Staying Grounded
I grew up in a small, economically stagnant, industrial town in Ontario. My father is a factory worker, as was his father. My mother is a care worker for the mentally disabled. My hometown is not affluent, and the presence of poverty and addiction was felt throughout my childhood. Just a year ago, in 2024, an emergency was declared in my hometown due to a mental health crisis and a surge in overdose-related deaths. My interest in philosophy grew out of trying to understand these social issues.
As a young person, I was dissatisfied with the depth of analysis I found in most political conversations. Debates over public policy made hasty ethical assumptions about which courses of action were right or wrong. My dissatisfaction pushed me towards moral philosophy, which reveals and clarifies those ethical assumptions, so that debates over current affairs can proceed on a firmer footing. This origin of my philosophical interests in pressing social and political issues continues to inform the direction of my research. I prefer to intervene in debates that have contemporary relevance to Canadian society, like those over multicultural accommodation, the concept of laïcité (secularism) in Québec, or Indigenous sovereignty. My philosophical journey began with concrete social issues, and I have never lost this desire to subject the society I live in and its problems to philosophical scrutiny.
Most public debates could benefit from the kind of critical scrutiny that a philosopher can bring to them. Arguments made in the public sphere are often replete with bad reasoning, leaps in logic, and unexamined assumptions. Philosophers can identify these errors while offering some much needed perspective on the moral assumptions underpinning most social and political issues. For instance, there is a common presumption in debates over multicultural accommodation that the endorsement of multiculturalism is antithetical to having a cohesive national identity. I have worked to show in my academic and public-facing work that this is not the case, and that this assumption rests on a confusion.
Part of the philosopher’s raison d'être is living an examined life and helping others to examine their lives as well. However, there is a tendency among contemporary academic philosophers to remove themselves from the public sphere and focus on niche interventions in obscure scholastic debates, even when their insights on the issues of the day would be valuable. This was not always the case, and the retreat of philosophers from public life is a shame. I have found that being a first-generation philosopher has helped to keep me from becoming divorced from current affairs or larger society, which has made it easier to intervene in public debates. In this way, I have found that being a first-generation philosopher can keep you grounded in the world beyond the university or our discipline.
I had no opportunity to study philosophy before going to university. In Ontario, philosophy is an elective in high-school that is only occasionally taught. My own school never offered a philosophy class, and had few humanities courses in general. I recall the frustration of learning that my high-school had cancelled the planned elective courses on law, economics, and history, citing a lack of interest. The situation is somewhat better in the province of Québec, where I completed my PhD. There, most students attend CEGEPs (public junior colleges) after high-school, where philosophy is a required subject.
Consequently, my introduction to philosophy was self-directed. I had an interest in politics, and the vague desire to read important works in the history of political theory. At the local branch of the chain bookstore Chapters, I found editions of Plato’s Republic, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. I came away with a tenuous grasp of Plato and only a marginally better understanding of Hobbes and Mill. Yet the way that they argued from such simple, seemingly undeniable claims to meaningful conclusions about how to govern a society was enthralling. Their arguments were better crafted than anything I had read, and they convinced me to study philosophy.
I was raised among the first generation of Canadians who were told that there was no choice but to attend college or university. Failure to earn a post-secondary degree or diploma would fatally wound your prospects, said teachers, parents, and guidance counsellors. Although youth from my hometown were pushed towards university and college, this push wasn’t indiscriminate. There was always pressure to pursue a “sensible” degree or diploma. Everyone had a parent or uncle who told them to enter the skilled trades or pursue an engineering degree. I cannot remember anyone championing the liberal arts or the humanities.
As a teenager, for instance, I once brought a copy of Plato’s Republic to a summer job. Seeing the book, my supervisor took the opportunity to lecture me on how reading philosophy was a waste of time. This reaction was typical. At best, people would be amused by my interest in philosophy, but more often someone would crack a stale joke about how studying philosophy trains you to be a barista.
Neither of my parents attended university. Perhaps because of this, they always held post-secondary education in high esteem. Like many working-class parents, they saw higher education as the key to social mobility for their children. Fortunately, my parents never pressured me to follow a specific career path, and gave me the space to study what I wanted. They did not believe that you should take a job in a field you did not enjoy.
Despite my parents’ enthusiasm for higher education, there were many aspects of university they did not understand, particularly the cost. When I left home at seventeen, my parents gave me $600 for a deposit on my dorm. There was an assumption that I would support myself, as they had when they left home. In fairness, we never discussed money; I’m certain they would have done their best to help me if I had asked. I received a merit scholarship that covered my tuition. A government loan paid for everything else. However, Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) loans are means-tested based on your parents’ income, on the assumption that your parents are supporting you financially. As a result, money troubles dogged me throughout my education. This improved somewhat in graduate school thanks to government grants that I was fortunate enough to receive, but I regret having had to waste so much time worrying about money.
Philosophical topics often diverge from the concerns of the average person, and I find that being a first-generation philosopher can help preserve connections to those outside the ivory tower. Still, it can also alienate you from the people you care about. Shortly before my grandfather died, he asked me what I was researching. By this time, I was writing my PhD dissertation on moral epistemology, and tried to explain it to him. He nodded politely before changing the subject. I’ve had similar reactions from other family members and friends, and often castigate myself. I wonder whether, if I just communicated the ideas better, then perhaps they would understand me. Although being a first-generation philosopher can help one keep one foot in the reality outside the academy, it can sometimes feel as though you have a firm footing in neither world, and that you might fall into the gulf between them.
There is something sad about not being able to share the things which are important to you with the people you love, even in broad strokes. Imposter syndrome is much discussed in academia, we hear less often about the feeling of no longer belonging to the community that you come from. I don’t know how to address that feeling, except to say that academic philosophy should not be so remote from people’s lives that they find it incomprehensible. A first-generation philosopher should not feel like they are stepping into an entirely different world, disconnected from the world outside the university. Although, that might be one benefit to being a first-generation philosopher: it can help keep you grounded, and that means you can help keep the discipline grounded as well.
Eric Wilkinson is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia.
