When (if at all) should you quit philosophy?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread a reader asks:

When, if at all, should you quit philosophy?

What if one is four postdocs in? What if someone is only adjuncting and not publishing? What if you have published but have been adjuncting for ten years straight, thus having no hope of landing a TT job? How should new grad students prudently think about their stay in academia if things go wrong (like the norm implies) before going on to something else (consider this question coming from someone who is not independently wealthy and has no financial safety net)?

Good questions, though I suspect there may be no general answer.

I considered giving up several times in grad school (when I really struggled for several years), and asked myself these kinds of questions numerous times during my better part of a decade on the job market. In grad school, I kept going on mostly out of fear (I had no real safety net or Plan B), but once on the market a lot depended on my job stability (I had a VAP that was renewable for a maximum of seven years), as well as on whether I seemed to be making any progress on the market--which I did start to see after a while. But, if I hadn't gotten a TT job during my last year on the market when my VAP was due to run out, I would have left.

Anyway, I have no real suggestion for when to "quit philosophy", as I suppose everyone has their own unique life situation, tolerance for risk, costs, etc. But I'm curious to hear what other readers think. 

Anyone have any helpful experiences, tips, or other insights to share?

Comments

[Jacob Joseph Andrews]

I think it's worth asking first what qualifies as "quitting philosophy/academia," for you individually. I teach a mix of foreign language, philosophy, and theology classes at a K-12 school, so I'm technically not in a traditional academic position. I publish occasionally and plan to do so for the next few years at least. I read and listen to philosophy and generally know what's going on in my subfield. Have I "quit philosophy" or "quit academia"? I would say no; I'm sure many people would say yes.

[5 years]

As I finished my PhD, my partner agreed that she was willing to give it five years for me to get a TT job. I got one on the fifth year out. I had descent VAP and sessional lecturer jobs all five years (though it was sometimes anxious between jobs). Philosophy was my plan B - I had already left another career. I was looking for something that was a better fit for my temperament. I cannot imagine a life outside academia now.

[MileageMayVary]

I don't think there is any reasonable answer to this question that applies to everyone. Your own situation and temperament can differ immensely from your peers, and what you find tolerable another would not. You may be open to living and working environments others cannot stand, and so on.

I think it's important to know what your own "dealbreakers" are. Is it adjuncting for less than 35K a year, or fewer than 7 sections a year? Is it teaching more than 4 preps? Is it never relocating for a year-long position? Is it giving yourself one more good solo publication and a round on the market?

Finding out what kind of form of life would be intolerable for you can go a long way toward helping you decide if and when it's time reel it in versus time to cut bait. These aren't easy decisions, but I think that is also largely due to how much of this system comes down to luck.

[Nick]

Here is a practical litmus test: Are your career choices significantly setting back your ability to retire?

If so, you should probably leave. You are likely a great philosopher, but pursuing the profession is not worth giving up your chances at a reasonable retirement.

There are so many other things you can do that allow you to flex your philosophy muscles while still making a wage big enough to stock up a 401k.

[cecil burrow]

to Nick; even taking a good job at an R1 college can significantly set back your ability to retire. There are many people well past tenure making only around 100k at such places. Some of them are even famous people you have heard of. The job market is going to get even worse as it will become more normal not to retire until well into your 70s, as many will simply not be ready to retire earlier. But that's a different topic.

[Hermias]

“be either a philosopher, or one of the vulgar.“ - Epictetus, Enchridion 29

“….Philosophy in all its range, than which no greater gift ever has come or will come, by divine bestowal, to the race of mortals” - Timaeus 47a-b

[cecil burrow]

Hermias, in fairness those sources are pretty biased.

[OP]

@cecil burrow: your reply to Nick just seems to point out yet more reasons against a career in academic philosophy.

I notice the OP doesn't say anything about what a person's *alternatives* are, except to stipulate that 'just not working for a while' isn't one of them. But, of course, 'rational choice' doesn't mean anything without some menu of alternatives. So it really depends.

A key concept here is *opportunity costs*: that is, what you forego by taking some option, as determined by the best alternative to that option. If you turn down a $100,000 annual salaried job to go into academic philosophy, your opportunity costs include $100,000 per year minus whatever you make in academic philosophy, for example. For a back-of-the-envelop calculation, my (recently ended) run at an academic philosophy career cost me half a million dollars, because I could have spent the last decade working as a software engineer making roughly $50,000 per year more on average more than I did. (That career path really was the alternative I turned down; the numbers here are only rough and quick.)

The opportunity costs of academic philosophy are steep and go beyond finances – they involve geographic inflexibility, frequent moving, all the usual suckage of this career path for all but the elect few. To see them more vividly, think back to your college buddies who went into fields you could have gone into, but didn't. Imagine how much money they have made in the interim, how much freedom to select where to live they've had, etc. The difference between their lives and yours is a rough estimate of (some) opportunity costs you have already incurred. (There will be benefits, too!)

So if you're going to be reasonable about this choice, you need to consider your alternatives. You need to do some research, talk to people ('informational interviews' are common outside academia – I have set up many just by reaching out cold and asking to chat), and spend a little time diving into other fields at least in your spare time. Speaking from personal experience, it is all too easy to get tunnel vision, to think only vaguely about your alternatives ('an office job at some company', 'maybe something in the public sector?', etc.). But this makes comparison, and so rational choice, impossible.

