Self-assessment/self-effacement

It is hard to come to grips with, but I have to face facts. At the age of 45, I think it is safe to say that I am not a good philosopher.

There are several reasons for this harsh self-assessment.

1. I average one publication a year.

In the business, that is not enough. You should average more to count as an even remotely satisfactory philosopher. The reason, primarily, is that I hate the last stage of publishing. I work hard on a paper, go through several versions before I am satisfied and send it off to a journal. However, after that, I usually loose interest in the think that I wrote. I usually get good reviews and editors encourage me to revise and resubmit, but somehow it takes me forever to do so and often it never happens. I have a stack of such 'R&Rs' with comments that I could easily incorporate -- yet somehow I don't. I am done thinking about the particular thing I investigated in the paper and know what to say. I hate pleasing referees who have different pet peeves than mine, just so as to get my stuff in print.

2. I am lazy.

Now, I think all philosophers are lazy. Laziness is the very thing that characterizes intellectuals. Too lazy to be bothered with the business at hand, we invent ways to get around it. This is why mathematicians are what they are -- too lazy to do tedious arithmetic -- so they invent calculus, and it holds for philosophers as well. However, my laziness is worse. I can get lost in very strange different things. I love to chat about philosophy, but I often am the only one, so instead I write e-mails to the many discussion lists I participate in, or write in my blog, or play tic-tac-toe on the computer, or mess around with my iPod.

3. I don't think I ever had a really original thought.

Again, this is not unusual, but it contributes that to the fact that I am not up there with the stas in heaven. I usually find myself picking up ideas from others and rewording them and see where that gets me. Most philosophers do, including some very good ones, but it is part of my self-assessment.

4. I am not a nerd.

The 'real' philosophers, people who are good at it and are recognized as such, are... well, basically, they are nerds. They are the sort of people who take one small infinitisemal small idea and blow it up and play with it to such an extent that it looks like something. There are exceptions. David Lewis, for example, is a hero of mine (from what I know of his work). But, let's face it, he too was a nerd. And though I am nerdish, I am not like that. I cannot loose myself completely in something and like an autistic Rainman go through it until it seems like something.

So what is on the positive side?

I think I am a decent teacher. I think I can explain things (once I understand them) much better than most philosophers. The reasons are the same that make me a bad philosopher: I am not idiosyncratically obsessed with things that I subsequently, without any introduction or motivation, 'present' to the world, like the 9 year old who tells his dad of this really cool piece of mud he just found (...). I try to explain people why it is important what I am to explain. I enjoy the look on the faces of students when all of a sudden they get 'it' or they see 'it'. This also explains, why I get bored reading philosophy, but love to hear people presenting their views or discussing their view.

So have I found my place in the world? Perhaps, only time will tell. Have I failed. I often think so: I failed at what really is my largest ambition, to become a really good philosopher. All I am is a decent one. Does this bother me? Yes, it does. It really does....