Responses to Quaker Philosophy Roundtable Queries

My responses to the Queries posed at the “Philosophers’ Roundtable” at the 2007 Annual Meetings of the Friends Association for Higher Education:


How do we see ourselves as scholars for peace, justice, or/and sustainability?

I will attempt to respond to this opening question “indirectly,” by means of responses to the subsequent questions, which I understand as sub-questions to this principal one, as ways of “getting at” this principal one. It would be both illusory and an impediment to “peace, justice, and sustainability” to think that we need to answer the following questions “first,” as if they were more abstract or foundational ones, before we could turn to this more practical one. Rather, we are as Quaker philosophers (or should be attempting to be, at least on my view) precisely scholars/philosophers for peace, justice and sustainability, and so the proper relationship between this first question and the subsequent ones is not that between an application and its theoretical bases, but that between end and means. Still, this relationship is complicated by the challenge of determining - even while being committed to them!, and perhaps above all for this reason - more exactly what peace, justice, and sustainability are and should be. And so the question that is perhaps rightly first in “religious priority” may not be the first we should attempt to answer, even if our responses to the subordinate questions cannot be adequate unless they are first of all (albeit necessarily incomplete) responses to this principal one, if at first only tacitly so.


What are we trying to accomplish in our teaching, our research, and our service?

I see my task as a teacher, broadly speaking, and as a teacher of philosophy in particular, as one of “encouraging cultivated imaginativity.” That is, I am of the conviction that “the world” (which is always the world in which we live and so includes us and our formative practices) is ever changing, and that each generation therefore faces challenges that the previous generations could not even have anticipated. (Analogies to already navigated waters can, of course, very often be found “after the fact,” so to speak, but to determine that a new situation is analogous to a foregoing one [and that it therefore calls for an already worked out solution, or some variation of it] itself requires a fresh judgment, and one that cannot presuppose the validity of the analogy.) My students will not only have to provide answers to new problems that I could not have taught them (the “answers” that I can teach them [even if “correct,” which is far from certain] may well not be answers to the questions that they will have to ask, and will almost certainly not be the answers that will fit the context in which they will be called upon to provide their answers), they will even have to ask questions that I could not have anticipated. In fact, I see it as one of the great disservices of dogmatic philosophy (and dogmatic theology, and dogmatic science) to put itself forth as providing, or even as seeking, timeless, “once and for all” answers that will not only be serviceable in every possible context, but will even, as universal, be an attempt to govern the parameters of any possible context. My task, then, cannot be to teach my students the right answers, for even if (miracle of miracles!) I could do so today, these answers would no longer be the right answers for tomorrow by dint of the changing questions. Or less radically (though for this perhaps so much the more subtle and the more commonly missed), the changing contexts in which the “same” questions need to be answered (those of a reputed philosophia perennis, for example) would effectively change the questions, and thus the required answers. I see it as my task then, to provide students with the broadest possible range of “tools” (in the loosest possible sense) for the imaginative work that lies ahead. I want to encourage an ever deepening plasticity and agility of mind (coupled with a perpetual questioning of the status quo), and philosophy is (historically, at least, and whatever else we might take it to be) a discipline (perhaps the paradigmatic one) that by its practice - if not always by its doctrine - is a model of the indefatigable variation of “takes” on things, of alternative paradigms, of the restless “reconstituting” of “the world” (i.e., of what we “best” take “the world” to “be,” and what we are to “do” about it - where all of these terms in scare quotes - and others - are precisely “in question,” i.e., yet to be determined). This is, whatever else it claims to be, at least rich fodder for the imagination. I take this (for rhetorical purposes, to be sure, but for more than that) to extremes in encouraging students “not to be intimidated too much my reality,” which is admittedly a peculiar charge coming from a philosopher. But I want students to genuinely believe that things do not have to be what they are, that (positive and radical) change is possible (tied to the Pauline claim that the me on is brought to humble and confound the on, that “what is not” is the necessary interruption and ultimately the redemption of “the powers that be [that are]”). And if this is not able to be transacted on the deepest levels (at the level of what is generally considered as the most real, at the level of what we generally take to be questions of ontology, or metaphysics, or cosmology), then the “changes” will correlatively never be anything other than ornamental. (Such that we might well get the change that, for a time at least, it will be lambs eating lions rather than lions eating lambs, but, unless the very structure of things is malleable, we’ll never get to the truly revolutionary: “lions lying down with the lambs” - which is a wonderful example of a marvelously imaginative, necessary, and true [“truer than true”] counter-factual.)

