The Philosophers' Cocoon

5 responses to “What is it like to be an independent scholar?”

1. Independent

   September 14, 2026

   I am an adjunct professor teaching one philosophy course per quarter four times a year. Although I do have this connection to academia, it’s little enough that I think of myself as an independent scholar. I don’t belong to a philosophy department, so I’m not in regular contact with other philosophers beyond an occasional social media interaction. The isolation is difficult, and I struggle to get valuable feedback on my work. I have to pay bills somehow, which leaves me with less time than I would like for academic pursuits. To the outside observer, it probably looks like I don’t do much, even though I feel like I put a great deal of time and effort into producing philosophical work. The pace can be glacial.

   So yes, it is very difficult. And, whether it’s real or not, I do feel a bit of a stigma when interacting with more successful philosophers, especially my old classmates. You just have to meet that with confidence and try not to dwell on it. But I am starting to see results in terms of conference presentations and publishable (I hope) work beyond what I already adapted from my dissertation. It makes me happy, and there are very few things to be happy about these days. If the only way you can be happy is to be a philosopher, then it possible to eke out a philosophical existence.

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2. Anonymous

   September 14, 2026

   My impression as a dependent scholar is that there are two types of independent scholars: Those with inherited wealth, and those without. I recommend being the former over the latter, if you have the choice.

   I also have the impression that most of the time when you see “independent scholar” instead of an institutional affiliation, that is reflective of a temporary state (like being between adjuncting jobs, or having finished grad school but not yet landed a job).

   Re: a previous reply made by someone in a similar position as OP, I think the status thing is unfortunate and real. (No doubt being a rich independent scholar would make some of that go away.) But that status hierarchy also exists for people with permanent philosophy jobs, too, who are made to feel bad (or make themselves feel bad–or allow themselves to feel bad, if Elanor Roosevelt’s framing is right) in comparison to people who have other permanent philosophy jobs. I’m not sure many people, looking at others, are capable in practice of drawing a distinction between seeing someone as “unable to compete” vs. “not willing to play this stupid game.” If you can develop a thick enough skin, and enjoy the other aspects of conferencing and publishing, then go for it. Or you could just do philosophy, and not bother with the professional communication?

   Another option is to get involved in public philosophy, i.e., philosophy for and with non-experts. There is a fair bit of that happening on YouTube and Substack, for example. It would be hard to make a long-term living that way, probably, but it is an option where you could get to keep doing serious philosophy without having a professorship.

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3. Anonymous

   September 14, 2026

   As a regular blog reader and published-in-a-top-10-Leiter-ranked-journal independent scholar (I say that not to brag, but just to establish that I’m not a crank…something you will feel the need to do as an IS), I was excited to see this question posted in the ‘How can we help you?’, and glad it got a post of its own! Finally, something I feel comfortable offering my thoughts on. Here goes.

   To begin, I’d like to offer some general comments on the prevalence of independent (as opposed to what I’ll refer to as ‘professional’) scholarship in philosophy. I think that if you asked a professional philosopher how much independent scholarship was cracking the Leiter ranked and non-ranked but still reputable (say the 71 considered ‘most popular’ by PhilPapers) journals, they would say ‘not much’. This is, however, not true. In Synthese there are at least 3 articles in the last year by true independent scholars. I have also seen papers in Asian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophia, and Grazer Philosophischen Studien recently by true independent scholars. And that’s just off the top of my head right now — I know I’m forgetting some other articles or that some escaped my notice.

   Now, why ‘TRUE independent scholars’? I add this qualification because some of the ‘independent scholar’ bylines out there, and certainly the ones at the highest level, a paper in PPR would be a recent example, need to be qualified, because the individuals in question appear to be ex-professionals with PhDs who previously held positions, but have left academia for whatever reason. That’s fine, but that’s not what I at least want to discuss by ‘independent scholarship’. These people evidently have connections to academia, and a level of legitimacy not afforded to the true outsider and non-professional, with a bachelor’s degree at max.

