The Philosophy of Retirement

Ken Taylor
Is retirement the best thing that could ever happen to a person?

Debra Satz
Or is it just a capitalist ploy to rotate more expensive experienced workers out of the labor force?

Josh Landy
Is there a philosophical way to spend your retirement years?

Ken Taylor
This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Debra Satz
…except your intelligence. I’m Debra Satz.

Josh Landy
I’m Josh Landy.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you from the Campbell Recital Hall on the Stanford campus.

Debra Satz
Our thinking originates a stone’s throw away at philosophers corner. That’s where Ken and I teach philosophy.

Josh Landy
And I co direct the philosophy and literature initiative.

Ken Taylor
Welcome, everyone to Philosophy Talk.

Now today, we’re philosophizing about retirement. And we wanted to get started by hearing how today’s retirees are faring. And so we sent the perfect person our roving philosophical reporter Liza Veale out to meet some of them in the wild. She files this report.

Gene
I met Darrell and his friend Gene at a donut shop. Darrell is actually not quite retired, but the question of whether he’s saving enough to be able to retire is heavy on his mind.

Darrell
That’s a billion dollar question. videos, you know, I don’t know.

Gene
He’s 62 He works at Enterprise rent a car during the day and ups at night.

Darrell
That’s the first thing you should worry about as soon as you graduate from high school is retiring, especially if you’re not born with a silver spoon in your mouth. You know, I was not I had to carpet school.

Gene
Gene, on the other hand has been retired for 12 years. He was a municipal electrician. And he thinks his union for what he sees as a dignified life.

I was basically just very lucky. Why? Well, when I got out of the army, I just kind of fell into the shop at the City of Berkeley. You know, in the first union vote, I voted for the money rather than the benefits, you know, and the old timers looked at me like you fool, you know, cuz you can’t convince a 23 year old he’s ever going to retire. You know?

Darrell and Gene gave me a whole lecture about how people younger than they are don’t know the importance of a job that you can retire.

There are what I call wage slaves.

Darrell
Nowadays, everybody want to be associated with a brand name? Well, these companies have not contributed to they behave, they’re burning you out, you know, you got to fend for yourself. What do they call it? A Europe will say, Well, you as a serf, you know, Mr.

Gene
Darrell is saving enough that he thinks he’ll be okay, as long as he isn’t hit with something catastrophic. But after talking to people, it seems like not planning for catastrophes is a common downfall.

Virgil
I probably could have saved more every good.

Gene
Like Virgil Todd, who I met at a senior center.

Virgil
I wasn’t shooting for, you know, sufficient is good enough.

Gene
He worked in parking enforcement at UC Berkeley. Virgil was a softie on the parking job. He says he gave more warnings than anyone else gave tickets. But he fondly remembers busting the dean of the ethics department for fraudulent parking permit. When Virgil retired, he took out all his savings at once and invested it all

Virgil
I had, you know, pretty good money coming in from the investments until my daughter needed an operation. And that was the only one money. So my turn. Now I’m considered four. Fours. Okay. That company.

Gene
Now he’s at 70, he comes to the senior center to make these beautiful ceramic beads and get an affordable lunch

Virgil
is sort of race. You know, a lot of older people had this race, trying to figure out how to keep the money, enough money to go on before they die, you know, and they’re actually kind of figured that. Maybe dying, Lou early is better than than dying without no money.

Gene
Yeah. When Virgil says he’s not alone and being poor. It’s true. Like a lot of people around his age, he’s living off social security, which for him is $1,200 a month. But the thing about Social Security is when it was first designed,

Blanca Castro
it was not intended to be the only salary that somebody would have in their older age.

Gene
Blanca Castro is an advocate with the American Association of Retired Persons, AARP, and she says Social Security was supposed to be the safety net of last resort, not the whole country sole retirement plan. Its funding has been cut over the decades. Meanwhile, more and more people have come to depend on it. a trend that’s going to grow because right now

Speaker 1
we know that majority are not saving for retirement, they are not saving for a number of reasons.

Gene
Number one reason is our jobs are no longer helping us, they’re less likely to offer pensions or an employer matched savings option. Number two is other costs like housing or just higher retirement is being treated more and more like the responsibility of the individual. Other countries have taken the opposite tack in Australia, Japan, the UK, for example, the state, the employer and the employee are all required to contribute to retirement funds. Here, we’re on our own,

Speaker 1
we’re already seeing increased number of people who are unable to retire. They either own their house, and they’re scraping by, or they absolutely are going into poverty. And there definitely is an increase in older adults faced with homelessness, or their their living with family.

