What good do we desire?

Last year, with the firing of the Philosopher, McGinn, for his grossly sexist acts and outright slap in the face remarks of his defense, many feminist bloggers took to the web with this call to action to reconsider the state of equality in the professional world, especially in the field of philosophy where the numbers of female faculty there are floundering as compared to other fields and professions.  In the midst of all this talk about equality and calling for a change in the sad statistics that are yielded in my beloved field of study I heard echoing somewhere in the distance something that Plato had illustrated to me once in his Republic.  In the midst of all that noise, valuable as it all may have been, I asked myself, “What good are we desiring?”  If what we desire we perceive to be the good, then why is it that there is such a terribly steep ratio of men to women in philosophy.

I am not talking about the “good intentions” of feminist or other civil rights groups here.  What I am aiming at is the more existential claim of where we are as a society with respect to the lack of diverse philosophy faculty. And I hope that I can adequately lead to a discussion of how we might or even ought to approach the various possible causes of the gendered cliff.  

I make a point about our existential well-being because I think it is an interesting avenue to consider the idea that if our society, at least here in America, were to be judged today its final judgment, what would we have to say for ourselves?  In a field that is the breeding grounds for social movement, advancement, and propagation of civil rights, how is it that this field is in possession of so little diversity.  Assuming that Heidegger was on to something about making use of one’s available possibilities, would it not seem beneficial to have the greatest array of equipment made available to oneself, equipment in the form of the perspectives that our educators bring to the academic table, making those perspectives available to us.  I am not one to take sides in feminist battles, really in any battles for that matter mainly on the grounds that there are too many opinions flying around, more than I care to keep track of.  But this is a matter not only of equality but also of the potential for greater knowledge and I can see a possible avenue for philosophy to rekindle its old flame, restore itself to its former grandeur in the public eye if it is made more readily available to more people.  Back to the existential question.  How would we look under an existential magnifying glass, if there were such a thing…consider it invented.  We would seem like hypocrites, preaching equality, having countless well-thought-out arguments about equality and existence but we would be a race of people that did not live up to the standards we set for ourselves.  What’s new?  Are we too idealist?  Have we set the bar too high?  Is the itchy bearded fellow stereotype illustrated by  really the case? Do women need beards to do philosophy?  I do not think that that is the problem. 

The problem, in my mind, lies within what we take to be the good as a unit, assuming all of us philosophers could be categorized as a collective whole, anyway.  There are a great many of us that say that things ought to be equally available to all.  Things including but not limited to job opportunities, ability to freely voice one’s own opinion, equal pay, you get the gist.  There are another great many that care, but not so much as to risk their livelihood in the name of equality.  Then there are some, like McGinn, that are satisfied with treating other people as means to ends and often in a discriminatory fashion.  We are so mixed up right now.  Some of us desire equality.  For some of us, equality is a good.  I would venture to say that that is a good worth having and one that is true to the category of good stuff.  But the reason why I got into philosophy was not to discuss my views all day about what the good is.  I got into philosophy because I found Jean-Paul Sartre inspirational, especially with his claim that a philosopher is a man of action.  For the ones that would like to accuse me of sexist language, go hug a tree.  Women of action are a possibility, only sixteen percent the possibility right now, but still a possibility.

I would like to see a change here, and not for the the women’s sake alone, but as well for the sake of minority groups.  As time passes, minority groups become less and less the minority.  They have more and more of a representation and both them and women deserve an equal amount of representation.  Why is it that they do not have this equality?  According to Linda Martin Alcoff's blog Click and her talk about this same topic, she makes sure to mention the cliff that is apparently before women at least, that the nature of philosophy is a battleground that might not be appealing to a vast number of women.  Also, according to Rae Langton's blog Click again, the caricature of the philosopher is a long bearded "Dumbledore".  Women cannot grow beards, at least most women.  This might not appeal to a women either.  It is also hard to be a woman in the field of philosophy if almost always in the past very useful texts and responses that have been made by females have also been made largely unavailable to those that are learning philosophy, according to Langton (men and women alike).

There are lots of other compelling reasons for this cliff to climb, but the most compelling, I think, comes out of Peg O'Connor's blog, The Double Bind, especially when she says her heart "soars and sinks" when that philosophical spark lights up the brilliant flame of reason, because as much as she wants the young lady to go on and be a great philosopher, she also knows that the deck is stacked against her.  This field is not widely accepted, for one reason or another, as a woman's art.  It is a woman's art just as much as a man's.  I think that this is a valuable point, but I jump off that wagon when she says that she takes it harder on her female students in order to prepare them for the harsh world that they might wish to enter into.  The problem I see here is that instead of preparing them for the harsh world by trying to gear them up and weather them, why not just tell them, "Do it!" at the moment when they think they want to pursue the career.  I can see in the graphs presented in Haslanger's Blog Click , when somewhere between pusruing a Ph.D. in philosophy (I always thought that that degree was a bit redundant) and the tenured/tenure track females in the academy.  

I would argue at this point that there is not as much effectiveness in this bootstrapping women for philosophy.  So many might be turned off by the various stigmas surrounding the philosophical academy and may choose a path that is less of a gamble, especially given the scarcity of jobs in the field as it is.  Perhaps this tapering off out of the fear, the uncertainty of the gamble in the game where the Others have the aces up their sleeves is not such a good thing and we ought to send as many as we can toward that area of the academy.