Leon: Hello everyone, my name is Leon Yin and you’re listening to Conversations from the Region, a new podcast by the Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Australasia (UPJA). Supported by the Australasian Association of Philosophy, UPJA is the first undergraduate philosophy journal run by students from the region. This podcast is a series of interviews with academic philosophers who are from, or currently working in Australasia, or whose work has had significant impact on philosophy in the region. For each episode, we’ll invite them to share their own undergraduate experiences, ideas, and advice. By asking established academic philosophers about how they got to where they are, we hope to offer a more rounded picture of doing philosophy, and inspire academic confidence in undergraduates who are passionate about careers in the field. And this is our debut episode number one, and today I’m with Dr Sam Shpall in this cozy audio room, here at University of Sydney. And thanks for taking time with us, Sam.
Dr. Shpall: Thanks for having me, didn’t know I was the first, uh, inaugural episode, so that’s a great honour – I’m happy to be here.
Leon: Okay, so, uh, let’s kick off this interview by a bit of introducing yourself, like what’s your philosophical interests, and what are you working on at the moment?
Dr. Shpall: Sure, so that’s a tough question for me. Um, I guess, broadly speaking I’d say I’m interested in ethics, aesthetics, social/political philosophy, and some other things. Um, I’ve never been the kind of person who has one or two topics, that are like, my topics. One of the things I love about being a philosopher is thinking about a lot of different things. So I guess I have written the most and taught the most and thought the most about a few topics in like, the philosophy of sex, and love, and friendship side of moral philosophy, broadly speaking. So, of what I’m trying to think about and write about now is in that space, so, for example, you know – because you took my philosophy of sex class, but I’ve been thinking a lot about gender and gender identity, I’ve been thinking a lot about masculinity, I’ve been thinking a lot about monogamy, I’ve been thinking a lot about, um, family formation, and how that relates to romantic love, and friendship, so all of those topics, I would say, are kind of in the core of what I’m doing right now. Uh, but I’m also doing other things, and that’s what I love about being a philosopher, that you sort of have a wide berth to explore that which interests you.
Leon: Cool. Then, what first drew you to philosophy, doing/studying philosophy, and eventually, you know, doing and teaching philosophy?
Dr. Shpall: I think I was drawn to some of the things that we characteristically do in the academic discipline of philosophy before I knew that there was such a thing of- as philosophy. As a kid, certainly as a young adolescent, I was very argumentative, I was very interested in some ways that I felt some of the people around me, some of the adults around me, maybe, weren’t thinking entirely clearly, you know? I was very curious, when, as a 14 or 15 or whatever year old, I sort of felt that I saw errors in thinking, or sometimes, errors in life, that I felt strongly were misguided, but, um, you know, that people seemed really confident about sticking to, or about pursuing. So- so I guess that’s what really got me into philosophy. It was when I was 16 or so that I really read philosophy for the first time, and I was immediately attracted to, um, the legitimisation, the sort of intrinsic way philosophy legitimises that process of questioning? And I guess what I would now describe as a sort of egalitarian bent or perspective- obviously, there are many ways in which the history of philosophy has not been egalitarian but I- the way I think about the practice, or the good practice of philosophy, it does have this kind of egalitarian character, where, it doesn’t matter if you’re 15 years old, if you can come up with an interesting consideration or argument, it may well persuade the good philosophers in the room, right? It doesn’t matter where you come from or how old you are, what sort of um, pedigree you have. So yeah, I think that, that was a big part of it for me.
Leon: What’s the first book you’ve read, about philosophy?
Dr. Shpall: I remember, um, in high school, one teacher had us read some of Descartes’ Meditations? So that’s the first one I remember? I think? Yeah, I think, the, sort of encounter with Cartesian scepticism would’ve been the first sort of, you know, canonical philosophical idea, and text, that I would have encountered. But I guess I should say, also, like, I grew up in a Jewish family, a secular, largely secular, but still, sort of reformed Jewish family, I had a bat mitzvah, so we were like, um, members of a congregation – in my view, the secular Jewish character has some overlap with the philosophical character, so there was a lot of like, dinner-time conversations about big ideas, at the synagogue, or in Hebrew school, you know, I remember quite vividly when I was, say, 12 years old, and leading up to my bat mitzvah, getting into arguments with the rabbi, you know, and that being, okay! Sort of appreciated! You know? Even though I’m sure it was quite annoying. So, in a way, the people- many philosophers I know wouldn’t think of that as, the sort of, you know, paradigm example of engaging with a philosophical text or tradition- I kind of think it was. That was sort of, proto-training at least, in what we do.