   Anyway, that’s just the present lay of the land. If you look back in time, I can think of at least one example of someone (now deceased) who 10-15 years ago had a good deal of success as a true independent scholar, and got as far as Philosophical Quarterly. None of these papers are, to my knowledge, particularly influential (some of them are outside my area of expertise, so I wouldn’t know if they were), but the same could be said of many professionals’ efforts. All of this to say that independent scholarship without graduate education in philosophy IS possible.

   So, what is it LIKE to be an independent scholar? Here’s been my experience. Other than, of course, reading philosophy and working on the ‘input’ side — hopefully you’ve been doing that for a while now — what you will be doing is writing and submitting papers. So, sitting at a computer. If you are able to support yourself without a 9-to-5, you actually have an advantage over the professionals in how much time you can devote to writing. At the high water mark this year I had 8 manuscripts under peer review.

   Now, what happens to the vast majority of those manuscripts? REJECTION, of course! In the 2.5 years I have been at this in earnest, I have racked up 28 final decisions: 25 straight rejects (ok, one was technically a ‘withdrawal’, but it was basically a desk reject because the editor asked me to write a different paper), 2 rejected R&Rs (these will torment you), and 1 acceptance after extremely minor revisions (it came on the tenth try). I freely acknowledge this is a horrible rate of success, worse I think than almost any professional, and I suspect that if I had had to wait longer for the accept on the lucky manuscript, doubt would have crept into my mind whether this was worth doing and I may have thrown in the towel.

   At this point you may be expecting me to blame my miniscule hit rate on my lack of institutional affiliation. But I do not. (There was one instance where the referee seemed clearly to be recommending revision but the editors rejected…but this happens to the professionals as well.) I have been fortunate in that most of my papers go to referees, and I feel like I am treated fairly and more less on a par with the professionals by editors during the ‘first decision’ process. I chalk the miniscule hit rate up to something that I believe is concomitant with being an independent scholar: that I try to approach the issues from new angles, and am not afraid to be critical of esteemed figures or doctrines that are treated as obvious or as sacred cows amongst the professionals. I also address what is interesting to me, not what is ‘hot’ or ‘in fashion’. Often this means that I’m in dialogue with twenty or even forty year old work. But, as has been dealt with ad nauseum on this blog, bold and ‘interesting’ (god, how you will hear that word in the referee reports!) papers or papers that revisit old debates face an uphill battle with referees, challenges I have experienced firsthand. Professionals are steered away from writing such papers, and in many cases produce deliberately palatable and fashionable material for career purposes. I can’t imagine why an independent scholar would, however, want to write papers of that sort.

   This brings us to the issue of referee reports, which will be your main — in all likelihood, only — line into the philosophical community as an independent scholar. I have received some openly negative reports, which in some cases did identify genuine faults or mistakes in the paper. And I have on occasion received reports that raised genuine OBJECTIONS to my proposal. But as my paper-writing has improved, I have more and more been receiving a report that goes like “this is a very interesting (that f*cking word!) paper, it is well-written, and it makes many plausible points BUT I remained unconvinced that the paper establishes some of its claims”. This is followed by a series of uncreative and wimpy defensive arguments (‘this is not clear’, ‘I don’t think these arguments succeed’, etc.) that I do not believe any editor could believe would merit publication as a response paper, were my paper published. Initially, I would revise the paper and try to address as best I could these sorts of ‘holdout’ criticisms. I am now beginning to suspect that a report of this kind is probably best just taken as a sign that you are getting closer, and that the paper is free of real flaws. Some people just can’t be convinced — I now understand this sort of referee report to amount to “nice paper dude, but I just don’t like it.’ What can you do about that?

