So I found the following idea in the book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig (specifically at the beginning of chapter 26). The following bit on philosophy vs. philosophology doesn’t have anything particularly to do with the main ideas of the book, but being a philosophy grad student, it got me thinking a bit. Hence, I thought I would share it.

Pirsig makes a distinction between philosophy and philosophology. The former is to the latter, he claims, as art is to art history, music to musicology, or creative writing to literary criticism. I take this distinction to be pointing out something like actual creative philosophy versus historical philosophy. “It’s a derivative, secondary field, a sometimes parasitic growth that likes to think it controls its host by analyzing and intellectualizing its host’s behavior.”(370) Having made this distinction, though, he goes on to note how, unlike artists, musicians, and writers, the ranks of pure philosophers are virtually empty. That is, almost everything that goes around calling itself philosophy is actually philosophology. New ideas that might have come up are often compared with Old-Dead-White-Guys¹ and found inferior.

However, he doesn’t just comment on this, but makes a potentially useful suggestion: figure out what you think first, and then compare it to Old-Dead-White-Guys. By proceeding in this way, you can better see the similarities and differences with other philosophers without simply getting carried away in their quite persuasive rhetoric. Furthermore, if you have strong personal views, then considering classical objections to similar Old-Dead-White-Guys may incite deeper consideration and perhaps revision of your own views instead of just abandoning a “Kant/Hume/Rawls/Quine was right” position. “You’re not limited by any dead-ends of [their] thought and can often see ways of going around [them].”(372)

I’m quite interested by this, and will be keeping it in mind as I progress through the program here. My initial reaction is that both philosophy and philosophology are taught here, but I think I need to pay more careful attention.

¹ By Old-Dead-White-Guys I simply mean already-existing philosophy.