Leon: I think I got a similar story with you. Like, I think my first book, probably was the same, Descartes’ Meditations, but that’s because, like, some growing up in China and, socialist country – so we actually, learn philosophies in high schools? But in a way that is like, an endorsement to Marxism and socialism? [Dr. Shpall: Right] So whole philosophy section is about categorising into this binary, the issue of idea- to this binary of like, materialism and idealism, and Descartes was the one who, you know, dismissed in the textbook, unrealistic idealism and Marxist as surrealism is the true- and the, the true self philosophy, you know, so that’s kind of uh, I was like, no! That’s, that can’t, cannot be the final answer, you know, so I dig it up, and read Descartes, so, yeah, here we go.
Dr. Shpall: Yeah, that’s very interesting.
Leon: Uh, well then, when you first started studying philosophy, I guessing, uh, as an undergrad, did you have any particular memorable classes, or teachers?
Dr. Shpall: Yeah, I did. Um, a few, in fact. So, probably the, uh, a teacher – so I went to NYU as an undergraduate. There are a lot of famous philosophers at NYU now, and, and then. The teacher who I thought was probably the most outstanding teacher, and this was, a widely held view among undergraduates, was John RIchardson. Taught a course on existentialism and phenomenology, that, is just the kind of course, that, as an undergrad, many students wanna take, and I absolutely loved that course. And he’s a very, gifted and sophisticated, and kind teacher. Um, I also had a much less experienced teacher, Sharon Street, who was just starting out her career at NYU around when I was in undergrad, I think, uh, and she was fantastic. And ended up supervising my honours thesis. And then I had, um, I mean I remember a lot of the NYU characters, but the, but the third person who really made an impression on me as a teacher, was William Ruddick, who I had for a couple classes, um, who specialises in bioethics. Wasn’t really an area I ended up being super interested in, but I had like, a small seminar with him, and again, fantastic teacher. So I think, you, you know, one, one thing that being an undergrad at NYU in retrospect, really taught me, although I probably only understand this now, or at least, much later on, is that, there’s really not that tight of a connection between your importance as a researcher, or how important your work is considered in your field, and how good you are as a teacher. I mean, some outstanding researchers are great teachers. Some aren’t. All, all of those three in fact, are great researchers as well, but they’re not as famous as some of the people, who would’ve been at NYU. I mean, Tom Nagel, [Leon: Yeah] I never took a class from, because he wasn’t even teaching, right? Um, Peter Unger, much more famous, uhh- but I just think it’s… different skills, involved. Anyway, I had a, I had a fantastic time doing philosophy at NYU, but, I didn’t think of myself as destined for academia? I didn’t even- I’d say I loved and hated philosophy, as I still do. Um, but I spent a lot of time at university doing other things, you know? Particularly literary studies, and then, you know, extra-curricular activities as well.
Leon: Then what’s the click that made the move to actually go on to the journey of philosophy?
Dr. Shpall: I think in part it was being encouraged by a couple of those teachers, particularly Bill Ruddick sort of said to me, you should do honours and you should consider going on in philosophy, and Sharon too. And when they said that, I really had no idea what that would involve. I had no future plans. People for a long time had told me, “Oh, you should be a lawyer, you should be a lawyer, you know, you’re good at this kind of stuff.” So, you can make a lot of money, whatever, and that never appealed to me that much. Although I like certain things about law, and thinking about the law. But yeah, when they said you should consider going on philosophy, they also said, “You know, if you get into like a good PhD program, they pay you to do it or they pay you a stipend and pay your fee.” And so I kind of looked at it, I took a gap- what in the US they call it gap year, did some kind of, I taught English in Costa Rica, and I lived in Spain, and studied some Spanish literature stuff and other stuff there. Uh, and I kind of applied to PhD programs in philosophy, thinking, eh, whatever, we’ll see. Don’t really want to get a job, if someone offers to pay me to study, I’ll consider it. So I sent in some applications. It wasn’t more complicated than that at that point.
Leon: Well then, do you think like, much has changed for philosophy students since you were studying? Like the whole environment or more generalised philosophy education in university?
Dr. Shpall: Yes. I don’t even know how to start answering that question because there’s so many dimensions of the affirmative answer that we could pursue, right? I mean, the world has changed a great deal. We just had email when I was starting undergraduate. So technological developments have completely transformed the way we do university education. That’s one thing. The discipline of philosophy has changed dramatically. I think largely for the better. Um, I think the topics we explore and the methodologies have diversified as well as the practitioners, and this has been overall a very good thing. We’re sitting here at the University of Sydney. The experience of students at the University of Sydney is very different in lots of ways from the experience of American university students. I mean, I left home when I was 17 and moved about 3,000 miles across the country to live by myself in New York City and started taking philosophy classes while I was doing other things, you know, exploring being an adult. To transition into adulthood, let’s say, on my own, most of my students here live at home with their parents, they’re commuting in and back to their parents’ houses. Cost of living situation is completely different. The constraints on student’s time seem different. We could pursue any, implications of any one of these sort of, dimensions for quite a while, I suspect.