   There is one place I have felt disadvantaged by my status as an independent scholar. This was on the 2 blown R&Rs. I won’t go into detail, but in each case I felt like I was subject to a more thorough level of scrutiny or that I had very much less goodwill in reserve than the institutionally affiliated. The second rejected R&R in particular I took great care to bend over backwards addressing the reviewer comments and was still ambushed, here with a completely new reviewer. I have seen some comments by professionals to the effect of “I have never lost an R&R and you shouldn’t either’, but my experience has been that this stage is fraught with danger, even if you do everything that is asked of you. I have one R&R outstanding at the moment, and all I can think to do is adopt a completely fawning attitude in the response document because I am so gunshy and traumatized about the process. As an independent scholar, I suspect there is little room for anything other than ‘yes, sir!’ and ‘the reviewer makes a number of excellent points’. The art evidently lies in getting through this show of obeisance without making the paper worse.

   Ultimately, after I publish a bit more, I would like to try to attend conferences. My reason would principally be that it would be fun! I deeply miss talking philosophy, something I have not been able to do since my days as a college undergraduate. Being an independent scholar is a very solitary activity, and the few email or in-person conversations I have had with people writing me about the published paper or an old friend who went on to get a philosophy PhD but exited the profession shortly thereafter have generally dried up or the people in question have largely lost interest in philosophy. I do not cold-write currently practicing professional philosophers as I feel like I am not at that level, and don’t want to rub anybody the wrong way while I’m still kind of in the ‘maybe its just a fluke’ stage of publication. I may revisit this down the road if I get a little firmer base to stand on.

   This is obviously a ton of text, but I hope it might be of use to somebody wondering about independent scholarship in philosophy. Obviously, it’s not for everybody — indeed, is only for the most valiant of heart — but there are people out there doing it and the rewards are all the sweeter, knowing that you succeeded against all odds, and on your own two feet. I’m not sure if my paper(s) will influence the literature — it’s too soon to say — but I suspect that it (hopefully soon ‘they’) might, and this is one of the things that keeps me going in spite of the neverending drumbeat of ‘I must regretfully inform you that the editors cannot publish your manuscript in…’.

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4. Anonymous

   September 14, 2026

   Maybe it is not my place to answer this question given my permanent position, but I still think I can provide some perspective.

   About connection: conferences are generally *very* status-focused. I hate this with a passion. Independent scholars (without being old white men) can be at the bottom of the ladder by default, and people will be less willing to talk to you. You are assumed to be a less valuable member of the community. You are not alone though, since people at “bad” places are in more or less similar situation. There is a real risk that you will feel isolated and dismissed. However, there are ways to get out of this. Suppose you consistently raise good questions in a conference, for example, then people would override their default judgment. (An independent scholar, if considered an active philosopher, may suffer less bias than a person adjuncting at a “bad” place. We associate wealth to the former.) Outside of conferences, it is also possible to form relationships with people with similar interests and not so status focused. If you can find 1-2 people, that is actually quite good. Many people don’t even have that.

   About research quality: being an independent scholar may lead to less good research because of lack of institutional incentives and funding. You are not expected to publish, and you are not teaching, and you may need to do other things to survive. All of this can lead to less quantity and less quality work. Again, there are ways out of this. If you have enough drive, and enough connection to get conversations and feedback, and enough time undistracted by survival needs, then you can have more time to do good research. Some people choose to retire early precisely for this. Publications can be tricky at first, which is partly due to editors’ prestige bias, and partly due to the objective quality of your work suffering from lack of feedback etc. Again, this is not insurmountable obstacle.

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5. Anonymous

   September 15, 2026

   From the outside in, I think one way to “make it” as an independent scholar is to publish. It gets you a kind of “this person isn’t a total kook”. When people talk to others there is a kind of “does this person know what they’re talking about and the norms” etc.

   Most of the independent scholars in my field are those who published while being affiliated with an institution and then kind of left because of eg wealth or they found a high paying job but still work on stuff. I don’t know anyone who has gone the opposite route – well, unless you’re Marc Sanders lol

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