This is the thirtieth installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series that gives a sense of what the philosophy profession looks like outside of the Anglophone West. This post is by Kaisa Kärki (Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Helsinki) and Matias Slavov (Postdoctoral Fellow, Tampere University)!
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Thank you for Thomas Wallgren for checking the details of this post.
The Republic of Finland is a country in Northern Europe levelling up with Alaska. It is a parliamentary representative democracy known for its progressive taxation system and welfare policies. Finland is also known for its status as the happiest country in the world, and has been noticed for being led by young women. Even though Finland is often categorized as a “Scandinavian” country, the correct label is “Nordic”. Finland became a member of the European Union in 1995 and accepted the Euro as its currency in the late 1990s.
The population of Finland is around 5.5 million, officially speaking Finnish, Swedish, and Sámi – the language of the native population in northern Finland. Most Finns speak Finnish as their mother language; the Swedish speaking minority is about five per cent of the population. Finnish is unlike the North Germanic languages spoken in the Nordic countries, though this Simpsons clip (from 1:18 to 1:27) conflates Swedish and Finnish accents. Finnish, together with Hungarian, and Estonian, are Uralic languages. For an English speaker Finnish is categorized as very difficult to learn.
Children in Finland begin school at age seven and continue their education until they are 18 years of age. Until recently, secondary education after the first nine years of comprehensive school was voluntarily. After finishing 9th grade adolescents typically choose either a vocational school or an upper secondary school known as a gymnasium. The latter prepares the students for university and includes two mandatory philosophy courses.
University education – including Bachelor level, Master level, and PhD studies – is free of charge, and the state provides students with financial aid, which consists of study a grant, a housing supplement, cheap meals at student restaurants, and a partly compensated, tax-deducible government guaranteed student loan. Still, more than half of students work while studying, as Finland is an expensive country to live in. In Finland most university students gain a Master’s degree, which usually consists of 120 ECTs. The Master’s degree is preceded by a Bachelor’s degree of 180 ECTs including at least one extensive minor of 40 ECTs.
Following the completion of a Master’s degree, it is possible to apply for a PhD researcher status. This process requires a suitable research plan and finding appropriate supervisors from the university. PhD research is typically supported with external funding. In Finland, just like in several other Nordic countries, there is a wide range of private foundations that especially support research in the humanities and the social sciences, interdisciplinary research, and independence of researchers – including setting up one’s own research group. Foundations such as Kone Foundation and The Finnish Cultural Foundation also fund PhD research. Some departments offer fixed-term doctoral researcher positions. A PhD candidate may also work in a project lead by a more senior scholar. Today, the term “doctoral researcher” is preferred over “graduate student”.
Six universities in Finland offer philosophy as a degree major: University of Helsinki, University of Turku, Åbo Akademi University, Tampere University, Aalto University and University of Jyväskylä. These universities also grant PhDs in philosophy. Philosophy can be studied as a minor at the University of Oulu, the University of Lapland, the University of Eastern Finland, and the University of Vaasa. Professional philosophers can also be found from Aesthetics, Jurisprudence, and Systematic Theology as well as several interdisciplinary research centers such as the Center of Excellence EuroStorie.
In Finland, as well as in several other Nordic universities, theoretical and practical philosophy are often separated. At the University of Helsinki, they are also in different faculties; Theoretical Philosophy with Philosophy in Swedish in the Faculty of Arts, and Practical Philosophy in the Faculty of Social Sciences. Theoretical philosophy is considered to contain logic, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, and history of philosophy, whereas practical philosophy includes ethics, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of the social sciences.
Teaching is usually held in Finnish or English or in Swedish in Swedish speaking departments. Both undergraduate and graduate students can apply for the Erasmus exchange program or a Fulbright grant, both of which enable students to study abroad for a semester or two.
A monograph is perhaps the most common format of a doctoral dissertation in philosophy, although many PhD students write a collection of articles. Dissertations are generally written in English, although some are completed in Finnish or Swedish. To be granted the PhD, the applicant must attend a public defense. This is called “väitöstilaisuus”, which roughly translates as “occasion of debate”. The opponent, typically a professor from abroad, reads the dissertation in advance and then poses a range of critical questions. If the applicant effectively answers the questions, the opponent will recommend approval for the applicant to become a doctor. A funny hat is involved in the process. Usually, the candidate will organize a banquet called a “karonkka”. This is held right after the defense in honor of the opponent.