And yet, this “imaginativity,” so important on my view, cannot rest content with being an imaginativity “free like the wind,” cannot be confused a with mere fantasizing that abandons rather than transforms reality. (I am simultaneously committed to and want to question my own “cannot” in the forgoing statement. Who says we “cannot” rest content with mere fantasy? Backed up by what, or whom? But it is this “backed up by” that in each case I am suggesting we question, for it is this - and the fact that not only may we not question them, but that we cannot [reasonably] do so - upon which “the powers” rest.) And this is why it is essential to qualify this imaginativity with cultivation. We do not (it seems) get to start fresh, with a clean page, but inherit an already made world (but not for that immutable), one with which we need to seriously and soberly engage if our work of communal re-imagining is to be effective, and thus one it is essential that we understand as best we can. We awaken, spiritually and philosophically, already implicated in a history, in a history of struggle over “what is (to be) what”. Entering into this struggle is not only limiting, but also empowering. It is what we have been “given,” but it is not given as given once and for all - it comes with a call, a call to an ongoing responsibility.


What is philosophy?

My own sense is that philosophy is without an enduring essence; that philosophy, like everything else, is going to be for us largely what we make of it. Part of the task of each generation (school, type) of philosophers is to determine what philosophy is, i.e., what philosophy can and should responsibly be for its own time. And, indeed, perhaps the mark (or one of them) of a mature philosopher is a well worked out (and often idiosyncratic) version (although I would prefer here “vision”) of the nature of philosophy. (Never mind that in most cases this has been dressed up as the very essence of philosophy for all time, rather than as a responsible version for its time.) But this “responsibility” bespeaks a response; the discourse of philosophy is, qua discourse, a response to something beyond itself. We do not answer to our philosophies, we need to answer for our philosophies. Working out what it is that our philosophies answer to, trying to articulate “within” philosophy that which “precedes” in calling for philosophy, is one of the most interesting and perplexing problems of philosophy. What needs to be avoided is the “illusion” - created by the effort to articulate that to which philosophy is a response (and thus related to idolatry) - that that to which philosophy is a mere response becomes the “object” of philosophy, over which it then exercises a power. What we “have” within philosophy is a response, and not that to which it is a response (the call to philosophizing), we “have” the echo without the original sound, which leads to the illusion that it is philosophy that is, and that whatever else is going to be (to be taken as being) has to prove itself on philosophy’s terms. Thus the disasters of the famous “proofs for the existence of God,” “the criteria for meaningfulness” arising from logical positivism, even the prejudicing of “knowledge” over mere opinion, and an endless line of such pretensions.

There is therefore some cause for preferring to think of philosophy as “a way of life” rather than as a discipline with its subject matter, as a love of “wisdom,” but before “wisdom” is translated as “knowledge.” Philosophy needs be, on my view, an attentiveness to that to which it is a response, an “attentiveness” (an ongoing attending to, “hearing” of) precisely because none of its articulations of that to which it is a response are going to capture it. Philosophy is thus both a questioning (which gives it a certain power), and a being in question (which demands of it a deep humility) - charged to respond, to be responsible.


Is it the task of philosophy to connect with real world problems?