[sahpa]

apologies – the above post by 'OP' is actually by me – I have no idea why I put 'OP' in the name field. Perhaps because I saw myself as replying first to Cecil burrows, then to OP....

[Derek Bowman]

Apologies for those who are tired of hearing me make the same point, but "being a philosopher" is not the same as "pursuing an academic career in philosophy." Equating the two is both a conceptual and a practical mistake, and it's antithetical to the conception of philosophy valorized by the authors that Hermias quotes.

Just sticking to the Enchiridion, try
"23. If you ever happen to turn your attention to externals [e.g. academic positions], so as to wish to please anyone, be assured that you have ruined your scheme of life. Be contented, then, in everything with being a philosopher; and, if you wish to be thought so likewise by anyone, appear so to yourself, and it will suffice you."
(See also 46 and the full text of 29.)

An academic career is a means to the end of doing philosophy while being able to meet your other commitments and satisfy your other needs. If it ceases to be a plausible means for doing this - or indeed if it becomes antithetical to those ends - then that's a good reason to abandon the pursuit of such a career.

[AlmostOutofHere]

As others have said, there's really no good blanket answer here. Whether and when someone should leave philosophy is surely dependent on the particular facts about a person and their situation. I can offer my own reasons for leaving, though, which I hope could be informative for others.

I decided to leave academia about a year ago. This is a little silly, maybe, but I made a list of the things that were important to me in life and discovered that, contrary to my prior belief, a career as a professor wouldn't get them for me. So, I came up with a plan. I'd finish my PhD, then take off to pursue something else. I'm defending in a few weeks time, and couldn't be happier. There are a lot of reasons why I think the academic life I could have lead likely wouldn't have been a good fit for me, but I'll just summarize the key points here.

First, I struggled for a long time with the feeling that my work, both as a researcher and a teacher, just wasn't particularly meaningful. I didn't feel as though I was making a difference, or that I would. Now, I don't really believe that's true. I'm confident, given reports from my students, that I had a real and positive impact on some of their lives. Certainly my own teachers have been enormously important in mine! Nevertheless, the periods of existential worry I went through came around like clockwork, and I don't think that cycle would ever have stopped.

Second, an academic career seemed so precarious to me. The probability of getting a job - let alone getting what I thought of as a _good_ job - was so unlikely that going through the hell of the job market just didn't seem like it would be worth it. In fact, it didn't seem to me that going through the job market would be worth it even if I got my dream job.

Third, I had an alternative career in mind that I was confident would make me feel as if I were making a real difference in the world. Moreover, this alternative career was economically viable and more or less failsafe - one of those "there always need to be more of them" things. It would require I dump many more years of my life into training, but even that felt exciting to me. I may not want to be a professional philosopher, but I still love school!

So, these were the three most important things for me: (1) academic work didn't make me feel good; (2) the precarity of my professional position felt terrible; and (3) I had an alternative in mind that solved these problems. It still wasn't easy to admit it to myself, though. I probably knew that I wanted to pursue an alternative career a couple of months before I said it out loud. So many sunk costs for nothing! But making the decision has been the best thing I've done for my mental health in years.

If someone is in a situation like my own, I'd recommend getting out. But lots of people aren't; I have good friends who have gone through the market, gone from precarious job to precarious job because they so love philosophy, and ended up in at a job they love. It's most definitely been worth it for them. The truth is, under most circumstances, it's probably impossible to know ahead of time what the right course of action is for someone. I hope, though, that my own story can provide a little help for others thinking things through.

[momdoc]

I'm a postdoc, have contemplated this question numerous times, and continue to do so. My main worry has not been the brutal prospect of the job market, but the compromises a tenure-track job might force me to make in starting a family, growing it, and staying involved with my kids. So I started having kids in grad school to test whether that compromise really holds true. What I can say is that, while I am extremely contentious with my time, I have still found the balance to be--shall we say--'fragile' at best. I have pretty much ruled out the tenure-track route at this point, and am now angling for a research position. I moved my postdoc down to part-time as well, and that really feels like a ceiling I wouldn't be able to break through and sustain long-term (for background, I basically double as a stay-at-home parent 4/5 workdays a week).

Having said all that, I am happier than I have ever been in all my 14 years in philosophy. My research is more prolific, original and interesting now than ever before, which I believe is a testament to the balance my life finally has.

All of this is just to say that if you're souring on the TT option (whatever your reason for that may be), you could consider one of the less traditional academic options (e.g., research position, administrative position, think tank at or near a university) and, if financially necessary, combine it with something else, like a trade or some other intellectual work.

I also think that if you're not independently wealthy, multiple moves for jobs is going to be very taxing, even without a family. I have lived on both ends of the financial spectrum and I don't think I could've sustained multiple moves when I was scraping by, despite my extreme frugality. The trouble is, living at the poverty line, or even earning a decent wage but pouring it back into student loan repayments, made material existence take up so much mental energy as to detract from my research. Where wealth buys convenience, frugality takes time and energy that more well-off peers are spending on their manuscripts. Some people can overcome that extra load, particularly if they don't end up on the long road of 4 postdocs, etc. But if one ends up moving a lot, then the economics really start to become a serious competitive disadvantage. In that case, committing to a shorter time period on the job market (come what may) might be something worth seriously considering.