Gene
It’s just the beginning of a tide of aging seniors that will depend on the rest of us for basic needs. Blanca Castro has dedicated her life to changing our country’s approach to retirement. But for at least a few generations, it’s already too late. For Philosophy Talk,

Ken Taylor
I’m Liza Vita. Thanks for that report. leisure. That was a powerful report. And you’re an amazing storyteller. And I love having you on Philosophy Talk. I’m Ken Taylor here with my colleagues, Deborah SAS and Josh Landy at Campbell Recital Hall on the Stanford campus. And we’re thinking about the philosophy of retirement.

Debra Satz
We’re also making an important transition for the program because our guest today is the CO creator and host emeritus of Philosophy Talk, John Perry. John recently retired after co hosting the program with Ken for 13 years. And that was after retiring from teaching at Stanford and UCLA for 40 years. Yeah, so

Josh Landy
Stanford, he retired from Philosophy Talk, also retired from UC Riverside. This guy is multiple, he retired. But he’s not just sitting around all day, playing golf and doing some pruning. He’s been writing papers, giving talks, all kinds of important stuff like that.

Debra Satz
So John has spent his retirement from being a philosophy professor by hosting a philosophy radio show, teaching philosophy at a university and writing philosophy papers. What’s wrong with this picture?

Josh Landy
Yeah, but, you know, by the same token, who better to ask about what retirement means for a well lived life? Please welcome back to the Philosophy Talk stage, John Perry.

Ken Taylor
Welcome back, John.

Debra Satz
So John, it seems like retirement agrees with you because you keep doing it over and over again. So do you think of it though, as a advance or as a retreat in your life?

John Perry
Oh, well, advance are series of advances. I first retired from Stanford in 2008. And I thought I was the perfect paradigm case of retirement, doing just what it should do. I had Tia crap from Stanford. I was 66. So I was eligible for Social Security. And I got the full load of Social Security.

Ken Taylor
And you also got our early our family retirement. And

John Perry
as I already I also got a bonus for retiring early. Yes. So I, I thought I was set and I wanted to make room for the younger, brighter people that were coming along. And I felt out of touch. I mean, I would give a lecture to freshmen and I would use Meg Ryan in an example. And they would say, Make who make and so I thought it was perfect, but then something happened. I retired in 2008. And my retirement precipitated a worldwide recession. So, so I decided to bring you back. So I decided I would not hit the IRAs right away. And so I got kind of a halftime job just had to fly down once a week to Riverside for two quarters give a seminar that helped pay my 10 grandchildren’s college tuition, which I hadn’t really realized how absurd college tuition become. So I had to I had to retire again.

Ken Taylor
But John, so John, I remember that I was chair when you retire. Yeah. And I didn’t want you to be tired. No, I thought you weren’t done you. There was no way you were done doing philosophy. There was there was no way you were done teaching you went on to teach for someone. I mean, I Why did you retire then? I mean, you weren’t it wasn’t like you were at the mall. Love your philosophical powers, I can name all the stuff you’ve written then. So why do we tire at that point?

John Perry
Well, one reason has to do with how I got hired in the first place. And this will be a very depressing story. If there’s any graduate graduate students in the audience. It was it was a couple days before Thanksgiving in 1967. Friends she and I were living with our two kids had Hasbrook apartments at Cornell. And we got these tubes. And in the tubes were rolled up pictures of scenes from Los Angeles, the beach, Hollywood, we had no idea why they were there. Then a couple of days after Thanksgiving, I had not applied for any jobs. I had not prepared a CV. I got a call from Don Kaylee’s chairman of department at UCLA who said, I’m offering you a position as an assistant tenure track professor at UCLA. Now, why? Because I was so brilliant. No, because I was a war baby. There weren’t many war babies, the baby boomers were coming in as freshmen as they were desperate. And then I spent 40 years watching more talented, more gifted graduate students struggle to get any kind of employment. So I really felt it was time to move on.

Josh Landy
So it sounds like you’re saying it was good altruistically to retire. But do you feel that it’s been good for you?

