One reader asks:<\/p>\n
\nHow does an independent scholar get bread and butter on the table?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Another inquires:<\/p>\n
\nHow could one make a living in philosophy and the humanities besides being a professor?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
<\/div>\nThe short answer to the second question is that one can't. This is not to say that someone with a degree in philosophy or another humanities subject cannot make a living. But apart from a few exceptions that prove the rule, one cannot both do philosophy and make a living from it without being a teacher of it. At this point I must issue a warning: having a teaching job is no guarantee that you will make much of a living from teaching. You might spend five or six years earning a doctorate only to end up teaching ten courses a year at slave wages as an adjunct professor in a community college in Fargo, North Dakota or Hibbing, Minnesota, or some such place. (I'm sure these places have their compensations, so please no irate e-mail.) Only slightly better would be the life of the gypsy scholar who after a string of one-year full-time appointments spread out over these United States ends up in Beirut or Ankara. To add insult to injury, you might find that your marginally intelligent colleagues at the community college have terminal Masters degrees, have never published a word, care not a whit about their subject except for moneymaking purposes, but get a substantial regular salary with benefits, while you with your doctorate and lengthy publication record must subsist on the crumbs from their table.<\/p>\n
\nBut I digress. What my correspondents want to know is how to both be independent scholars and fill their bellies.<\/p>\n
One idea is to take Spinoza as your model, live with Dutch frugality, and find the modern-day equivalent of lens grinding. One could start a little company that does not consume all of your time but pays your bills. You might set up as a 'computer doctor' in a place where there are a lot of computer-illiterate senior citizens. Think Florida or Arizona. You configure their computers for them, recommend and install software, troubleshoot, and the like. You charge them $40 per hour.<\/p>\n
Another idea is to build a slave. You work hard from say ages 20 to 40 at some high-paying job. You live like a monk and save and invest most of what you make. Being married to a high-earner can't hurt. When your 'slave' is good and healthy, you live the life of otium liberale<\/em> from his return. Few will have the discipline for this approach. And postponing your 'real life' until later is obviously risky. But where there is a will there is a way. <\/p>\n