The point of philosophy blogging
I had created a ginormous draft post about the nuances of philosophy blogging: different kinds, benefits to readers and the blogger, etc. Then Wordpress ate it. This leads me to my first point, right out of the gate: blogging as a primary form of scholarship is dangerous unless you’re backing up your work (and taking pains not be be plagiarized).
The original reason I started the post was reading another philosophy blogger’s blog and it made me reflect upon why I do what I do. Probably the best way to characterize what I do is “reading journal blogging”, which means I’m not spending a lot of space on my own ideas (though I do have them and post some occasionally). Rather, I’m concerned to make sure I understand the primary sources and can explain them to someone else. My audience isn’t necessarily the specialist; although I anticipate there will be those of my peers who do read.
What I saw at the other blog was a false dichotomy between who the blog is “for.” At least in my experience, making this blog “for others” (trying to explain ideas, find fresh analogies) has resulted in a benefit to me. I wind up meeting others through the blog, which can yield deeper conversations offline. I also have returned back to this space as a kind of reference desk to generate bibliographies and summaries.
So that said, I will continue to blog for the “in-between” audience of general readers with interest in philosophy. But I will also need to delve deeper into some abstract topics, which could lose some of these readers. (I’ll try to spice up the blog with UU topics, occasional critiques of news coverage, etc.) I’m working up some bibliographies in the topics I tend to cover, which I’ll put online when they’re closer to complete.
I’ll close this short(ened) post by soliciting some reflections from you. Those of you who read philosophy blogs, what broad categories would you put them in? Who do you think are the major beneficiaries (in terms of education, networking, etc.) of these blogs? Do you see any success stories in terms of the commenting communities created by the moderators?
I see several categories myself: the group blog, the thought experiment blog, the links/news blog, the reader journal blog. Of course, these are not self-contained. Which do you read, and why?