Leon: What about like, coursework demand back in the old time when you’re doing undergrad compared to nowadays? Because I think like, especially in use, there’s not much constraint that a teacher can enforce on his students, right, whether that’s uh, reading or like, participating in a tutorial and lectures.
Dr. Shpall: I think that’s a direct result of technological innovation. I think primarily it’s a result of having institutionalised the lecture recording system. Even when I started at the University of Sydney, which was nine years ago, none of the, none of my lectures were recorded. It wasn’t even on my radar, the idea of recording lectures. So like, if you wanted to know what was going on in the class, you came to the lecture. [Leon: Have to be there!] You got to be there. There’s no negotiation. Of course, not everyone came to the lectures, but if you came to less than, I don’t know, 70% of the lectures or something like that, there’s a pretty good chance you were going to do pretty poorly in terms of your overall performance. So um, I don’t really think it’s much more complicated than that. Of course, I already mentioned cost of living pressures and people kind of like tie themselves in knots sometimes to give more complicated structural explanations of what has been happening at major Australian universities over the last few years. I don’t deny that these are relevant, but I think in the case of our precipitously declining engagement in coursework across the entire university. Definitely across the entire faculty of arts and social sciences. So the point where it’s like an achievement if you’re a lecturer and you have 30% of your students showing up to any given lecture. I mean, it was, I think you probably noticed, it was very unusual that in philosophy of sex, though perhaps predictable in a class like that where you have a bunch of highly motivated, interested students enrolling, very unusual that we had over 50% of students coming to lectures. I mean, that’s a, in my view, kind of historic phenomenon. I try and, students get annoyed when you go too hard on this topic because they think they’re berated or whatever.
Leon: And they’re doing their best.
Dr. Shpall: And they think they’re doing their best and some of them are, right? But this institution has been around a lot longer than five years, which is how long lecture recordings has been around. Give or take. For the entire history of this institution, people came to lectures if they wanted to learn. So on the one hand, the lecture recording technology has introduced a lot of flexibility, which is fantastic for students who are working and have caring obligations or whatever who live far away, right? On the other hand, it hasn’t just done that. I would say it has at least as sort of, influentially, just decreased the total amount of learning and impoverished the classroom environment for the students who do want to be there and who do want to learn and who don’t want to do their entire university education alone in a room somewhere in front of a computer screen, right? So I think these costs are systematically underappreciated, but I mean, that’s a conversation in itself. We could probably talk about more interesting things.
Leon: Then like, more back to issues that are related to the philosophy department nowadays. Like, in recent years there’s been a rise in global interests in the STEM subjects – you know, especially like, artificial intelligence, coding and engineering, on the contrary, like the humanities, you know, and perhaps philosophy in particular, have suffered from, low enrollment rates and as we talked about, uh, participation and cuts in funding, you know, example would be, uh, the Dianoia Institute at ACU, and of course, here at USyd as well. So I guess, in your view, do you think philosophy’s still relevant today, why and how?
Dr. Shpall: Yeah, of course, more than ever. Um, I don’t think any serious person would deny the importance of philosophy. I think there are some serious people who would think, eh maybe, you know, there’s been too much funding over the course of the last few decades or whatever, going to humanities projects that don’t stand to directly benefit um, the public interest. And I mean, I could have a conversation with that kind of person. I think the way that we do funding, especially government funding of research in Australia, is totally insane. So I don’t think it’s like the best system, and it’s this horrible thing when um, philosophers don’t win $300,000 grants to buy them out of three years of teaching obligations or something like that. Nonetheless, I don’t agree entirely with your characterization. You’re right that there is in some ways, a trend of sort of declining student interest in humanities disciplines. I don’t think we’re seeing at least at the University of Sydney declining student interest philosophy. We have very, very strong enrollment numbers and have had for the last several years. And it’s unclear whether they’re growing or whether they’re kind of the same or how you want to take the measurements, but certainly no major declines. Some courses that are very popular with students from across the university, in part because they rightly see units in logic or in critical thinking or in ethics or in political philosophy or in human rights or in philosophy of happiness or whatever, right? As kind of transcending disciplinary boundaries of philosophy and being applicable to what they are doing, whether they’re going on to you know, work in a private sector or be lawyers, be doctors. It’s hard to find a week that goes by where there’s not a story in the Guardian or some big news outlet about topics that I think we have a special relationship to, we philosophers have a special relationship to, not necessarily an exclusive or proprietary relationship. So we’re just talking about um, before we turn on the mics, right? This article, the big feature article in the Guardian published this weekend about pornography and male sexuality that, you know, I was interviewed for, that some students from philosophy of sex gave anonymous interviews for, a lot of people theorise about these topics, but the contributions of philosophers and by philosophers, I mean to include smart philosophy students to theorising about these topics both in academia and in the public square, they’re inimitably important. They’re distinctive contributions. We have distinctive methods in philosophy, resources that we are particularly adept at drawing on, not say we don’t make mistakes in doing it. That’s a vital part of the conversation, whether you’re talking about immigration or sexuality, any number of topics, which I’m sure we’ll get to some of them soon.