After completing the doctoral degree, graduates can apply for postdoctoral funding or a position provided they want to continue in the academia. Many go abroad for a year or two – until recently mobility to another country after finishing the PhD was mandatory for receiving postdoctoral funding from the Academy of Finland, and it is still greatly encouraged. Junior faculty positions, such as assistant professorships, are not common in philosophy in Finland, so postdocs need to establish a research profile so they could later apply for senior level positions. To that end, one must be successful in acquiring grants and producing international publications. The title of docent can be awarded to a candidate who advances from a junior scholar to a more advanced postdoctoral researcher. In practice, docents should have publications that are equal to two doctoral dissertations. The most sought-after and competitive grants for postdocs are provided by the Academy of Finland and the European Research Council.
Perhaps internationally the most famous Finnish philosophers are Georg Henrik von Wright (1916–2003) and Jaakko Hintikka (1929–2015). von Wright was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s successor at Cambridge University, and contributed to philosophical logic, philosophy of action, and philosophy of science. von Wright is also well-known in the Nordic countries for his popular essays on ecological problems and the critique of techno-scientific progress. He was also one of Wittgenstein's closest friends. Helsinki currently hosts The von Wright and Wittgenstein Archives (WWA) which contain much of von Wright’s correspondence and personal library, including most of his published and unpublished writings, and an extensive Wittgenstein library. Hintikka contributed to mathematical and philosophical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, epistemology, and the history of philosophy. Both von Wright and Hintikka were featured in the series Library of Living Philosophers. An important figure from early 20th Finnish philosophy was the Academician of Science Eino Kaila (1890-1958). Kaila visited the Vienna circle from the 1920s, and introduced what might broadly be called analytic philosophy to Finland. The first female philosophy professor in the Nordic countries was Raili Kauppi (1920-1995) who contributed to logic, especially intensional logic, and to Leibniz scholarship.
Every year I go on the market I get a few interviews for TT jobs at very good places that don't pan out, and I get interviews nowhere else. I worry I am caught in a trap: my profile is not strong enough for top places to hire me, but too strong for other places to hire me because they don't think I would come or stay. Any advice on how to get out of this trap?
This is indeed a tough position to be in, and I'm very curious to hear what everyone thinks. One reader responded:
I do not think you are as trapped as you think. When I worked at a 4 year state college, we took every application seriously. The only ones that we passed over who had strong research profiles were people who had no sense of what kind of job they were applying for. This was evident, not from their pedigree, but because their application package (eg. teaching materials) was completely unsuited to our students and our institution. We did not need someone who was keen to teaching a course on grounding, or philosophy of physics. What we needed was people who were prepared to teach our general education courses - which all of us taught. These included: history of ancient, history of early modern, intro. epistemology, ethics ...
And another reader responded:
You write that your "profile is not strong enough for top places to hire" you, but that seems untrue if you're getting these interviews in the first place. I doubt many (or, honestly, any) committees are interviewing you with no interest in advancing your candidacy, so it seems totally within your power to land one of those jobs. Maybe it's just terrible luck, but maybe it's an issue of doing more research on the departments and interviewers, and practicing your interview skills in order to present yourself as being the right "fit" (that most elusive but important of hiring committee criteria). I know for a fact that my (well-regarded R1) department has passed over otherwise excellent candidates on those kinds of grounds.
I think both of these responses are insightful, so here are my two cents. It's never a bad idea as a job-candidate to tailor your approach to the job market to the evidence you are receiving. In this case, the OP notes that every year they get TT interviews "at very good places" and "nowhere else." This suggests to me what it seemed to suggest to the second commenter above: that the OP is competitive for jobs at "very good places" (whatever exactly that means). This suggests to me in turn that the OP is either (A) having a bit of bad luck, or (B) they could work on the interviewing skills. Readers (and the OP) may recall the curious case of Jared Warren (Stanford) here, who (if I recall correctly) was on the market for a fair while despite having a spectacular publication record. Obviously, it took Warren a while, but ultimately he ended up in a plum job--so, perhaps the OP just needs to keep at it (i.e. keep publishing, etc.), and in the meantime perhaps do some mock interviews with friends or colleagues to see if there is anything they can do on that front.
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? It might be good to hear from candidates who are (or were) in a similar position as the OP. What did you do to find your way out of this proverbial "trap"? Was there anything in particular that you did that seemed to help--or did you just stick it out?