现在的哲学学术圈都是些什么人？一群秘密失败者_风闻

【原作者 Rachel Anne Williams WUSTL（圣路易斯华盛顿大学）哲学博士】

Have you ever spent two years pouring your heart and soul into a project that only three people will ever see? In academia, we call that your “dissertation.”Philosophers spend a lot of time writing things and trying to get them published in journals nobody reads—not even other philosophers—because in order to get a job, you need to have these papers and journals on your C.V.

你是否曾经花了两年时间全心全意地投入到一个只有三个人能看到的项目中？在学术界，我们称之为"论文"。哲学家花了很多时间写东西，试图把它们发表在没人读的期刊上——甚至其他哲学家也不读——因为为了找到工作，你需要把这些论文和期刊放在简历上。

Those two years you spent every day working on that paper—all that effort reduced to a single line on a C.V., just to ever-so-slightly improve your odds of getting a good job as you compete against people who also have those lines on their C.V.

那两年你每天都在写论文ーー所有这些努力都变成了简历上的一行字，只是为了稍微提高你找到一份好工作的几率，因为你要与那些在 C.V.也有这些字样的人竞争。

Nobody reads this stuff because most of the journals are behind paywalls so expensive that only large libraries at academic institutions can afford to access them (and even then, many university libraries are cutting some journals off for budget reasons). Even within the halls of academia, where people do have access, there are simply so many papers published every year, even within niche fields, that nobody has time to read anywhere close to all the papers/books being published, especially considering the amount of reading it takes just to teach classes, etc.

没有人会阅读这些东西，因为大多数期刊的付费墙是如此昂贵，以至于只有学术机构的大型图书馆才负担得起访问它们(即便如此，许多大学图书馆还是出于预算原因削减了一些期刊)。即使在人们可以访问的学术大厅里，每年发表的论文数量也是如此之多，即使是在小众领域，没有人有时间在任何地方阅读接近正在发表的所有论文/书籍，尤其是考虑到仅仅教授课程就需要阅读的数量，等等。

Although there is already a growing mountain of philosophical research that’s impossible to keep up with, it’s common for journal referees to reject your paper because you didn’t engage with [X] paper/book, where often [X] is either written by the referee themselves or someone they’re chummy with.

尽管现在已经有越来越多的哲学研究无法跟上时代的步伐，但是期刊审稿人拒绝你的论文是很常见的，因为你没有参与到[x]论文/书中，通常[x]要么是由裁判自己写的，要么是和他们关系密切的人写的。

As an end-result, academic papers usually end up popularity contests, a game of who’s-who where the goal is to develop incestuous citation networks so that your impact factor will look better for hiring and/or tenure committees. Analysis of these citation networks in “top” journals reveals they mostly revolve around a small group of influential people (btw, they’re like 97% white men if you were wondering).

作为最终结果，学术论文通常以人气竞赛告终，这是一个谁是谁的游戏，其目的是发展乱伦的引用网络，以便你的影响因子看起来更适合聘用和/或终身教职委员会。对这些引用网络在"顶级"期刊上的分析表明，它们大多围绕着一小群有影响力的人(顺便说一句，如果你想知道的话，他们大概有97%是白人)。

And speaking of men, philosophy is absolutely notorious for not being a great place in academia for women, especially grad students. Recent high profile cases of Big Shot Male Philosophers losing their jobs because of women coming forward and speaking out about sexual harassment indicate that sexism is alive and well in academia.

说到男人，哲学绝对是臭名昭著的，因为它在女性学术界不是一个好地方，尤其是研究生。最近一些备受瞩目的男性哲学家因为女性站出来谈论性骚扰而丢掉工作的案例表明，性别歧视在学术界依然存在。

Philosophers use “rigor” to justify badwriting.

哲学家们用"严谨"来为糟糕的写作辩护。

Even if academic philosophy were publicly accessible, I doubt the public would be interested in reading any of it. Philosophers often go to great lengths to make their papers as boring and difficult to read as possible. This is done in order to seem “rigorous” and “technical,” but most of the time that “rigor” does nothing but make it harder for non-philosophers to understand.