Leon: Yeah, true. You’ve opened all, like, I think still teaching probably will be ended in the near future, the course called philosophy of sex, in which we dive into more philosophical aspect about sex, about love, about sexuality. And I guess a follow-up question would be like, then how important do you think it is for us to philosophise about sex and in the way that which to have a course on this? How do you think that’s important?
Dr. Shpall: Extraordinarily important. And indeed, I think no one can deny it’s importance because I think everyone does it, whether they recognize um, it as philosophy or not. I mean, if the philosophy of sex course at the University of Sydney never gets taught again and indeed no one in the philosophy department at the University of Sydney ever teaches a course that even touches on um, issues in the philosophy of sex again, I guarantee people are still going to be talking all the time about what gender identity is and it’s relationship to feminism, right? About what compulsory heterosexuality means. About whether we should even have sexual orientation concepts. About whether it’s permissible to procreate or whether if we want to be parents, we should all be adopting, right? And many other topics that are the kinds of topics we investigate philosophically in that unit, people think about these topics systematically, well, sometimes systematically, there is systematic thinking about these topics whether or not it is usually systematic or comprehensive or compelling, whether or not the debates about them in more public venues are carried out respectfully or responsibly. I think the real shame in not doing these topics in a serious, rigorous way, which I aspire to do when I teach the philosophy of sex unit is that philosophy can really bring some clarity and respect to these hot button issues or the discussion of them. So I think the more that we outsource philosophical thinking to pundits and um, people who have vested interests either in a political position or in getting you to click on the next article, the more toxic some of these discussions tend to become. And the slower progress is, really.
Leon: Uh, you’ve written a lot about sex, gender and love and that’s why you kind of teach this course and particularly I think one of your papers that made impressions to me is the paper against romanticism, and you made a persuasive critique towards many like, romantic concepts about love and suggest that maybe a rational account of it works or maybe it’s better. So as the philosopher who philosophises on love, what’s your view of love and what do you think about this common, like, narrative of like, feeling love, or even like I fell for philosophy, this kind of view, so what do you think about that?
Dr. Shpall: Oh boy, where do we start here? Um, maybe we won’t start by me giving like, an account of love. Maybe one way to start is by saying I think the concept of falling in love is a very, very interesting one. I’m tempted to think it’s a misguided one. Um, and some stuff that I’m thinking about and trying to write right now, I’m exploring the idea, we really should be employing this concept of limerence which is coined by the psychologist Dorothy Tenov in 1979. And maybe moving away from the in love concepts, falling in love, being in love, falling out of love, because maybe those concepts kind of uncomfortably straddle, incline us to ignore the differences between, limerence on the one hand, and love, even romantic love on the other hand, okay? So a different way to put that is that I think, and I think this is part of what Dorothy Tenov thought. I think that there’s a distinctive psychological phenomenon that many people use the word falling or, ya know, the term, the phrase, falling in love to refer to. It’s characterised by some strange features or properties, okay. One really obvious one is the sort of intrusive thoughts. Some of us, maybe many of us – there are debates about how common uh, limerence is – but some of us experience, when we are in that, normally I can sit down and read a difficult text for hours at a time. You know, it’s one of the reasons I do what I do. In fact, I quite like that. Um, I have pretty strong concentration capacities, right? But then all of a sudden I go on five dates with this person and I can’t read a paragraph without thoughts popping in. You know, maybe they’re nice thoughts like, oh, “I can’t wait to see this person! They’re so wonderful!” Maybe they’re not so nice thoughts like, “oh, does this person like that other person more?” Such a strange property. There are other strange properties, according to Tenov, of the state that she calls limerence. And I think one of the main points that I’m interested in is that, those features which seem to be characteristic of that state, whatever you want to call it, don’t seem to be characteristic of what I want to call romantic love, okay. You might say they’re characteristic of quote unquote “early stage romantic love” or quote unquote, “obsessional romantic love” or whatever, people like to trot out phrases like that, like that. But there might be some dangers in mixing up these two things. So that’s one thought I’m very interested in.
Leon: What are the dangers?
