Philosopher Laureate:
An Idea Whose Time Has Come

A few months ago, I heard a story on "All Things Considered" detailing the rise in the number of poets laureate in the United States. Reporter Andy Bauers took his listeners on a short cross-country poetry reading, interviewing poets from California to Florida and recording them reading their work. It turns out that, while the country isn’t exactly going crazy for poetry, it’s at least moved off the "downright hostile" mark, and in the giddy aftermath, cities, towns, even counties, are appointing locals to be their official city/town/county poets. Sometimes poets are chosen by panels of other poets; sometimes they’re chosen by the city or town councils. Some poets serve for terms of fixed length; others serve indefinitely. Virtually none of them is paid for their work (surprise), which ranges from organizing poetry slams in local schools, to writing poems commemorating local people (fallen police officers), events (the opening of a new high school), places (a now-defunct neighborhood in Tampa), and, uh, circumstances (rolling blackouts in California).⁽¹⁾ 

I found myself remarkably engaged by the story, and particularly compelled by the argument of one poet, who said he believes the rising interest in poetry is in part our attempt to take back the language that has been stolen from us by the media and by the political process. (I know just what he means. I long ago held my own funeral for the word "fresh", a word that canned food manufacturers use, with perfectly straight faces, to describe the vegetables they entomb. Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against canned vegetables. I have a LOT against using the word "fresh" to describe them.) I found myself, well I’ll admit it, charmed by the idea of a town commissioning its local pen to write a poem—a poem, for heaven’s sake—to commemorate the opening of a new high school.

Just think of it: instead of (okay, maybe in addition to) a strobe light display, free Diet Coke and Doritos, and large speakers blaring top-40s music, you have one person (in this case, a man) standing in front of a microphone, reading a very small, very carefully chosen set of words. That’s it. What a powerful antidote to about 80 or 90 things about our consumer-driven culture that drive me nuts. What an acknowledgement of the power of poetry as a form of human engagement with the world.⁽²⁾  And what a great way for people to be able to approach poetry; to hear it read by someone who lives down the street or across town from them, and who wrote it themselves!⁽³⁾ 

And then it dawned on me; why not a philosopher laureate?

When I first had this thought, I was kidding. I spun out for myself a humorous little Phil on Hol article, in which I imagined the fierce run-off election that would be held at our house to determine the official philosopher laureate of 1002 Riverview Hills South. (Since it would end in a tie, we’d have to divide the house; one of us would get the ground floor and the other would get the second floor and the basement.) I drew up a list of events (ha ha) for which the town or city or county would call upon its philosopher laureate: unexplained suspension of the law of cause and effect; a missing shade of blue; discovery that a lot of its citizens were in fact chained inside of a cave lit only by a fire; cat gone from mat. I came up with witty observations about the towns that would have to have more than one philosopher laureate, in order to accommodate the mixed metaphysical and epistemological commitments of its residents ("oh you know Boston; with all those old transcendentalists still living there, there’d be no way for a hard-boiled empiricist to ever be chosen—that’s why they had to divide the city in half.")

Then I stopped laughing. Sort of. Okay, I didn’t then go down to the St. Peter City Hall and present a petition to the city council to make St. Peter the first town with its own philosopher laureate.⁽⁴⁾  But I did start thinking about how exciting it would be if people in a community sometimes turned to a philosopher or philosophers to help them think about something—an event, an issue, maybe even a concept. And then I started thinking about how very, very exciting it would be if those philosophers actually had something to say, and knew how to say it, and took the time to do it.⁽⁵⁾ 

I began trying to think about what a philosopher laureate (or even a philosopher without any leaves on their head) might do in their town or their county if they had the ear of some of its citizenry—if someone actually asked us what we thought about something.⁽⁶⁾ It was remarkably—embarrassingly—hard, especially for a someone who alleges to be a philosopher of everyday life and who claims to believe that philosophy ought to be speaking to actual people’s actual experiences in the world.⁽⁷⁾ 

After much wringing of hands, and much bouncing of this idea off of other philosophers of a sympathetic sort, I came up with the following list. It’s short. I think we can do better. In fact, so confident am I that we can do better, that I’m offering the coveted Philosophers on Holiday Travelling Dental Kare Kit to the first five philosophers (credentials immaterial) who send us an addition to this list. We’ll post them in the next issue.

Events that might inspire a village/town/city/county
to call upon its philosopher laureate,
and/or what that PL might do:

(Notice that these aren’t events that philosophers alone are equipped to address. For some of them, a poet laureate might be just as good a choice; for others, perhaps a plumber laureate would be more appropriate. I’m not out to make philosophers uniquely qualified for anything; after all, they wouldn’t have had to have a poet at that high school opening either.)

1. A town annexes a new portion of land, and contemplates building a new subdivision.

2. The PL posts weekly reflection questions in the city/town/neighborhood newspaper, and reports on people’s responses in a subsequent week.

3. The PL conducts an analytical survey to find out if most people in the town are Platonists or Aristotelians.

4. A city council/town board/county commission asks the PL to attend its meetings as an ex officio member, charged with asking clarifying questions when debate seems entangled.

Send your suggestions for Philosopher Laureate to:

Philosopher Laureate Job Desciption
c/o Philosophers on Holiday
P.O. Box 354
St. Peter, MN 56082

(or email to heldke@gac.edu)

Dental health awaits! 

1. I’m only guessing, but I would bet that since September 11 (this story aired on the 3rd of that month) the number of these poets laureate has increased, as have the demands on their services. I was surprised and moved to witness the way in which many people turned to poets, in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. People (like me) who normally feel very intimidated by poetry found ourselves listening to it, reading it, finding in it the depth of expression that we couldn’t find in the endless news analysis with which we were surrounded.  

2. Okay, so maybe it’s a little overblown to suggest that a poem about a new high school opening is an instance of "human engagement with the world." But you get my point—and you wouldn’t be arguing with me right now about it, if I’d picked a poem about the death of a police officer or of a neighborhood.  

3. The first time I ever really listened to a poem—as opposed to fidgeting along with the meter—was when I heard my friend Clare read her poems. I was, by the way, Not Young when this event occurred. I’m a late and slow bloomer in the poetry-appreciation department. I like to believe I’ll catch up; I have a lot of friends who are poets.  

4. They probably wouldn’t have honored my petition anyway, since I live outside the city limits; I’d have to petition the Lake Prairie Township board. Lake Prairie Township Philosopher Laureate: has quite a ring to it, doesn’t it? 

5. Okay, yes, this is probably another one of those rants (familiar to those of you readers who are actually in this profession) about the divorce of philosophy from everyday life, about the abdication of philosophy from engagement with the questions that actually matter to people. So sue me. 

6. But wait: in the beginning, I think we’d have to volunteer our services rather than waiting to be asked. I don’t think philosopher laureate events come quite as clearly labeled for people as do poet laureate events. I think people would actually be a little nervous and intimidated to call upon a philosopher laureate, for fear we’d tell them that "this isn’t a philosophically relevant event." Of course if they’d ever been to a philosopher’s party, they’d know that the placement of commas is a philosophically relevant event, but never mind. We don’t generally make ourselves all that approachable, so in the beginning, I think we’d just need to be willing to step in and assert that our services were needed. 

7. Turns out I’m rather intimidated by philosophers as well. I keep imagining other philosophers saying "that’s not philosophically relevant" about every idea I come up with.