Making Philosophy Matter

This article contends that philosophy is losing its standing because of its tendency to treat its own practice as an exercise in thinking about the world. When we treat ourselves and our colleagues as thinkers of the world, we isolate both our research and each other from the world. This is affecting the way philosophers and their work are perceived by others, and subsequently, if and how they are received as contributors to public discourse. One potential solution is to acknowledge that philosophy matters in the material sense: we must return to our bodies as (1) sites of meaning-making and discovery and (2) the condition that ensures philosophical practice remains a worldly activity. We make philosophy matter by making our research matter and each other matter.