即使学院哲学可以公开获取，我怀疑公众也不会对其中的任何一本感兴趣。哲学家们常常不遗余力地使他们的论文尽可能地枯燥和难以阅读。这样做是为了显得"严谨"和"技术性"，但大多数时候,“严谨"只会让非哲学家更难理解。

But I think the ultimate sin is that academic philosophy is filled with people—mostly men—who spend a lot of time talking about things that are almost entirely abstracted from the pragmatic realities of human existence.And not in a good way.

但我认为学院哲学充满了秘密失败者——大部分是男人——他们花费大量时间谈论几乎完全脱离人类存在的实用主义现实的事物。而且不是好的方面。

Contemporary academic philosophy is embarrassing.

当代学院哲学是令人尴尬的。

I will never forget sitting in our auditorium listening to a long talk about meta-ethics when, right outside the doors of the university, Black Lives Matter activists were marching (this was in St. Louis at the time of Ferguson).

我永远不会忘记，当我们坐在礼堂里，听着关于元伦理学的长篇大论时，就在大学的门外,“黑人的生命很重要”(Black Lives Matter)活动分子正在游行(这是弗格森时期的圣路易斯)。

I could hear them chanting; the stark contrast between the esoteric subtleties of meta-ethics vs. the concrete realities of what would be considered “applied ethics”—a term usually uttered with slight contempt—made me deeply uncomfortable.

我能听到他们在吟唱：元伦理学深奥的微妙之处与被认为是"应用伦理学"的具体现实之间的鲜明对比——这个词通常带有轻微的蔑视——让我深感不安。

How could I justify this exuberance of abstraction when there were so many real-world problems that needed the minds of intelligent people? I know, I know: the value of pure research, etc., etc., But lemme just give you a flavor of what contemporary “pure research” in philosophy looks like. I went to philpapers.org → topic: metaphysics → top trending article. The abstract of that paper reads as follows:

当现实世界中有如此多的问题需要聪明人的思考时，我怎么能够证明这种抽象的繁荣是正确的呢？我知道，我知道:纯粹研究的价值，等等。但是让我给你们一个当代哲学"纯粹研究"看起来是什么样子的味道。我去了philpapers.org→话题:形而上学→热门话题。该文件摘要如下:

“I argue that if David Lewis’ modal realism is true, modal realists from different possible worlds can fall in love with each other. I offer a method for uniquely picking out possible people who are in love with us and not with our counterparts. Impossible lovers and trans-world love letters are considered. Anticipating objections, I argue that we can stand in the right kinds of relations to merely possible people to be in love with them and that ending a trans-world relationship to start a relationship with an actual person isn’t cruel to one’s otherworldly lover.”

“我认为，如果大卫·刘易斯的模态现实主义是真实的，来自不同可能世界的模态现实主义者可以彼此相爱。我提供了一个独特的方法来挑选出那些可能爱上我们的人，而不是我们的对手。不可能的爱人和跨世界的情书也被认为是。我预料到会有反对意见，因此我认为，我们可以站在正确的立场上，与那些仅仅可能爱上他们的人建立关系，而结束一段跨世界的关系，与一个真实的人开始一段关系，对另一个世界的爱人来说并不是残酷的。”

I don’t mean to pick on this particular paper, or the author—who I happen to know is a very smart and nice individual—merely to give a flavor of what I mean when I say contemporary academic philosophy is almost wholly divorced from the messy world we live in.

我无意挑剔这篇论文，也无意挑剔这位作者——我碰巧知道他是一个非常聪明和善良的人——仅仅是为了让读者明白我所说的当代学院哲学几乎完全脱离了我们生活的混乱世界。

Which is not necessarily a bad thing—I enjoy thinking about philosophical questions and find many of them interesting. But I would often feel uncomfortable listening to philosophers give talks about their research because I had this gut feeling we were all wasting our time arguing about things we would continue to argue about for decades to come (that’s what we call a “research project”).