Dr. Shpall: Well, here’s one thing that Tenov thinks that I think is super cool. She thinks that not all people are limerent with a T. So not all people are even capable of experiencing this kind of state. But some of these people who are not capable of experiencing limerence are definitely capable of romantically loving. So if we think that the only way to say, come to be a romantic lover, or to come to be in love, is to experience the state that’s characterised by these symptoms, we’re saying to those people actually, though you feel like really strongly connected to this person, you really want to be around them, you want to do these characteristically romantic things like maybe wanna kiss and have sex and sleep in the same bed, although we could return to this if you want. I don’t identify romantic love with sexual love. I think it’s useful to distinguish those as well. But um, you know, though you might think of yourself as a romantic lover since you didn’t feel limerence, you can’t be. That to me looks like a mistake. And I think Tenov is right to diagnose that as a mistake. I’d prefer to say limerence is sometimes, a sort of early stage of romantic love or alternative you- alternatively, you might say limerence is sometimes the state that someone is in that proceeds, their coming to be a romantic lover, but it needn’t be the state that persists, right? You can be a romantic lover without having experienced limerence. And likewise, you can be limerent without being a romantic lover. So you can be limerent for someone you don’t really know very well. You’re not really interacting with, in any deep sense. You can have these intrusive thoughts, you can be dying to get to know them better sexually, romantically and otherwise. You can be limerent, but not a romantic lover, at least on this picture.
Leon: Uh, another topic is that I know you’re being kind of pioneering in our university with courses such as like comparative ethics, and also philosophy of sex and love at the undergraduate level actually and I’m very lucky to be in both of the courses. And I’ve noticed that many of the texts we cover in those classes are not so dominant or orthodox in the reading list for undergrad, for students, you know, such as like Lao Tzu and Confucius on Chinese ethics and Luce Irigaray or Freud on love and sexual differences. So I guess another question for our interview is that, what do you think about this sort of like, gatekeeping of disciplinary boundary, the fact that we call ourselves a philosophy department, but essentially most of – all, basically all of the courses that teach uh, this kind of uh, western philosophy, and where we kind of put the eastern philosophy in more kind of a region based study faculties, and also this like analytical, slash continental uh, categories. Do you think they do any good, or particularly for undergraduate students?
Dr. Shpall: It’s a big question, and a good one. Some categories are important. I think the, uh, key thing is what you do with the categories. So I don’t really mind the analytic, continental category because I think it does track some methodological differences, uh, but I’m always keen to make sure people are on the same page and understanding that it’s not a hard and fast thing, like it’s not really clear, or completely clear why the analytics like to claim and think they get to like exclusively claim someone like Wittgenstein, right? Or like where Nietzsche fits in since everyone I know thinks Nietzsche is interesting, you know? Some categories are fine, it’s more about how they get deployed, um, and I do think we could have more of it here, uh, teaching some works of philosophy that are typically considered continental or non analytic, um, but we do have some. I think the, uh, you know, eastern-western if you like, categorization is more vexed and difficult. One, and this is what, you know, people who are sceptical about the more critical perspectives on this issue tend to say, there’s some truth to it, because most people who get training, you know, who do PhDs in the West, they can’t do much Chinese philosophy. Um, they can’t read the original texts. It would take them years to get that capacity, and same for Indian philosophy and various, and philosophy from various other traditions. That said, as you know, because we discussed it in the comparative ethics unit quite a bit. Uh, there are some like J. Garfield and Brian Van Norton who say cool, well, if your perspective is that you’re just going to be teaching western philosophy, because that’s all you need to know about and that’s all you do know about, then just make sure you advertise that, and call your department a department of, uh, European and American, or of West or whatever philosophy. Right? And that proposal is not, um, it has something going for it. And I do think that as our world becomes more interconnected, as the student population at a university like this becomes, um, increasingly international. I don’t know what the proportion would be in philosophy units, of Chinese students but it would be significant, and uh- [Leon: I think significantly low, compared to the average.] -lower, low compared to the average, but I would still say significant. Like I would ballpark it at like, maybe 20%, which is very significant. I mean, that’s one out of five students. I could be wrong. It could be a little lower, it could be a little higher, right? But that’s a lot of students in our units. Um, so to have, we’re at the case that we had zero Chinese philosophy being taught in this department. Yeah, that, I mean, that seems weird. So I think there’s some recognition of this within the discipline, but I don’t know. I think because it’s a lot easier for a philosopher like me to spend a few years reading feminist philosophy and get to a place where I can competently teach a course that’s like, you know, philosophy sex isn’t a feminist philosophy course, but at least half the readings are classic readings that you would get in a, you might get in a feminist philosophy course, right? And I think I’m competent to teach that material because I’ve studied it, you know, and I care about continuing to study it. Um, it’d take me a lot more time, and training to be able to really teach Chinese philosophy. I think I do a bit, well, I used to do a bit, when comparative ethics, uh, existed, and I think it was good to do that. There’s a worry, right, that like, I don’t want to teach something that I’m not really competent to teach just because it would be good for that to be taught, right? Part of what I’m supposed to be doing is teaching stuff about which I have sufficient expertise.
