(12/09/2012)

EBOOK/PREPRINT SPECIAL COMMENTS. This is a working copy (draft or preprint): It may differ from final published version and should not be quoted nor referenced. Copyrights belong to the author and may have been transferred to the final publication venue. Please consult http://www.fredericbouchard.org for links to the final published version.

Ceci est une version de travail (brouillon ou version prépublication): elle peut différer de la version publiée finale et ne devrait donc pas servir pour les besoins de citations. Les droits d'auteur appartiennent à l'auteur et ont pu être transférés à l'éditeur. Veuillez consulter http://www.fredericbouchard.org pour obtenir le lien à la version définitive publiée.

Frédéric Bouchard

Département de philosophie

Université de Montréal

f.bouchard@umontreal.ca

Book Review of MINERVA'S AVIARY: PHILOSOPHY AT TORONTO, 1843-2003

Final version is published in Scientia Canadensis vol. 30, n° 2, 2007, p. 123-125.

HTTP://WWW.CSTHA-AHSTC.CA/SCIENTIA_CANADENSIS/VOLUMES/30/INDEX2.HTM

FRÉDÉRIC BOUCHARD

DÉPARTEMENT DE PHILOSOPHIE, UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL, P.O. BOX 6128, STATION CENTRE-VILLE, MONTRÉAL, QUÉBEC, CANADA H3C 3J7; EMAIL: F.BOUCHARD@UMONTREAL.CA; WWW.FREDERICBOUCHARD.ORG

Book Review MINERVA'S AVIARY: PHILOSOPHY AT TORONTO, 1843-2003. BY JOHN G. SLATER. (TORONTO: University of Toronto Press, 2005. xv + 623 p., ill. Fig., bibl., ann. ISBN 0-8020-3870-0 75 $)

The philosophy department at the University of Toronto currently has close to 70 professors; to put things in perspective, the other big philosophy departments in Canada have anywhere between 15 and 30 professors. This fact alone could be the premise of a research project. With Minerva's Aviary, J.G. Slater provides a prehistory and history of the philosophy dept. at UofT, how it emerged from its religious foundations to become one of the influential philosophy departments in the English speaking world.

As explained in the preface of the book, the project emerged from an institutional request to retrace some of the history of various units at UofT. This means that it was originally intended for an internal audience which explains in part some omissions and some of the emphases. Slater is not a historian; he is an emeritus faculty member of the philosophy department and has been chair of the department for a few non-consecutive terms, which gives him a privileged vantage point on the department’s history.

The first part of the book is rife with minutiae concerning the education politics of Ontario in the 19th Century, the Solomonic (or not) decisions of chairs, deans and university presidents, etc. But after 200 pages or so, this (non-historian) reader found another quality to this book: this is a big sprawling ‘family’ history, and one cannot help getting interested in the family patterns that persist and those that are abandoned. The book focuses mainly on the individuals that have been at the helm of the department through the years but other significant members of the department are examined as well. Slater offers an even-handed depiction of this family’s trajectory in the university world while also providing his personal assessment of some of the characters involved (e.g. T.A. Goudge ‘good’, F.H. Anderson ‘not so much’).

Because he is writing about his own ‘family’ it’s not surprising that the treatment offered of the ‘deep’ past is very different from that of the ‘recent’ history he has taken part in. A quirky example of this is the peculiar interest Slater has about salaries. He makes a special effort to indicate detailed compensation for all members of the department … that is, all the faculty until Slater himself is hired at UofT. We have accountant grade information of compensation from 1843 until 1964 and then absolutely nothing. This symptomatic shift in the book (around p. 375) reflects itself in other ways. The epic political/departmental battles of the late 19th  and early 20th century are completely absent from the 60s on. Since he was an interested party from then on, this is completely understandable especially if the natural audience of the book is within the institution itself. But given that Slater shows no such restraint in the first half of the book, the change is abrupt. In fact the second half of the book may not be not as useful for it relates easily accessible information (who was hired, when and from where) and does not offer much judgement on the transformations the department must have gone through in the last third of the 20th century. Slater does offer some brief editorial remarks concerning recent or future developments (e.g. the hypothetical rise of an autonomous bioethics department), but they are scarce and more conservative than the ones offered in earlier parts of the book. The deep past gets an epic treatment that reads like a mix of University Affairs, Jane Austen and David Lodge, while the recent past gets mostly the University Affairs treatment. It remains interesting but it is less involving for the reader, and Slater insider’s status is under utilized.

Given the thoroughness of the research involved, three lacunae are somewhat surprising. 1-Where is the IHPST? Slater mentions the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology maybe 4 times in the book (and only to mention joint appointments). It can’t be that he is limiting himself solely to the philosophy department itself, since he offers a succinct but fascinating account of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Sadly the reader will learn nothing about IHPST in this book. 2- Where is the research? As the author notes, the focus on research in academic philosophy is relatively recent. Even so, there is virtually no mention of SSHRC in the book. The reader will not know if or how research funding has changed the department in its composition or in its aims. Given the current importance of research (and funding) in academic philosophy, more needs to be said about this point 3- Where are the rankings? One of the many interesting factoids provided by Slater is that a UofT philosopher, C. Webb, was in charge, by himself, of the first Maclean’s University ranking. What is omitted however is any mention of the ranking headed by Brian Leiter (philosophy and law at UTexas Austin). This biennial ranking (the Philosophical Gourmet Report) ranks most of the English-speaking philosophy departments in the world according to a reputational survey based on assessment of research output. UofT is consistently ranked 1st in Canada and equivalent to the top 10 in the US. Slater does not mention this ranking even though it probably has had an impact on its successes in recent hirings, the quality of its graduate student pool or on the placement of its students. The latter two lacunae reflect relatively recent changes to the field, but changes that many departments have had to contend with in the last decades. Other significant details are strangely missing (e.g. we do not have any student cohort figures after the 70s), but these omissions can be forgiven since the book is already a richly woven tapestry of the institution. As pointed out earlier, the initial aim of the project, namely to provide philosophy’s part to the institutional memory at UofT, may explain the omissions.

Slater is in a difficult position: how do you offer something special and unique about a family history without falling into gossip, personal information and personal politics? Slater chose a careful path, airing out the dirty laundry of the past (1843-1964) and giving some partial but detailed factual information about the present. This is an impressive example of institutional memory and any department would be lucky to have such a thoughtful and diligent history keeper as Slater. But concerning recent events, it will be up to future historians to offer all the gory details.