这未必是一件坏事——我喜欢思考哲学问题，并发现其中许多问题很有趣。但是，当我听到哲学家们谈论他们的研究时，我经常会感到不舒服，因为我有一种直觉，我们都在浪费时间争论那些我们将在未来几十年里继续争论的问题(这就是我们所说的"研究项目”)。

Before anyone jumps down my throat, let me say that I think philosophy and even academic philosophy does a noble service to the world. Teaching young people how to think critically and analyze the world around them carefully and reasonably is a fantastic thing.

在有人强烈反对我之前，请允许我说，我认为哲学甚至学院哲学对世界有着崇高的贡献。教导年轻人如何批判性地思考，如何仔细合理地分析他们周围的世界，是一件很棒的事情。

But there is a big difference between the hard working philosophy professors who teach logic and critical thinking and the rarified discussions and the technicalities of what academic philosophers do with their research. The dense jargon and technical details make much of contemporary philosophy exhausting for the average person, who likely does not have the patience or time to slog through a maze of technical wizardry.

但是，在教授逻辑和批判性思维的勤奋的哲学教授和那些稀少的讨论和学院哲学家们在他们的研究中所做的技术性工作之间，存在着巨大的差异。密密麻麻的行话和技术细节让当代哲学让普通人疲惫不堪，他们可能没有耐心或时间在技术魔法的迷宫中艰难跋涉。

Philosophers are exemplified by contrarian assholes.

哲学家被举例成反面的混蛋。

Academic philosophy is primarily an experience in constant rejection and criticism. Everyone is taught how to brutally attack the arguments of their peers. Have you ever hung out with someone who disagrees with everything you say? Philosophy conferences are pretty much like that. All the time. It’s a never-ending parade of people attempting to one-up each other in verbal combat, all under the pretense of being lovers of wisdom.

学院哲学主要是一种经常遭到拒绝和批评的体验。每个人都被教导如何残酷地攻击同龄人的观点。你有没有和不同意你所说的一切的人一起出去过？哲学会议就是这样的。一直都是。这是一场没完没了的口水战，所有人都假装自己是智慧的爱好者。

Along with the constant rejection comes the publish or perish mindset. If you don’t publish in “good” journals, your chances of getting a good job are slim to none. Often you’d see jobs posted with hundreds of candidates, all with similar PhD holding qualifications, most with publications in similarly ranked journals.

伴随着不断的拒绝而来的是发表或者消亡的心态。如果你没有在"好的"期刊上发表文章，那么你找到一份好工作的机会微乎其微。你经常会看到数以百计的求职者，他们都拥有相似的博士学历，大多数都在类似排名的期刊上发表过文章。

The task of standing out is nearly impossible. Usually it comes down to informal factors, like having an influential advisor or coming from a “top program.” My school was ranked ~25–30ish (in the world) for its philosophy PhD program, and it would be polite to say most grad students struggled on the job market. “Struggling” doesn’t begin to describe the pain and anguish of sending hundreds of job applications and not landing a single interview. That’s not uncommon.

脱颖而出的任务几乎是不可能的。通常来说，这归结为一些非正式的因素，比如有一个有影响力的顾问，或者来自一个"顶级项目"我们学校的哲学博士项目排名在25-30左右(全世界)，礼貌地说，大多数研究生在就业市场上苦苦挣扎。“苦苦挣扎"并不足以形容发送数百份求职申请却得不到一次面试机会的痛苦和苦恼。这并不罕见。

But instead of realizing the nightmarish futility of the adjunct vs. tenure-track system, so many young PhDs buy into the academic insecurity that equates dropping out with failure.

