Fiction vs Philosophy
Philosophers do their best to not read new philosophical writing, but lovers of fiction actively seek out new fiction. Why is there an asymmetry in the attitudes between consumers of philosophy and consumers of fiction?
Fiction
I am a big genre fiction person: horror, sci-fi, mystery, romance, fantasy, etc. Genre fiction is characterized by a series of common tropes that readers of the genre will doubtlessly be familiar with.
The haunted house trope in horror. The enemies to lovers trope in romance. The warring space colonies trope in science fiction. The tropes get increasingly granular, depending on one’s acquaintance for the genre.
Tropes are part of genre conventions more generally. In romance: the convention is that, well, the couple makes it in the end. In mystery: the detective solves the mystery. In horror: there is some kind of resolution to the malignant force haunting the main characters. The conventions also dictate how the book goes, from beginning to end.
In genre fiction — which is most commercial fiction, basically — we love conventions. We love the unoriginal, the utterly predictable.
Genre fiction is notoriously predictable…yet readers of genre fiction love this fact. Readers of genre fiction love the genre conventions; this is why they consume so many works of genre fiction! If you go on social media, you can even see that book marketers now explicitly market their books by describing the tropes within them. The ad will explicitly say: this is an enemies-to-lovers plot.
Genre lovers consume a lot of genre fiction, and they appreciate the conventions. Sometimes it gets a bit stale, so some originality is desired. But the threshold for originality is relatively low.
Philosophy
Now compare the situation with genre fiction to the case of academic philosophers. There are conventions of academic philosophy, for sure. There are tropes. But readers of academic philosophy are not hungry for these conventions and tropes in an analogous way.
Readers of academic philosophy get tired of different versions of the same basic theory. The rationale is: if it isn’t substantially different, it shouldn’t get published. Originality is a virtue. And even then, they still don’t want to read anything new.
Philosophers often read new philosophy when they feel like they have to. Reading philosophy is a professional obligation. In order to advance my career, I have to read your stupid article. This results in a captive audience effect. The audience is unusually hostile, partly because they feel forced to take your work seriously.
As a reader of fiction, I am not generally guided by the feeling that I must read the latest and hottest new book. This is partly because it is impractical to read all the books appearing lately, even the ones by prominent authors.
Here is what I’m searching for: in fiction, books are a treat that we reward ourselves with. Philosophical writing is more like a dietary requirement.
The Asymmetry
The obvious explanation of the asymmetry between fiction and philosophy consumption is that philosophers crave originality in ways that fiction lovers do not. Though it is not obvious that, in fact, philosophers crave originality. They certainly say that they want substantially original philosophical ideas, but it’s unclear whether this is incentivized by publication, hiring, and promotion.
A less obvious explanation, but perhaps a true one, is that philosophers generally do not like reading philosophy. We fiction lovers pay to read books. Philosophers have access to philosophy for free (through institutional subscriptions) and actively despise the amount of work being published.
Fundamentally, academic philosophers enjoy treat as an oral tradition. Papers are treated as opportunities to talk about ideas in-person. From this perspective, you want to minimize reading as much as possible.
I actually enjoy reading philosophy, much more than talking philosophy, actually. My fiction reading habits carry over to philosophy. Relatedly, I prefer writing philosophy to giving presentations. (Though I really enjoy giving presentations!) I wonder if others have this orientation.