Leon: I guess another problem would be that, considering like, Chinese philosophy more generally, there’s kind of more material obstacles for Chinese scholars to actually, you know, establish its’ career in Western dominated or English-speaking academic world, right?
Dr. Shpall: I think so. But I would say I do think, not fast enough, and my personal private impression is that it’s not happening as fast as it is happening in other sub-disciplines, like maybe feminist philosophy, and philosophy of race more generally, um, but the field is diversifying. Like, there are more people getting PhDs now who at least have, competence in non-Western philosophical traditions, and there’s more stuff being written, whether it’s about, like, Latin American philosophy, or Africana philosophy, or East Asian philosophy. There’s more out there.
Leon: So the next question is, uh, philosophy can change a way student view the world and issues of importance, from being, you know, ethical dilemmas and improving clarity of thought. Do you think a tertiary understanding of a particularly ethics, especially about gender, sex and love, can change a way your students engage with the world; in your past experiences and if so, how?
Dr. Shpall: Yeah. I mean, I guess I want to maybe make a more general point, like, I think it’s low-hanging fruit a bit to say, “oh, my philosophy of sex unit can, you know, I’ve seen it change the way people think about gender and gender identity,” which is obviously significant given that we all have to face certain questions about the inclusion of trans and non-binary people in various social spaces and enterprises and how that inclusion is going to go. And, uh, I mean, right, that’s only one piece of what we do in philosophy of sex, but it’s, could it be more obvious that there’s real-world implications to thinking critically about that stuff? Or like to thinking critically about the role of romantic love and/or sexual love and/or limerence, and friendship in a flourishing human life? I mean, could there be a more practical mode of study than trying to figure out what you yourself think, about the kinds of relationships you ought to pursue? I mean, most people in the societies like this, have as a necessary condition on their pursuing a romantic relationship with someone that it be monogamous or sexually and romantically exclusive. Yet, when we come together in philosophy of sex, and talk about these exclusivity requirements, people find it really, really hard to vindicate them. In my estimation, most students in the class go from thinking, you got to be, like, like, “the default presumption is just that for a relationship to be serious and choiceworthy, it’s sexually and romantically exclusive” to at the end of the semester thinking, “I cannot justify that assumption.” So, of course, these are consequential topics, and I think it’s fantastic for young, thoughtful people to think about them, but to think about them together, not alone watching a couple videos, at home, in between doing the dishes and whatever else, right? But together with other really smart people and having weekly conversations, which are challenging, with other people who they respect. But as I said, that’s kind of low-hanging fruit. I would just guess that anyone who would listen to this podcast would just say, “Yeah, okay.” So, I guess what I would be more inclined to push is the idea that philosophy generally does that. That in philosophy, what we do when we do philosophy well, is create the conditions for people to make better choices, and live together more harmoniously, create better political societies, and maybe even be more mentally healthy! You know, I teach philosophy in prisons- I’ve taught philosophy in several different carceral contexts, and there it’s extraordinarily striking the kinds of personal, and kind of micro-social transformations that just doing a bit of philosophy seems to effectuate. Personal transformations like, someone thinking of themselves as like, having worthwhile ideas, as having the licence to like, explore what they think about complex topics. Social transformations like, getting more interested in trying to understand the person sitting across from you. Getting really invested in having a conversation with a person that’s not a dismissal of them, or a kind of power struggle, or a way of just blowing off steam, but is actually an investigation, a collaboration. I’ve just seen that happen in many contexts, including as I say, in conditions of, I would say, sometimes inhumane, but at least gross deprivation. So if those things can happen there, one would expect that they could happen for, already privileged, educated, sophisticated university students.
Leon: Then as we speak about, like, the transformation of philosophy, then I think are you’ve been teaching philosophy and particularly running philosophy of sex for three years now, if memory serves? And how much do you think writing and teaching about sex and love, or maybe just philosophy in general has changed your own personal life?
