About the Trough

We feature writing from philosophers on a wide variety of topics.

A word from our co-founder:

When I was working on my master’s degree, I remember meeting with one of the professors to discuss some of the finer points of Aristotle that were important for a paper I was working on. Towards the end of the meeting, the professor offhandedly asked me, “so what do you think about all of this?” I wasn’t prepared for this question, and replied, “I don’t know what I think about it – I was just trying to figure out what Aristotle thought.” His response gave me something to think about: “if you really don’t know, that’s fine, but at the end of the day, if you are really doing philosophy, you need to give an account of what you think. Even if we don’t have it all figured out, we owe it to ourselves to understand our own thoughts about things, rather than just relying on someone else’s.” When it comes to making a career in academia, this was probably some of the worst advice I’ve ever received. I think it was some of the best advice I’ve ever received about being a good philosopher.

My professor’s point was fairly simple, but I think about it frequently. Whatever you think of the relative merits of academic philosophy, one thing it does is suppress the more self-reflective side of thinking and writing about philosophical questions. What drew me (and I presume many others) to philosophy was the excitement of thinking about some really big and difficult questions for myself. Over the years, implicitly or explicitly, I’ve been told to think about slightly smaller and less difficult questions, and to do so more for journal referees than for myself. At the Trough, we want to provide the opportunity to publish philosophical work without concern for referees and “making a contribution to the literature.” It’s about saying what you think, and saying it how you want to say it. In so doing, we hope to bring back a bit of that excitement we all felt when we first started on our philosophical journeys.
– Scott Harkema