A Philosopher Gets Fed Up With Profundity
Here is a story I have heard from more than one professional philosopher, though it has never, at least not yet, happened to me: You are sitting on a plane, the person next to you asks what you do, you tell them you are a philosopher, and they ask, “So, what are your sayings?” When a philosopher opens their mouth, people expect deep things to come out of it. Philosophers don’t always enjoy this; to avoid it they might even say instead, “I am a professor” or “I teach Plato” or “I am in academia.”
When I was an undergraduate pondering what to do next, a professor of mine—not a philosopher—advised me, “Even if you get a Ph.D. in philosophy, don’t ever call yourself a philosopher. Kant, Socrates—those people were philosophers; you’re someone who reads or thinks about philosophy.” He felt that by calling myself a philosopher, I would be putting on airs, claiming to be deeper than I was. I did get a Ph.D. in philosophy, and I do call myself a philosopher, and that does, just as the professor feared, sometimes lead to disappointed expectations.
Recently, by Rachel Aviv drew more on her conversations with me than on my written work. While many readers said they loved the profile’s intimacy and directness, those same features seemed to outrage others—although the critics were split on the question of what exactly was wrong with the profile, and with I was, and Joyce Carol Oates called my concerns —whereas others found me strange: a “weirdo,” a “freak,” a “.” The two sides of the opposition couldn’t come together on whether I was or bizarrely unrelatable, but one thing they did agree on, and complain about, was that I had failed to come across as someone possessed of great profundity. And they’re right: Deep down, I am not deep.
