In our July "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:
I wonder if others have run into the following challenge: in graduate school. I focused on "smaller", bite-sized ideas that I thought would be most easily published. I also think that philosophy moves pretty slowly, that "small" steps are really important, and that "big" steps often make a lot of "small" (and not-so-small) mistakes.
On the job market, it seems to me that committees are almost exclusively looking for "big" ideas, at least where I'm applying (R1, research-focused). I worry that I've written myself into the typecast of making "small" contributions that don't add up to anything "big". Since I'm junior, that doesn't seem fair since my small contributions haven't had time to add up to anything big. But that aside, I'm just wondering how to move toward "big" ideas, if for no other reason than that is what many schools seem to seek.
I also understand why colleagues want to hire someone working on "big," sexy ideas. I'm not sure that's where good philosophy is done, but it's certainly fun and interesting to engage with.
This is an interesting query to me, in large part because I went through something similar early in my career. I too was socialized in grad school to work on 'smaller' papers. However, I didn't have much success publishing papers like that and while I think papers that take small steps can be good and important, I found it difficult to motivate myself to work on these kinds of papers. It just wasn't why I fell in love with philosophy. I always loved exploring big ideas, so at some point I just tried to trust myself and start writing on larger topics and found more success and enjoyment doing so. I'm not sure that I have any great tips on how to pursue 'bigger' ideas, and I suspect that different things probably work for different people. But here's a little bit on some methods that I use in doing the kind of work that I generally do.
Finally, for what it's worth, I suspect the most important thing is to probably do the best work you can and work that you enjoy. In my experience, there are lots of philosophers who prize good work that takes 'small steps', and indeed, I suspect there's probably a reason why this is the kind of work we are so often encouraged to pursue in grad school. So, if you enjoy working on smaller topics and are being successful with it, there are probably people out there who will value it too!
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?
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