John Perry
I wouldn’t have retired solely on altruistic reasons. But the other thing was that I really do enjoy doing philosophy publishing philosophy and, and teaching interferes with that. I think I’m I think teaching is great. I think it’s the best thing we do for the world. But but you know, I wasn’t getting my books done the way I wanted.

Debra Satz
But you didn’t really have an option to go from full time to zero time, would you if there had been a way to more seamlessly go to quarter time physician? Would you would have that been a good option? Well, why don’t we think about options like that? Well, I

John Perry
think that probably was an option. I wasn’t forced to retire. But Stanford offered and this was a result of a committee I was on long time ago. But it wasn’t, I think two times your annual salary if you would retire when you became eligible for six for Social Security at 66. And if you don’t think about the tax bite, because they pay it all at once, that seems like a pretty good deal. But then once you do that, you can’t come back and teach at Stanford except for peanuts.

Ken Taylor
So but I want to ask a question about the arc of your life. I mean, every life has an arc. I know you don’t like the narrative. It has a starting point. But we haven’t quite reached Yeah, every light has an arc. I mean, do you think Well, you had a point in your life where it just made sense to retire because of the arc of a well lived life. There’s a place in the world we live live where retirement naturally gone.

John Perry
So this is the kind of Ken Taylor Josh Landy Frederick Nietzsche approach to things. Where did retirement fit in the arc of your life? Where did retirement fit in the novel that each of us writes with our life? And I suppose the honest answer is that it didn’t occur to me to think about which is going to be think about it. I got three books, that I owe publishers, and it’s no way I can get them done unless I retire. And it turned out there was no way I could get them done even if I did retire. But I didn’t realize

Debra Satz
now you were reasonably fortunate, though, because you were in a great position, you had a good retirement package. And then when that changed that changed things for you.

John Perry
Well, I’m still in a good position. I mean, you know, fly down once a week to give a seminar to break registered and know exactly poverty and and so it was able to put on my grandchildren through college and I still have a lot of money. So no, I, I have what I think retirement should be and what I suppose Franklin Roosevelt thought it should be when he came up with Social Security. And what we used to think it would be for any working person because they would work for a firm that had a program like Stanford does, that would supplement Social Security, but it’s not what it’s like now.

Ken Taylor
This is Philosophy Talk coming to you from Campbell Recital Hall on the Stanford campus, I guess, is my longtime co host and friend and inspiration, now host emeritus John Perry.

Debra Satz
In our next segment, we’ll think about how retirement fits into the larger social picture. Does our society have it right about how retirement should work or just tyerman just show how faulty the whole way we’ve set up our employment and leisure system are

Josh Landy
and we’re also going to consider the shape of the retirees life whether John wants to or not. What steps can we take to make our retirement meaningful,

Ken Taylor
making retirement meaningful for the individual and for society along with questions from our retiring or non retired or awake audience when Philosophy Talk continues?

But you Tom but you thanks to our musical guest ever gorgeous and Marco Casasola, this is Philosophy Talk. I’m Ken Taylor, with my new Stanford colleagues and new collaborators, Josh Landy and Deborah sets.

Debra Satz
Our guest is John Perry, who recently retired from CO hosting Philosophy Talk. He also previously retired from teaching at Stanford and from UC Riverside, and probably some other school that doesn’t fit on his CV.

Josh Landy
What comes to mind when you think about retirement, finally not having to work or starting a whole new career, traveling the world or sitting quietly at home doing a bit of pruning every now and again? What changes does retirement bring to the story of your life during the discussion by stepping up to one of the microphones on either side of the stage?

Debra Satz
So John, I just read in the New York Times a review of a new book co authored by Martha Nussbaum, where she says that retirement is one of the greatest moral outrages of the 20th century. That’s probably an exaggeration. But she compares people retiring on an age based rationale the way you were describing to make room for others, as if women would retire early to make room for men so that they could have jobs. So what do you think about that argument?

John Perry
It occurred to me What if you’d asked Martha would it be good idea to make men retire so that there would be more jobs for women that she might have gotten the result? But I think she has a point she says, you know, being old is like being a woman or being a man or being black or being Jewish? It’s, you know, it’s it’s a category you belong to, and you should not be treated differently on account of it. On the other hand, your old

Ken Taylor
black Jewish No.

