Hmmm, I wonder about using Ryan Holiday as an example of public intellectual & academic. He's a former marketing manager at American Apparel turned self-help writer, and not someone regularly contributing to academic journals.
I don’t think he is a great example of an academic doing this! Just an example of someone who condescends to his readers. But there are plenty of academic examples…
"If the academic humanities too often address only siloed experts, then pop philosophy too often addresses an audience of imagined idiots."--Spot on.
Maybe a hot take, but I wonder if the condescending posture in pop intellectual writing emerges at least in part from academics in the humanities modelling their work on the natural sciences. I have in mind Timothy Williamson's piece in the Daily Nous a few years back where he likened "public philosophy" to science popularization, the idea being iirc that the former like the latter is about repackaging one's specialist "findings" in a way accessible to a non-specialist audience. If you see your work as a thinker as akin to lab work, then in searching for a model for taking that work public, it's natural to look at the established mode of taking actual lab work public (namely Dawkins, Hawking kind of stuff). But the problem is that while not everyone has a lab, everyone can think (even if not everyone is well-versed in modal logic, etc.). The public scientist can point to a special source of knowledge from which they're reporting back, as it were, but intellectuals can only point to their minds, and ofc treating one's own mind as a special source of knowledge in interaction with others is inevitably condescending (even if one does have specialist expertise or training that informs one's thinking).
Another part of the story I'd say is just the insecure yearning to be "relatable."
completely agree about "public philosophy" treating readers like idiots!
Hmmm, I wonder about using Ryan Holiday as an example of public intellectual & academic. He's a former marketing manager at American Apparel turned self-help writer, and not someone regularly contributing to academic journals.
I don’t think he is a great example of an academic doing this! Just an example of someone who condescends to his readers. But there are plenty of academic examples…
"If the academic humanities too often address only siloed experts, then pop philosophy too often addresses an audience of imagined idiots."--Spot on.
Maybe a hot take, but I wonder if the condescending posture in pop intellectual writing emerges at least in part from academics in the humanities modelling their work on the natural sciences. I have in mind Timothy Williamson's piece in the Daily Nous a few years back where he likened "public philosophy" to science popularization, the idea being iirc that the former like the latter is about repackaging one's specialist "findings" in a way accessible to a non-specialist audience. If you see your work as a thinker as akin to lab work, then in searching for a model for taking that work public, it's natural to look at the established mode of taking actual lab work public (namely Dawkins, Hawking kind of stuff). But the problem is that while not everyone has a lab, everyone can think (even if not everyone is well-versed in modal logic, etc.). The public scientist can point to a special source of knowledge from which they're reporting back, as it were, but intellectuals can only point to their minds, and ofc treating one's own mind as a special source of knowledge in interaction with others is inevitably condescending (even if one does have specialist expertise or training that informs one's thinking).
Another part of the story I'd say is just the insecure yearning to be "relatable."
I completely agree with this hot take. That piece absolutely drove me crazy and I think about how annoying i found it all the time. I wrote a bit about it here! https://www.oxfordpublicphilosophy.com/two/what-is-public-philosophy
Lmao, glad to hear I'm in good company!
Has the essay on stoicism been published? Looking forward to it as I recently wrote something on the topic myself, including Holiday and his brand.
alas, no, it's in my book!
where will yours be?!
sent you an email!
Feel better!