Dr. Shpall: Yeah, a lot. Yeah, I mean on a number of issues, but I, but I guess I would probably lead with the thought that when I did my PhD, which was from like 2005 to 2011, I can’t remember a work of feminist philosophy that was assigned, in any of the courses that I took or for like my exams or anything like that. And before that when I did my undergraduate degree, I can’t remember a work of feminist philosophy that was assigned. So it was only, I’d say in my early 20s, while doing PhD that I started sort of, on my own, reading a bit of feminist philosophy. It’s not like I was, I’d never been exposed to feminist- feminism before – I had, I grew up in a very, yeah, I mean, I already said in this interview, I grew up in a secular Jewish family, I grew up in Los Angeles, so like that, anyway, um, a lot of that was just there anyway. But, that’s not the same as reading feminist philosophy. And, I, I really think that my, um, 16, 17, 18 plus whatever years of being exposed to feminist philosophy has deeply changed who I am as a man, not to say it’s made me particularly good in this way or that way. Or like I don’t go around claiming that I’m a feminist, or a great feminist, I don’t think that’s productive, or some of my colleagues think men can’t even be feminists! And I don’t really care, about that label. Um, but I know it has profoundly affected the way that I see my world, the world I live in. It’s profoundly affected the topics that I consider important. It has made a huge impact on how I narrativise myself, I suppose you could put it, how I think about my upbringing and the, the residue on all of us, but on all men of patriarchal culture. It’s made me see how deep objectification goes. It’s made me be a lot more, um, measured, and, I think, respectful of certain views that I don’t buy, but nonetheless, I, I kind of recognise the importance of their being there, their sort of legitimacy. Yeah, so of all the, if I were to choose like, an area or a subdiscipline in philosophy that has made the biggest sort of personal effect on me, on how I see myself, on how I conduct my relationships, on how I think I can make a difference and so on, it would be that, right? Because, and that shouldn’t be a surprise, right? Like, we should almost expect that, especially a man, a man who grows up playing sports and you know, doing a pr- having a pretty, I mean, look, I could have grown up in much more patriarchal and misogynistic times, and places, and even places in the United States at that time, right? Nonetheless, I think that it’s very hard to understand some of these things without really spending time reading the most sophisticated advocates of feminist philosophical positions, although it’s becoming less hard only because of, in my view, the extraordinary influence that feminist philosophy, broadly speaking, philosophy, broadly speaking, has had on the culture. We’re now in a time where a lot of the work feminist thinkers have done over the past 100, 50, but particularly let’s say 40 years, about 40 years, or maybe let’s go back to Simone de Beauvoir, 1950, I don’t know, right? But like, that work is more legible, I think, particularly to your average young person in a world city than it has ever been. So I think some of my own difficulties in understanding what it means to be a man, what my own history has been like, my own sexuality, how I think about relationships, all that kind of stuff, I think, and hope, it’s not like we solved everything, but I think and hope people your age, who are at universities like this, have, they’re growing up with some different tools. It seems to me, hard to deny.
Leon: I guess we have to kind of wrap up with some more light questions. So you said before that you have kind of a bit of a bittersweet kind of attitude with philosophy, then have you always wanted to be a philosopher, if not like, what’s the, maybe second best career you’d like to pursue alternatively?
Dr. Shpall: Yeah, no, I haven’t always wanted to be a philosopher. I do love aspects of being a philosopher, and I dislike some aspects of being a philosopher. I love teaching. I love philosophical engagement. I love the actual doing of philosophy really energises me, and I think it’s a wonderful pursuit, I love doing philosophy with students. I love doing philosophy with colleagues, love giving talks at other universities and engaging with people about ideas or going to talks- I mean, all that kind of stuff, absolutely love. There are other parts of the job, which are not so fun. [Leon: Like admin stuff?] Admin stuff, but also publication processes, how slow things move, grant- all the funding stuff. I just despise. You know, I’m just about the kind of pure, I just love the talking about ideas bit and the thinking, particularly the collaborative thinking. And I do, I, I guess when you say what would I like to do besides being a philosopher, one thing I would say is write other things that aren’t philosophy. In part, because I think, I find the constraints of academic philosophical writing useful for specialisation purposes, and I’m not saying there shouldn’t be those constraints or there should be no such constraints, making no claim about that. But I find them personally quite stifling. I find it hard to be creative, not to be creative as a philosopher, but to be creative in the writing of articles that are going to be published in academic journals. And I think creativity is one of the best things about philosophy. It’s what I like. And I think creativity is beautiful, not just in argumentation, though I love that, but it’s also beautiful in modes of expression. So that’s one of the reasons I have always been a, sort of passionate admirer of literary artists. And why I think some forms of literary composition are not just like, complementary to the forms of composition that we pursue now in the academy in philosophy, but they’re actually necessary parts of a more holistic philosophical enterprise. So I think poetry does some things that are philosophical; academic articles basically never do. So yeah, I guess the answer is write things that are philosophical, but not [Leon: philosophical-] “philosophy,” quote unquote.
Leon: Then, lastly, do you have any kind of, words of advice for philosophy undergraduates thinking of doing a post grad or maybe actually thinking, taking this role less travelled by quote, academia?
