Socrates Tenured

Robert Frodeman is Professor of Philosophy and founding Director of the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity at the University of North Texas. His publications include Sustainable Knowledge: A Theory of Interdisciplinarity (2014) and The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (editor in chief; 2nd edition 2016). Adam Briggle is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas. He is the author of A Rich Bioethics (2010), co-author of Ethics and Science: An Introduction (2012), and author of A Field Philosopher’s Guide to Fracking (2015).

• Acknowledgements / Foreword, Steve Fuller / The Argument in a Nutshell / Prelude: Philosophy Purified / Part One: Philosophizing in Neoliberal Times / Chapter 1: Philosophy, Know Thyself / Chapter 2: The State of Things / Interlude 1: Philosophical Places / Part Two: Disciplinarity and its Discontents / Chapter 3: Applied Philosophy / Chapter 4: Environmental Ethics / Chapter 5: Bioethics / Interlude 2: Philosophical Spaces/ Part Three: Reaching Escape Velocity / Chapter 6: Field Philosophy / Chapter 7: The Philosophy of Impact / Bibliography / Index

Socrates Tenured argues that academic philosophy has abandoned its roots and lost its way—it is sterile, insular, and largely unengaged with issues that the public cares about. Frodeman and Briggle (both, Univ. of North Texas) are less worried about whether this is defensible than they are about the likely practical upshot of this turn of events. They believe philosophy as currently practiced is unsustainable because the cost cannot be justified to state legislators and administrators at private schools; funds are bound to be cut for philosophy programs and shifted to areas thought to be more relevant, such as STEM programs. But the authors believe the situation is not hopeless. Philosophers can revive their discipline by addressing issues that society cares about and writing about those issues in language that nonspecialists can understand, though that language may be less rigorous than is currently required by professional standards. This process requires philosophers to engage in what the authors call "field philosophy"—to become more interdisciplinary and inter-institutional (by working with state legislatures, hospitals, and local governments, for example). Summing Up:Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.