Professional Philosophy and Its Myths

Professional Philosophy and Its Myths exposes the myths that govern academic philosophy and keep philosophers from genuine self-knowledge. Only by reimagining what it means to be a philosopher and what it means to do philosophy will contemporary philosophers free their field from its present mythic order.

In Professional Philosophy and Its Myths, Rebekah Spera and David M. Peña-Guzmán argue that academic philosophy is steeped in a host of myths that keep professional philosophers in a state of self-ignorance. Understood as unconscious schemas that shape philosophers’ collective imaginary, these myths perform a dangerous ideological function within the discipline. Not only do they contribute to the overwhelming demographic homogeneity of the profession—ensuring that philosophy remains a holdout of white and male dominance—but they also prevent philosophers from seeing themselves as workers who, like all workers who sell their labor for a wage under capital, are subject to alienation, exploitation, and oppression. After outlining and critiquing these myths, Spera and Peña-Guzmán call upon philosophers to collectively invent new myths that will enrich rather than impoverish their psychic and professional lives. Through these new myths, they argue, a new philosophy—a “philosophy of the future”—will be born.