In his essay “Philosophy Professionalized: How We Killed the Thing We Loved,” Robert Hanna defines “real philosophy” as follows:
By real philosophy, [I] mean authentic, serious, synoptic, systematic reflection on the individual and collective human condition, and on the natural and social world in which human and other conscious animals live, move, and have their being. Real philosophy fully includes the knowledge yielded by the natural and formal sciences; but, as we see it, real philosophy also goes significantly beneath and beyond the exact sciences, and non-reductively incorporates aesthetic, artistic, affective/emotional, ethical/moral, and, more generally, personal and practical insights that cannot be adequately captured or explained by the sciences. In a word, real philosophy is all about the nature, meaning, and value of individual and collective human existence in the natural cosmos, and how it is possible to know the philosophical limits of science, without also being anti-science. Finally, real philosophy is pursued by people working on individual or collective writing projects, or teaching projects, in the context of small, friendly circles of like-minded philosophers. Like-minded but not uncritical! Real philosophers read both intensively and also widely inside philosophy, and also widely outside of philosophy, critically discuss what they’ve read, write, mutually present and talk about their work, re-read, re-discuss, and then re-write, with the primary aim of producing work of originality and of the highest possible quality, given their own individual and collective abilities. They also seek to disseminate their work, through publication, teaching, or public conversation.
If that’s not what the reader means by “real philosophy,” then please substitute your own definition—for example, Arthur Schopenhauer’s, according to which genuine philosophy is “the free search for truth,” or Wilfrid Sellars’s, according to which philosophy is “understanding how things in the broadest sense of that term, hang together in the broadest sense of that term,” or what Susan Haack calls “serious philosophy” and “philosophy as a calling,” whose primary aim is also the free search for truth. Indeed, Hanna’s argument in this essay will work pretty much no matter what the reader means by “real philosophy,” provided that (i) it’s at least in the spirit of classical or perennial philosophy as formulated by Schopenhauer, Sellars, and Haack, (ii) hence it’s animated by the sincere and wholehearted search for truth, (iii) it’s rationally critical but not skeptical, and (iv) it’s directly opposed to what Hanna calls professional academic philosophy. On the other hand, if the reader thinks “real philosophy” is necessarily equivalent to professional academic philosophy, and if they somehow or another loved professional academic philosophy even when they first got into philosophy, then you’ve killed the thing you loved. More generally, the main thesis of this essay is that since at least the beginning of the 20th century (and if Schopenhauer is right, then since the mid-19th century), but especially since the end of World War II, real philosophy, the thing we all loved, has been killed by professional academic philosophy.
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