Retirement age; philosophy of religion
Ezra Klein writes a good post arguing that we should not raise the retirement age for Social Security benefits. He argues that many people don’t give as much intrinsic value to work as people with happy jobs do; Social Security isn’t that expensive anyway, or hard to fix; raising the age is essentially regressive; Social Security is so efficient.
Speaking of retiring, philosopher Keith Parsons has undergone a rare line-item retirement from a sub-discipline of philosophy, philosophy of religion. There is a fun discussion at Prosblogion. There is also some discussion by noted autodidact Luke Muehlhauser. And Leiter has put the issue up for discussion. [Update: see also this nice discussion by Bill Vallicella].
Some people have given snobby, even if correct, reactions to this, by saying various things that mean “Who is Keith Parsons anyway?”
What is interesting to me is that this issue is interesting at all. Does it matter if someone thinks some side of a philosophical debate is decisively victorious? That’s a very optimistic assessment of any philosophical position. As a general rule I don’t think the philosophical argumentation of atheistic or theistic philosophy of religion, or any major philosophical discipline, is decisive. On a popular view, when a philosophical position truly wins, it is no longer called philosophy.
One interesting topic to come out of the discussions of Parson’s autobiographical remarks is the distinction between “apologetics” and “philosophical theology.” A useful task of philosophy is the analysis of concepts, and surely a decline in apologetics might see analysis flourish. However, from philosophers like Nicholas Wolterstorff to Richard Swinburne to Marylin Adams, I don’t think either side of this dichotomy has really been ignored. Also, I don’t think philosophy of religion is unique in this regard. We happen to have the cute term philosophical theology to apply to this particular case, but analogous pursuits exist in most other philosophical endeavors. For example, it is only one task of the moral realist to demonstrate or prove or argue that moral properties exist or that moral realism is true. It is another task to analyze and develop what moral realism even is, what moral facts would be like, whether ethics has continuity with empirical science, etc. In fact, we might say that the “apologetic” discipline is only one of many tasks of the moral realist.
There has also been some discussion of the canard about philosophy of religion not being taken “seriously” in the discipline. This common impression is confuted by (1) the number of philosophers who do excellent work in multiple disciplines and take phil religion seriously, (2) the number of peer-reviewed academic presses and journals that publish work in phil religion, and (3) statistics cited at Prosblogion which show more or comparable specialization in phil religion as other subjects such as philosophy of mathematics.
Here is my own discipline-oriented view on philosophy of religion, in a handy list:
(1) Philosophy of religion is an excellent pedagogical tool. Like ethics, it is one of the few areas of philosophy intersecting with real lives of real people (a subset of which are students!), so relevant that many people have already thought about – even thought hard about – issues involved.
(2) Philosophy of religion is quite vast in scope, overlapping with all other disciplines within philosophy. For this reason it is slightly misleading to say one specializes in philosophy of religion generally. Rather, one usually has general competence but has developed in some specific areas: religion and ethics, epistemology of religion, etc.
(3) Philosophy of religion is important for understanding the history of philosophy, as many philosophical pursuits have their origin in religiously-oriented disputes, and certainly in thinkers who are only fully understood in the context of their faith. Some philosophers, e.g. John Hare in ethics, have made efforts to demonstrate the cost of leaving religion out of our interpretation of major thinkers.
So, I think it is a mistake when major universities don’t offer an introductory survey course in philosophy of religion. Philosophy of religion is a good gateway into philosophy more generally. As Neil Tognazzini comments on Leiter, one can introduce major topics through the subject. But even though many major universities don’t offer such a course, that doesn’t mean the subject isn’t taken “seriously.” It just means that about as many people are very interested in it as are interested in philosophy of math, etc.
Not to bore my infinitely large readership, but one last comment I want to make is somewhat anecdotal. In my experience several undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty who don’t list philosophy of religion in their interests or specializations or even competency, nevertheless do have a substantial interest in it, either via their official interests (say, metaphysics) or just non-professionally. As evidence of wide cross-disciplinary interest (or interested disinterest!), see for example these two volumes, Philosophers Without Gods and Philosophers Who Believe.