John Perry
Right. I think Sammy Davis has retired. But, on the other hand, if you’re retiring, it’s because you had a job. So forced retirement, I do think not having forced retirement is a good idea. Not solely for Martha’s reasons, but also because it encourages people to make retirement attractive. Right, but

Ken Taylor
Right. But look, retirement is a late occurring, social formation of the Industrial Revolution, where lots of people were doing back breaking, repetitive, boring work. My father was a UAW person, and they had 30 out and you could retire. He retired at 55 with a really good pension. He’s now at 80. He’s been retired for all those years. But after he retired, he got a less back breaking job. So yeah, sure. Retirement in the industrial revolution from back breaking labor, that was repetitive and boring. And, and not not not work. Not philosophy. Of course, that’s a good thing. Martha thinking of herself. She’s thinking of professors. Oh, right. I mean, what do you think?

John Perry
Well, I know a non forced retirement for professors didn’t come out long ago, pet soupy had to retire.

Ken Taylor
That’s a former colleague of ours. Yeah. Grateful.

John Perry
Yeah, I could have made any difference. He started three businesses after he retired, all of which Stanford now owns and benefits from. But But I think non force retirement and having an incentive, like I got is a great idea. But But I think we need to think more basically about it. I mean, basically, you got consumers, you got producers, you have an economy, you want to keep thriving, and there’s no law that says everybody should work her but he should work for a certain amount of time, we should think through how, how would this work to keep the economy thriving? And but nobody does that they think of in terms of justice or something or

Debra Satz
but in an ideal society, would there be such a thing as retirement? Or would people work less than they do now, but continue contributing and participating throughout their lives in an ideal

John Perry
society? You don’t,

Ken Taylor
you don’t have to even have to go to ideal societies just go to just take the long view of human history and the organization of human production. There are less developed societies that are still agriculture or nomadic are something in which the old one or the old become they don’t, they don’t retire, they become like the priestly class. That is they become wise they’re supposed to give advice they get they’re no longer in the day to day Management of the household or the farm, but they have a role, right? A role suited suited to their age. Retirement is like, Okay, you give up labor. It’s interesting because you don’t give up being a citizen, you don’t give up political rights, but you give up that status that being a producer in the economy. And it’s like, Okay, it’s time for you to do that.

Josh Landy
That does seem like something we’ve importantly lost, right? Maybe Martha is giving that impart that the notion, okay, so even leaving aside forced retirement, even if we just start with a kind of a default assumption, that you’re going to work for a while, and then you’re going to stop working, it’s easy to slide from that to you’re going to be useful to us for a while, and then you’re going to be useless. Well, that seems to

Ken Taylor
just the focus, cultural variation. There are societies where that’s what’s done. That is, once you reach a certain age, you give all the property over to your son or your daughter or whatever, and you lose all rights. Right, you

Debra Satz
lose. All right, we know King Lear and what happened there?

Ken Taylor
So there’s a highly cultural variable, but what do you think, Joe? Well, I

John Perry
think it’s another way in which being a philosophy professor is better than even being other professors, because philosophers on like mathematicians and so forth, typically peak at 74.

Ken Taylor
Yes, sir.

John Perry
And, but, you know, I mean, if I was a computer scientists, would it be a good idea that I would be an elder? What would I say, well make your effing fonts larger millennials. I can’t read anything. And why don’t we go back to Lisp or even Fortran. I mean, we live in a world in which things are changing so fast, that it’s hard to have practical wisdom about the world you come to live in.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re talking about the philosophy of retirement in front of a live audience in the Stanford campus. And we got questions from that audience. Welcome to philosophy dogs.

Speaker 2
Thank you. My name is Carl. So my question is apart from this little bubble in the stock market, is there anything in your retirement your three great retirements that you regret anything at all that you regret?