On my view, it is indeed the task of philosophy to engage in real world problems, and more than that, to transform them; that is, not only to participate in the clarification of the questions, and the formulation of responsible answers to our questions, but to assist (and perhaps even take the lead) in encouraging a re-visioning of the questions themselves (although this latter will of necessity be an “interdisciplinary” project [even if the tenets and outcomes of the very idea of disciplinarity are themselves questionable]). Put most radically: philosophy is not only charged to engage in real world problems, but to transform “the world” - to revision, to re-constitute, what “the world” itself is. (Mundane example, but for the sake of clarity: we might want to participate as philosophers in answering the question of how we can more justly distribute wealth, but we might also want to call into question the very mode of thinking whereby “wealth,” its meaning and value, is presupposed.) And that requires, at the same time, both the deepest engagement with the problems (the “cultivated” from above) and a supreme power of abstraction (the “imaginativity” from above). I cannot be “detached” or I’ll fail to understand the problem in its profundity and seriousness, and yet I cannot be so “engaged” that I cannot see a way “through,” or a way to reconfigure the field to allow for creativity and innovation. The “purely theoretical” aspect of philosophy is thus constitutive of its practicality, is one of the key moments in its applicability; philosophy must be “above it all” (but not in any moral [or extra-moral sense]) if it is to perform its function, but it cannot perform its function if it is merely or arrogantly “above it all.” The “abstract” nature of philosophy is thus not to be gainsaid by a too quick demand for relevance, but neither may it be an end in itself, or provide a justification for a smug and aloof sense of superiority.


Do we ever find our Quaker identity in conflict with our academic-philosophy identity, and if so, how do we respond to such conflicts?

This has never been a problem for me, but perhaps in part because of the way in which I conceive of philosophy.


Is there something that could be called “Quaker Philosophy”?

I am hesitant to think there is something that could be called “Quaker philosophy” if by that we were to think that we could translate “Quakerism” - a living religious practice - into a set of philosophical claims (against which I would have the same objections as I would against translating Quakerism into a set of theological claims).

I am more inclined to think that we should rather think of philosophizing in a Quakerly manner, but where the “way of engaging” in philosophical discourse is no mere add-on after the fact that would leave “philosophy” undisturbed at its core, but where the manner of philosophizing (e.g., in a Quakerly way) would affect (and sometimes even transform or effect, though not as a one-to-one correlation) the content of philosophy itself. (For this reason I think it ultimately inadequate for Quaker philosophers to be engaged only at the level of the adopting/adapting of philosophers that seem to resonate with, or at least not violate, Quaker notions, and avoiding those that do seem to contradict them). To philosophize peacefully, for example, neither presupposes nor guarantees any definitive philosophical content, but could hardly fail to give shape to whatever content it had at its disposal, or any content to which it would participate in giving shape.

So while the idea of a “Quaker philosophy” is not unproblematic, it is no more problematic than is the idea of philosophers who happen also to be Quakers (as if the latter were incidental to their philosophical practice), and so I generally prefer - at least in most contexts, and at least until persuaded otherwise - the former problematic term to the latter problematic one, as I prefer the designation “Quaker philosopher” to that of a “philosopher who is (i.e., just happens to be) a Quaker.”


Do Quakers have anything distinctive to offer to academic philosophy?

I trust this is the case, and am - buoyed and inspired by (and in gratitude for) the strong precedents established by Quaker philosophers in the twentieth century - anxious (and committed) to participate in discovering what we, as Quaker philosophers, might have to contribute in the twenty-first. Of course, such offerings are already being made by various individuals in a range of philosophical areas and schools, and I think it essential that we encourage and support each other, and learn from each other, even (and perhaps particularly) when we don’t agree with one another. But I wonder too whether there is not a contribution that we are called to make as a community of Quakers in philosophy, with the particular and peculiar set of sensibilities and insights and responsibilities with which we have been gifted. I am excited at the prospect of being a participant in an ongoing process of determining what this “distinctive offering” might be, and am hopeful that our “philosophers’ roundtable” at FAHE at Earlham College, and the discussions following up on it, may be an opening upon such an “opening.”

Jeffrey Dudiak, Associate Professor of Philosophy
The King’s University College, Edmonton, Alberta