From: CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
January 12, 2015
Wolfram Eilenberger, editor of
“Philosophie Magazin,” in Berlin, savors the disciplinary boom. Philosophic
discourse, he argues, should be conducted not only on university campuses but
in the public square.
By Paul Hockenos
Berlin
In
Germany, a country known for esoteric thinkers like Hegel and Heidegger, the
growth of media focused on philosophy is drawing university philosophers out of
the ivory tower and thrusting them into the mainstream of public life. As
flattered as many of them are at the unlikely attention—which has attracted
more undergraduates to their classes—some worry that the so-called philosophy
boom may put pressure on academics to dumb down the likes of metaphysics and
epistemology for a lay audience.
The
boom includes several new magazines, three TV shows, several radio
"philosophy cafes," which are informal roundtables with
deep
thinkers, and an annual Philosophy Festival. Popular paperbacks, too
, aspire
to tackle the profound questions of the day by employing the ideas of Plato and
Aristotle, Descartes and Spinoza, as well as contemporary practitioners like
Judith Butler and Jürgen Habermas.
"For
us, it’s about how philosophy and today’s philosophers can help us renew our
perspective on what we know or seem to know," says Wolfram Eilenberger,
editor of the glossy Philosophie Magazin, which is based here.
"Philosophy
can be an extremely effective means to help us interpret and order ourselves in
our environment," says Mr. Eilenberger, a former academic who taught at
the University of Toronto. The public square, not the elitist confines of
university campuses, is the appropriate domain for philosophic discourse, he
argues.
Philosophie
Magazin, which hit the newsstands in 2010 and has a circulation of
90,000, proposes to investigate the "large and small questions in life
through a philosophic lens." Its first issue asked "Why do we have
children?," bringing Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Plato, and other thinkers
to bear on the topic. Subsequent issues have dealt with questions as disparate
as "Do Germans think differently?," "Do coincidences decide our
lives?," and "God, a good idea?" One recent issue looked at the
intellectual tenets behind Vladimir Putin’s "New Russia" ideology.
Aside
from the magazine, popular, even best-selling, books written by a new
generation of philosophers are available at newsstands. The philosopher Richard
David Precht’s Who Am I?—And if So, How Many? sold 1.4
million German copies. Along with Mr. Precht, Markus Gabriel, a philosophy
professor at the University of Bonn, belongs to the group of best-selling
philosophers. His Why the World Does Not Exist, which argues
that metaphysics is dead, was on German best-seller lists in 2013.
Observers
of the upswing in interest say theoretical thinking is ever more relevant to
rapidly changing, crisis-ridden societies. "Many people are searching for
the kind of orientation that religion had provided in the past," says Eva
Gilmer, philosophy editor at the Suhrkamp publishing house, who notes that Germans
have been leaving churches for years. "They’re perhaps also searching for
something more substantial than all of the TV channels, Internet information,
and social media."
As
pleased as university philosophers seem to be in the limelight, they see pitfalls,
too. Thomas B. Sattig, chair of theoretical philosophy at the University of
Tübingen, says that like any other discipline, philosophy needs experts, and
that the best way to do serious philosophy is in "the controlled
conditions of a philosophy laboratory"—an academic setting.
"It’s
important not to distort philosophy by asking overly simple questions and then
providing simple answers to them," he says, drawing a line between
rigorous philosophy and pop psychology that poses as philosophy. "Sometimes
there are 10 questions behind that one question. If you oversimplify, you risk
getting it wrong."
Nonetheless,
many philosophers are pleased that the apparent boom includes undergraduates
flocking to their classes. At Tübingen, Mr. Sattig says, the number of students
enrolled in philosophy courses has increased by nearly one-third, to 1,600, in
the past three years. The philosophy departments at both Albert Ludwigs
University of Freiburg and Goethe University, in Frankfurt am Main, have had to
impose limits on enrollments for the first time ever.
Germany’s
academic philosophers are adapting to the unexpected demand at their
universities and from the public. In the past, says Ms. Gilmer, of Suhrkamp,
they wouldn’t have considered aiming books about their latest research at a
popular audience. Now even the most serious philosophers enjoy recognition and
influence beyond the classroom, she says.
"Academic
philosophy and the popular publications can very well exist side by side, as
long as you don’t mistake one for the other," says Ms. Gilmer.
Mr.
Eilenberger says many academics initially turned up their noses at Philosophie
Magazin. But now just about every philosopher in Germany is open to the
idea, he says. "The challenge for us is to get academics to express
themselves in an accessible, dialogic style."
Michael
Hampe, who writes for Philosophie Magazin and is the author of the
widely read Four Meditations on Happiness, cites the complexity involved
in writing philosophy for a general public. It’s not as easy as conducting
academic research and then spinning off a few lighter books about it, he says.
"Sometimes
the popular version is harder to write than the academic product," Mr.
Hampe says. "The true public intellectual can do both. But it takes hard
work and lots of time."
