work here. And be ready to get responses that will be clearly false commit logical fallacies, and seem quite irrelevant. But also be ready for responses that are challenging, that make you think more about what you believe and why.
   3. Cultivate a humble posture. It is easy to think that the public needs to learn from us, but they have much to teach us as well. We can sharpen our arguments and refine our views as we do so.

There is a possible tension between doing public philosophy and teaching, namely, that some students will find out your views on a particular issue, when you’d prefer they don’t have that knowledge. I tell my students in the classroom what I think on some issues, while on others I don’t. I’ve had pro-Trump students find my online essays criticizing Trump as a candidate and President, for example, but have never stated my views about Trump in the classroom. And I’m sure other students have seen my work on guns. In doing public philosophy, we need to emphasize to our students that (i) they need not fear taking a different position; and (ii) simply agreeing with the professor’s views in hopes of getting a good grade will not work, either.

We need philosophers who will engage people and ideas outside of the classroom, academic conferences, and academic publishers. If you are interested in doing this, I encourage you to give it a try. I’ve enjoyed doing this, and have found it to be an important part of what it means for me to be a philosopher.

Comments

[a philosopher]

Thanks for the interesting post, and the work you do in public philosophy.