English or in comparative literature...thediscussion is of a very
different sort. I think it is, generally speaking, less ruthless.” This
ruthlessness—this toughness—may be a manifestation of philoso-
phy’s view of itself as one of the most exacting of disciplines. In try-
ing to account for the fact that among all the projects selected for
funding, “the philosophy proposals are the ones that need to be ex-
plained,” another philosopher stresses, “Philosophy projects are by
and large very, very difficult to understand.” Along the same lines,
the website of the American Philosophical Association states that
“no other discipline is more attentive to the cultivation of intellec-
tual conscience and of critical acumen.”^24 Particularly in interdisci-
plinary settings, actions that reflect these field-specific characteristics
may be interpreted by nonphilosophers as a form of misplaced intel-
lectual superiority or as an inappropriate attempt to enhance disci-
plinary status.
Philosophy’s “very autonomous” position in the humanities is
another potential source of trouble on interdisciplinary panels. A
historian observes that “it’s very hard to find a philosopher...
who has any common ground of discussion with the rest of the
world.” A geographer summarizes his panel’s frustration with eval-
uating philosophy proposals with the remark that philosophers
“produc[e] absolutely unintelligible research proposals, and so we
just didn’t know how to deal with them.” Put differently, the philoso-
phy proposals appear to have tested these panel members’ ability to
engage in cognitive contextualization. Some panelists interpret phi-
losophy’s “autonomy,” “isolation,” or “lack of common ground” with
other disciplines as an indication of its loss of relevance. The geogra-
pher, for instance, dismisses the field as “sterile.”
I did a degree at Oxford and I did philosophy, politics, and eco-
nomics [a typical Rhodes Scholar degree]. I decided it was pretty66 / On Disciplinary Cultures