I’m presently reading and enjoying Sean Sayers’ recollections of ‘the making of a Marxist philosopher’. He relays his experiences of the dull and conservative teaching of philosophy he experienced at Oxford and Cambridge and how he and a handful of colleagues sought to overcome this deadening influence when at Kent University. This included the founding of the journal Radical Philosophy, which I recall with affection.
The opposition from staid philosophical circles that Sayers encountered reminded me of one of my early teaching experiences, hence this brief anecdote. In the mid-1970s a group of teachers of sociology across London University’s medical schools came together to offer our medical students the option of an ‘intercalated’ B.Sc in Sociology Applied to Medicine. This, one of many intercalated courses offered to medical students, took place in the interval between their two years of pre-clinical study and their clinical studies. Every year a handful of medical students opted to take our course, with or without MRC support. It was a ‘brave’ move on their part since sociology was at that time a largely scorned discipline in medical schools and more than one student actually withdrew their application to us as a result of medical school, parental or peer pressure.
I offered my own unit on our B.Sc course. Initially this was entitled ‘Philosophical Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory’. I had actually begun a Ph.D in Philosophy at Birkbeck College before switching to do one in Sociology at Bedford College, so felt I was well qualified to do this. Before it could be taught, both the title and an attached list of topics and reading lists had to be submitted to the appropriate Board of Studies of the University of London for approval. Because my unit included the word ‘philosophy’, my offerings were dispatched to the Board of Studies in Philosophy rather than Sociology. The Chair of this Board was David Wiggins (ex-Oxford and then at Bedford College of London University); and he responded by stating that my topics and readings were far too complex for undergraduates in medicine to cope with. In particular, he cited the later work of Wittgenstein. My response which proved effective, was simply to change ‘Philosophical Foundations’ to ‘Conceptual Foundations’ and to submit this revised version to the Board of Studies in Sociology.
The point of this anecdote is a different one and has two parts to it. The first is that Wiggins was totally wrong in presuming this select band of medical students couldn’t cope with the philosophical issues I planned to embrace. They were exceptional, extremely bright and very highly motivated. One example: as preparation for one seminar I asked one student to read and summarise two chapters of the (then) newly published ‘Realist Theory of Science’ by Roy Bhaskar. Bhaskar is known for his dense and difficult writing style. This student read the entire book and offered a lucid summary of its contents in the seminar. Nor was this student exceptional. Each annual intake was of a very high standard.
My second point is more pointed. Wiggins had clearly been put off not only by the putative difficulty of thinking one’s way through Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty whilst a medical student; he also baulked at a topic and reading list that covered many of the continental philosophers and theorists beginning to be introduced in sociology but considered beyond the pale in Oxbridge Anglo-Saxon philosophy.
But what struck me above all else was the presumption that Wittgenstein’s writings should rightly and properly be seen as ‘too difficult’ and beyond the reach of my students. Wittgenstein, at least in his later incarnation, would I think have been appalled at this attitude, at the notion that only the likes of (Oxbridge-trained) professional philosophers should be defined as competent to ‘do philosophy’. Sayers’ narrative reminded me of this idea of philosophy as a protected esoteric enclave, an exclusive club with an appropriately vetted membership.
Fortunately, thanks to the activism of Sean Sayers and many others, we have moved on from those days, if not always at pace. And there’s still a way to go!