John Perry
Trump’s been elected? That was I mean, I got very depressed a year ago. I don’t quite remember why. And since then, I’ve been like that little guy in lies his thing, the one that had a cubicle in his living room. Well, I have my my daughter sitting there, I have her old bedroom, and I get up in the morning, and I sit there and I write write philosophy, right philosophy, right philosophy, smoke pipe for a month and quit for a month and go back and smoke. It without that I don’t, I would probably have to be hospitalized over, over whatever it was I was depressed about. So that’s my only regret. And as Ken nicely points out, it wasn’t totally my doing, although you couldn’t tell that from the email I get from the Democratic Party. Yeah,

Josh Landy
I mean, you admitted to having calls the 2008 stock market? Yes. You know, bets are off. So but I want to I guess I wanted to pick up on that to force you back on the train. You don’t want to get onto that narrative already. Right. Right. So So you may you know, you are a special case in many excellent ways. But consider there may be other people for whom retirements a time to take stock, right, among other things. Many people write their memoirs. And many people even if they don’t write their memoirs, they’re thinking about how their life went. And they may have regrets unlike you lucky and virtuous man. And they may think to themselves, gosh, retirements an opportunity for me to set something straight. Yeah. No,

John Perry
oh, no, I I’m trying to set something straight. For example, I think I dominated the philosophy department from 1974 till 2008. Mostly for the good but But occasionally, Max’s. Remember Ken Bless his heart when he was chairman had a great idea and I didn’t like it. I shot it down, and I got home and I thought, Jesus, why am I doing that? I mean, I mean, I thought that I was insincere. But these are young people are in touch with the profession, you know? So what are you doing? What I’m doing to make a man just staying out in apartment business was one small exception, which was something I wanted to get done before I retired whatnot, I won’t say what it is.

Ken Taylor
Yeah. So this is retirement as not ending, productive meaningful work but as transitioning a new chapter, a new tab. So

Debra Satz
and one thing you know, we should separate work and paid work, right. So a lot of people might end paid work, but it supposing they have a pension or, but still contribute and find things to do that are important. I mean, you’re still writing philosophy

Ken Taylor
so much for that.

John Perry
Deborah, do you think in an ideal society since you like to talk about it Do societies that that the pay you get would have anything to do with the job you do, or you just think people would get what they need to do a thriving life and they would do what they want to do because they enjoy it.

Debra Satz
So that’s another long topic on distributive justice. But I do think the, you know, the way we’ve set things up so that you’re working, employed, and then you’re completely unemployed sets up the worry, first of all, that you’ll not have enough resources that you’ll be vulnerable that you’ll be, you know, easily oppressed or isolated, and that the quality of your life will decline.

Ken Taylor
It sets up that worry, especially in an atomized individualistic society that cares not about the collective problems like ours has become increasingly again, my father was dying to retire. He lived through Strike after strike after strike in the UAW, I remember, a three months strike when he was just living off the strike. The wage that, you know, they pay into the strike fund in a three or four months strike when I was a young kid, they won their health benefits, they won their retirement benefits. The Union enabled him to say, I’m out of here, right? 55, right. Those things have disappeared in the society and other places around the world. They’re disappearing, but they still care more about the collective space than we do. So let’s change it up a how

John Perry
you use are gone. I mean, they’re not gone, but are not the forest. They used to be. You know, back when I was a kid, the big question was, what do you call it right to work? Right to Work was the right wings way of saying, No unions? Because you write work meant you couldn’t be forced to pay union dues? Well, that’s kind of an irrelevancy. Now, the union side of it is kind of become impotent. The right wing side of it is in control of everything. That’s my own personal view.

Ken Taylor
Oh, we’re political on the show before you. Yeah.

John Perry
But you know, philosophers have the job of rethinking the whole thing. Why is this is a link between what you do and what you’re paid? Isn’t the relation between what you paid and what you need more important. We have all these myths that philosophers has helped us get rid of it, for example, golf, lots of people think, Oh, when I retire, I’m gonna play golf. I mean, that is absurd. I played golf for about 20 years, and no one realized I had a philosophical book, and I realized, this is, this is the worst, the most depressed. I felt all week. And besides, I’m hot and sweaty. I remember going out with my father when he was returning to move, move to a golf course. And we’d be playing along and he, you know, definite thing, and he throw his club. And so but that’s a myth. Oh, once you’re retired, you can play golf. Well, okay. What in the right mind wants to play golf? And that’s a row. That’s a relatively minor. Okay. Let’s

Ken Taylor
take another question. Welcome to philosophy.

