During last week’s Republican presidential debate, Sen. Marco Rubio quipped that “welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less [sic] philosophers.” This wasn’t a new idea for Mr. Rubio, he’s been picking on us throughout the campaign.
After the debate, many were quick to point out that Mr. Rubio was wrong. While philosophy majors and welders begin at about the same salary, philosophy majors make more money over their careers than do welders. At “mid-career,” philosophy majors make more than $80,000 while welders make slightly more than $40,000 (according to payscale.com). Ironically, Mr. Rubio was also sharing the stage with a former philosophy major whose net worth is estimated at $59 million, Carly Fiorina.
Welders and philosophy majors alike will remind Mr. Rubio that the worth of a person isn’t measured in their wage, otherwise Donald Trump would be the most valuable Republican candidate. Philosophers — and welders — are also smart enough not to take Mr. Rubio’s bait and make this an argument about whether a welder or a philosopher is more important. I live in Pittsburgh, a city that would literally fall apart without welders. Nor is Pittsburgh unique in this respect. Our society exists because of millions of hardworking men and women who build and sustain it. Contemporary philosophers know this.
But maybe Mr. Rubio, and those he’s appealing to, don’t know the way that philosophers have shaped and continued to shape the country we love in equally important ways.
Historians argue that Jefferson’s famous phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” was inspired by the English philosopher John Locke.
Locke argued that all people began life with certain natural rights, that could only be abandoned if they formed a government of their own making — a democracy. Jefferson, like many Americans at the time, didn’t feel they had any say in the way the British crown was running things. Thomas Paine, another English philosopher, had a more direct role in the revolution. He wrote pamphlets that inspired Americans to take up arms against the British.
These same philosophers and many others helped to influence defining moments in American history. Ideas from Locke and Paine can be found throughout the Constitution. Philosophers like Frederick Douglass shaped our national debate about slavery and the Civil War. Mary Wollstonecraft influenced the suffrage movement as well as contemporary debates about gender equality.
Philosophers had their hands in the worker’s rights movement of the early 20th century, the civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s, and debates about when (and how) to wage war. Nor is the philosopher an anachronism. The same day Mr. Rubio was lambasting us, one of my colleagues was talking to the Food and Drug Administration about how to ethically conduct research during outbreaks like Ebola.
Our deep national disagreements of today are thoroughly philosophical. Abortion is about who is a human and what rights do women have to their own bodies. The definition of marriage forces us to decide what types of relationships the government should endorse and the role of religion in civil society. Taxation and income redistribution can only proceed once we know what people deserve.
Politics isn’t the only place touched by philosophy. Adam Smith — a perennial hero of the Republican Party — was a “natural philosopher” who wrote on many subjects beyond economics. Albert Einstein credited the philosopher David Hume for inspiring him to make his greatest scientific advances. Today, philosophers are working with biologists, physicists, epidemiologists and mathematicians to solve many of the most difficult scientific problems of our day.
Many of us must answer philosophical questions for ourselves. What parent hasn’t had to explain the idea of “fairness” to a teary- eyed child who didn’t get what she wanted? A wife must decide whether she should lie to her husband to spare his feelings. People of faith must try to reconcile the teachings of their religion with the discoveries of science. Many years ago my grandfather faced the weighty decision of whether an intrusive medical intervention might lead to a life that’s not worth living.
There is a bit of truth in what Mr. Rubio said. We need people to build and maintain all the technological marvels in our society. What Mr. Rubio forgot is that we need thinkers to help us do it right.
Kevin Zollman is an associate professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University and the co-author of “The Game Theorist’s Guide to Parenting” (kzollman@andrew.cmu.edu / @KevinZollman).
First Published: November 16, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