但是，许多年轻的博士们并没有意识到辅助教育和终身教职制度的可怕徒劳，而是陷入了学术上的不安全感中，这种不安全感将退学等同于失败。

So they continue to slog away for years in that nether-world between PhD and tenure-track, jumping from adjunct position to adjunct position, post-doc to post-doc, always moving, never stable, never secure, always on the job market, always facing rejection, never making enough money. (For reference, I make ~2.5x more delivering pizza, working fewer hours than I ever did with a “fully funded” grad stipend at a university with a 7.5 billion endowment.)

因此，他们在博士和终身教职之间的虚无世界里继续艰难跋涉，从兼职跳到兼职，从博士后跳到博士后，总是流动，从不稳定，从不安全，总是在就业市场上，总是面对拒绝，从不赚足够的钱。(作为参考，我在一所拥有75亿美元捐赠的大学拿着"全额资金"的毕业生津贴，工作时间比以前少了2.5倍。)

This is the future of academia. The ratio of adjunct to tenure-track jobs has been sliding towards the adjunct side for decades, and things are accelerating in that direction. Philosophy departments are being axed for being “economically useless.” The job market is getting more competitive. An increasing number of people who make their living as “philosophers” are adjuncting.

这就是学术界的未来。几十年来，兼职工作与终身教职工作的比例一直在滑向兼职工作，而且事情正朝着这个方向加速发展。哲学系因为"经济无用"而被解雇就业市场竞争越来越激烈。越来越多以"哲学家"为生的人都是助教。

Philosophy is a silly profession.

哲学是一种愚蠢的职业。

When I used to tell people I was a philosopher, a common refrain was “So what’s like, your favorite saying?” People often have no clue what it is academic philosophers do—because we are often so absurdly high in the ivory tower that any attempt to come down is seen as being “not serious.”

当我告诉别人我是一个哲学家的时候，经常有这样一句话:“那么，你最喜欢的那句话是什么样的?”人们往往不知道学院派哲学家是做什么的ーー因为我们常常荒谬地高居象牙塔之上，以至于任何想要下来的企图都被认为是"不严肃的”。

Those who work on contemporary and pressing issues like race, gender, and bioethics are seen as doing something “less pure” than the “real” philosophers who work in “serious” fields like metaphysics and metametaphysics. No, seriously. There are books and conferences about “metametaphysics.” The deeper into the world of abstraction, the better. The less connected to real world issues, the more pure it is.

那些研究种族、性别和生物伦理学等当代紧迫问题的哲学家，被认为比那些研究形而上学和形而上上学（元形而上学）等"严肃"领域的"真实"哲学家做的事情"不那么纯粹"。不，我是认真的。有关于"形而上上学（元形而上学）“的书籍和会议越深入抽象的世界越好。与现实世界的联系越少，它就越纯粹。

I left academic philosophy because I couldn’t stand its essential stuffiness. But I will nevertheless contend that philosophers as a whole are a curious and intellectual bunch who, at the very least, are good conversational partners. They also drink a lot. Most good philosophy is done in the pub. I do miss it sometimes. Being surrounded by people who are equally excited about weird questions like “Do holes exist?” is a unique experience, to say the least.

我离开了学院哲学，因为我无法忍受它本质上的沉闷。但是我还是要说，哲学家作为一个整体，是一群充满好奇心和智慧的群体，至少，他们是很好的谈话伙伴。他们也喝很多酒。大多数好的哲学都是在酒吧里完成的。有时候我真的很怀念。周围的人都同样对一些奇怪的问题感到兴奋，比如"空洞存在吗?“至少可以说是一次独特的经历。

But I don’t need academic philosophy to do philosophy. Blogging over the past ten years, I’ve reached a larger audience than I could have ever hoped to find through the traditional academic journal system. And that’s ultimately why I dropped out: it was holding me back.

但是我不需要学院哲学来研究哲学。在过去的十年里，通过博客，我已经接触到了比我希望通过传统的学术期刊系统所能找到的更多的读者。这也是我最终选择退出的原因: 它阻碍了我。

（翻译 泥瓦匠）