Speaker 3
Hello, I’m Judy, I’m at the Center for behavioral scientists this year, as a fellow, I must say that a lot of the women I know, retire really do so to look after their parents. And I wanted to go back to the issue of gradual retirement. I mean, I’ve read lots of studies that say that it’s much better to retire gradually to not go from full time work to retirement, but to have flexible retirements to work part time 20%. And that would allow for a lot of the caring work that goes on much of it, which is unpaid to be done. And actually, there’s more and more of that work that needs to be done, because we’re living longer and longer. So I just wanted to how you would respond to that to this choice we’ve got at the moment, which if we’re lucky to go from very good, full time work to full retirement.

John Perry
I’ll just say a word about that. I mean, that was not what I plan to do. But it’s what in effect I did. I retired from here and gave up a full time job. But then, with the recession, I took a part time job at Riverside, not too demanding. And then when I got done with that, I plan not to do anything. But then Berkeley asked me to come over and give a course or two. And I think Berkeley is such a fascinating, wonderful institution, and has a great history department, a lot of friends. So I did that for a couple of years, not because they needed the money. So I’ve had a very, you know, whatever you call it, retirement. And then the last thing is Philosophy Talk, wonderful experience. But after 13 years, it’s time to make room for the younger generation.

Ken Taylor
But but but that could be I do think that could be elevated into a paradigm. Yeah. Because at least societies that change the nature of the work that older people do gradually. That makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t know why we don’t do

Debra Satz
right. So the I mean, that was you know, the question I was asking you before about we have really two main choices, academics are a little luckier. And then we can sometimes go part time for a lot of people. It’s either you’re in or you’re out. And that is, you know, can be a shocking change and an isolating one and a disempowering one.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about retirement with our recently retired host emeritus John Perry.

Josh Landy
In our final segment, we’re going to ask our host emeritus about some practical advice for making retirement more than just a period of sitting back and being done with work, but instead making it the capstone to a well lived life. Maybe we should

Debra Satz
also ask him for some practical advice about how to deal with his former co host.

Ken Taylor
We’re coming to you from Campbell Recital Hall. We’ll take more questions from our audience when philosophy continues.

Amber Gougis
come the day, your mouth

Ken Taylor
thanks to our live musical guest, Amber Gouda, San Marco Casasola. I’m Ken Taylor. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything

Debra Satz
except your intelligence. I’m Deborah SATs and along with our colleague Josh Landy, we’re thinking about retirement with our colleague emeritus John Perry.

Josh Landy
So John, if the best is indeed yet to come for people approaching retirement, what wise advice do you have your your now you’ve been elevated to priestly status? What wise advice do you have? For Pete how people can make the most out of it?

John Perry
Well, when I was at Stanford for a long time for about 1976, on, I used to give a talk to the whole freshman class, when they came in for orientation. And what I told him was not totally unbiased, it was partly to squeeze some philosophy majors out of the group. And what I told him is, you’ve got a unique opportunity for years in college. You need, you need to have your decisions based on you your beliefs, your desires, and not the ones that were poured into you by your parents, your church, your whatever, over all these years, you got four years, you got a lot of units to play with. So find out what you really care about, which was very good advice. And it’s the only way we got any of those people that came to be pre meds to transfer a lot.

Josh Landy
I think retired responsible for the dearth of doctors.

John Perry
I think retirement is like that, because now since being a freshman and being graduating, you’ve had another 40 or 50 years of kind of basing your desires and beliefs and what you care about, largely on extraneous things. If you’re working for standard, you have to care about Stanford, if you want to make it as a professor, you got to write stuff to get tenure. And it has to be stuff that the journals like and the referees were the journals like and then all of a sudden you’re retired and you can be like a freshman because they’ve been okay. What, you know what, and I was surprised because if you know if you’d asked me 20 years for retired I was, what are you going to do? Is it well, oh, windsurf, I really enjoy that I’ll go fishing a lot. Actually, by the time I retired, I could care less about wind surfing, I don’t even know where my wind surfboard is. Well, it turns out what I really like is what I’d like to do when I was eight years old, sit in a room and read and write, before my father persuaded me that there was more to life than that. So retiring what I do.

Ken Taylor
So we I mean, that’s really profound. I’m going to make it sound that I don’t take no, no, no, I cuz you’re saying that retirement puts you in the presence of your freedom. I mean, it puts you in the presence of your freedom and you like do with it, what you

John Perry
will come to think of it. That’s what I meant.