Dr. Shpall: So I think I tell all my students is that, if you do post grad work in philosophy, it has to be because you think it’s intrinsically valuable. If you do it because you want to- if your main motivation is that you want to get a permanent job in philosophy, then you’re making a mistake. You can want to get a permanent job in philosophy, but that shouldn’t be your main motivation. You have to be happy. You have to anticipate feeling no regrets if you get to the end of doing a PhD or whatever degree and you don’t get a job in philosophy and you go on and do something else. You have to anticipate feeling like, “that wasn’t a waste of time, on the contrary, I’m really happy I did it.” And here’s why. So that’s one piece of advice that some people won’t really love to hear, because some people want to hear advice about how you get a job, or you know, how you succeed. But in my view, giving advice like that is a bit irresponsible because it’s not a completely merit-based system. There’s not a secret reason that I have the job that I have and my friends X, Y and Z who have PhDs in philosophy are now lawyers, journalists, teachers, whatever else. There’s no reason. I mean, there are causes, but there’s not, I don’t think I’m smarter than them. I don’t think my work is better than them. I don’t think, you know, once you hit a certain threshold of achievement, then you’re in the running and then it’s a crapshoot. Just like in my view, it’s a crapshoot, whether your paper gets published at this prestigious journal. It sort of depends on a lot of things that you can’t control. There’s just too many talented people in the world for the amount of funded positions in this discipline that we have. We have to recognize that, right? We have to recognize our privilege. Getting to study philosophy, getting your, doing post-grad work in philosophy, and above all, if you’re someone like me, getting to be paid, stably for teaching and researching in philosophy. So I could say things like, well, make sure you choose your supervisor wisely, or, make sure you’re thinking about who your recommendation letters are coming from significantly in advance of when you will need them. Uh, think about choosing a topic that’s like, you know, maybe not the most arcane topic you could choose in the philosophy of language where there’s not going to be many jobs advertised, right? But that sort of advice is boring, obvious, and I think in a way morally missing the mark a bit from my position of immense privilege, I have a kind of, I have to care for my students, right? And the main way I care for them when they ask this question is by saying like, we all engage in constant self-deception, right? Many of us think, “oh yeah, like the odds are bad, but like, I’m really special. Like, the odds for me are way better than the odds for that schmuck over there.” That could be true. It could be true in your case, Leon, you know, I don’t know! But-
Leon: I think it’s true for all of the people who actually like and passionate about doing acting. I think that kind of ego is kind of what motivates you and makes you that, you know?
Dr. Shpall: One would, one would hypothesise, right? You see why I’m saying I kind of feel like it’s important to make it really clear. I never just, I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m saying my attitude when I started PhD was I have no idea if I want to be an academic, but I love studying. And if someone’s going to pay me or if it’s going to be like financially feasible for me to study for five more years, and I’m going to get to study closely and get like a lot of attention from these awesome philosophers, yeah, I’m not going to regret that. Might become a teacher, might go to law school, might become a journalist, might try and write novels, might do something I haven’t anticipated, but I won’t regret it. I think that’s got to be the perspective.
Leon: I guess the final last question is another pick and choose one. So I’m personally, very like, this kind of question is, I think it’s a way to know a philosopher. So what’s three books would you take on a desert island if you’re stranded there? You’ve got enough food, enough like, cozy environment, but no other thing else. And there’s only three books you could take.
Dr. Shpall: Okay, I can try with this one. So I have a bit of a cheat that I like for this question because I’m going to only choose very long books because I don’t want to run out, quickly. So like if this is a great book, but it’s only 200 pages long, like even if you can reread it 10 times profitably, that’s like that’s, I mean, if I’m stuck there for more than a few months, that’s not going to cut it, right? So you need big books. So one obvious one for me, is the collected dialogues of Plato. That counts as one book, one volume. And it’s a fantastic one. You can, I mean, I haven’t read all the platonic dialogues, but I’ve read a bunch and they’re awesome and you can revisit them. So, so that’s, that’s one. Now you did say books, so I wonder if I get to count, you know, Remembrance Of Things Pa– Proust, Remembrance Of Things Past or In Search Of [Lost Time] as one book. That’s several volumes [Leon: A series, yeah, volumes], that, that would be, um, that would be [Leon: That’s counted as one!] a great one if I get to count that as one. Then, um. And then I think, one of my favourite books is Don Quixote, Cervantes. It’s a book full of such delight that I think I might choose that over other long novels that I maybe, love equally just to, of course, it’s a serious work in many ways, but, um, to have some humour and a tinge of lightness in the midst of reading Proust and Plato. Yeah. Choose Cervantes.
Leon: All right, I think that’s all. And, uh, again, thanks for spending time with us, Sam.
Dr. Shpall: Thank you very much and good luck on this podcast.