Teachers and Philosophers

Abstract

Ihe philosopher J. L. Austin once observed that we might be tempted to call oversimplification the occupational disease of philosophers if it were not their occupation (38). If he could speak that way of philosophers, what would he have said of us teachers, whose job requires us to simplify, and who look to philosophers to keep us from going over the edge? Even as we perform before the public, we picture ourselves performing before philosophers. In my proudest classroom flights I still see my old philosophy professor, listening in, ready to croak, Too simple. I am like Cicero's orator, struck dumb in mid-gesture by the discovery of a Greek in his audience. The rise of theory has not moved the philosophical presence further away. Theorists are philosophers. Picturing a theorist in the audience, one who sees more in words than one has ever thought to see, can intimidate in the old way. And more often. There are very few subjects I can talk about these days without feeling, as certain words rise in my throat, the old tightening in the tongue. By now many teachers, I suspect, keep a mental list, a sort of tongue-tighteners' dictionary, of words not to be risked, or to be risked only in auricular quotation marks. And it is not hard to guess what words their lists share. The word truth,