I have very ambiguous feelings about the term “popular philosophy”. At one disagreeable end of the spectrum, it can refer to a diluted down form of the subject, which offers simple answers and instant solutions to people who are after selfhelp dressed in the garb of deep metaphysics. At the other, it can mean the kind of gruesome attempt by well-meaning academics to explain themselves to the unwashed masses, so as to give them a glimpse of the Platonic realm of ideas that only real philosophers occupy.
I am of course all for popular philosophy, if that simply means increasing the subject’s popularity. But how do you do that without falling into one or other of the traps I’ve mentioned? We hope that TPM provides one answer. However, in crude numerical terms, our success in making philosophy more popular has been quite modest. But in tiny Holland, an ostensibly similar magazine is bought every month by 18,000 people. You can read all about it on page 11.
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I think that anyone interested in increasing philosophy’s popular appeal can learn from the Dutch experience. One thing in particular which struck me when reading the report was their lack of interest in what counts as “real philosophy”. Francis Fukuyama, for example, has featured in their magazine. Is he a philosopher? It doesn’t matter, for a good part of what he does is clearly philosophical.
Of course the danger in this approach is that you end up with an “anything goes” attitude. But it’s a danger that can be avoided. At minimum, to be philosophical is to apply rational, critical analysis ruthlessly to questions which are not purely empirical. That criterion alone should rule out both new age mumbo-jumbo and any flaky thinking which calls itself “philosophy”. After all, it’s not what’s on the label that counts, it’s what’s in the tin.
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© 2005, The Philosophers’ Magazine and contributors
ISSN 1354-814X
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The Philosophers' Magazine/2nd quarter 2005