Ken Taylor
But let’s take some more questions. Welcome to but we’ve got a young person here. Welcome to philosophy talks. What’s your name and comment?

Speaker 4
My name is Grant. I’m a graduate student in the philosophy department here. And I had a question about a common view about leisure time, which was that it’s particularly conducive for philosophy and this goes back to the ancient Greeks. And it seems like it’s been a received view for basically the whole course of philosophy. But nowadays, it seems like leisure time has become onerous. There’s this unending stream of information and entertainment that we need to keep up with. So I’m wondering if it’s time to rethink whether retirement and leisure really is the most conducive way to do philosophy or whether office hours and appointments keep us on track?

John Perry
That’s a very wise question. What’s your Even within philosophy, ancient philosophy, ancient philosophy, like, like really did guys, Plato and Plato and Aristotle. I mean, when I, they said, You can do the program, I tried to find some stuff in Plato and Aristotle about retirement. There’s not like there because in those days, it was a class thing. I mean, if you’re rich, you kind of retired your whole life, and so forth and so on. Well, I think there’s a paradox there that most graduate departments haven’t really figured out, which is we really do think philosophy is something that you do best when you don’t have too many concerns in the world when you’re relaxed when you have time to think. So let’s put together a graduate program in which person will have absolutely no leisure time. They’ll either be TA or taking required course or something like that. Well, of course, it depends on leisure, but no, I think, you know, the, I mean, that’s one reason I finally started to give up Philosophy Talk, because even though I had my life down to kind of, maybe three days a week, with big chunks of time pagan Philosophy Talk, which kind of rules that out for getting anything written. I still wanted more, I wanted more leisure time, but not for leisure for writing and thinking, all these, what did Fricker really mean in the big riff trips and things like that? So I’m not giving very good answers your question, except to say, it’s an insightful question, and you want to write a dissertation. And start right away, don’t waste any time.

Debra Satz
So I mean, one thing, your question to me suggests is, it’s really hard to free yourself from all the habits and forces that have shaped you over the, you know, the launch of most of your life. And so people who live and work in particular ways don’t just become different people. I mean, you’re an example of that. And sometimes that’s to the good, but sometimes it’s not because people have been obeying other people their whole lives, or, you know, buying things their whole lives. And it’s very hard to figure out how to throw that off.

John Perry
So Josh, you really think I’m writing a last chapter to my personal novel, but I’m just fooling myself and thinking I’m not. That’s to read your mind.

Josh Landy
That’s good mind reading. I can’t decide I need more time, you know, with you lying on the couch and me, they’re opposing your therapy using you. Though, I say, yeah. So you could be that you’re just what Galen Strawson calls an episodic and you just don’t care very much. And maybe that’s right. Or maybe yeah, maybe you’re just not as aware as you might be. If the fact that that really no, you’re you know, what the length of your descriptive, beautiful description of what you think we should be doing in retirement? That sounds a lot like the John Perry, I’ve always known. Oh, is it really true that you’re doing something radically different? By sitting and, and thinking and writing any, even by putting everything into question? You’re that’s who you are. You’re the guy who puts everything into question, except your intelligence, obviously. But yeah, right. So I yeah, I’m not totally convinced. And in fact, you’re throwing narrative completely nerd considerations completely out of the wind.

John Perry
Well, since I’m retired, I have time to catch up on my Josh Landy reading my Nietzsche reading, but I don’t think I’ll do that. So maybe I’ll change my Let’s take

Ken Taylor
another question. Welcome to philosophy.

Speaker 5
Thank you. I’m Linda. And I’m from San Francisco. And my question, I’ve been working at a certain institution of higher learning for about the last 24 years, but in a field that I studied that you could call art. And most people would, in their retirement love to do something like photography all the time. But that’s what I’ve been doing for a job. Now, I look at retirement as a possible place where I could study harder, where I could get into more of a life of learning. And I wonder what you think about older learners in a rigorous program as an undergraduate?

John Perry
Well, well, I think older learners in a rigorous program is a great idea. We have continuing education here. And then we actually have a master’s program in the humanities within continuing education, which is a great program. And and there’s no reason learning should be relegated to the young. And actually, one of the things I thought I do wanna retire is really learn mathematics, which I didn’t do a very good job of first time around, but like golf, it just seems to not be appealing to me when I get up in the morning to to do that. But no, I think that’s terrific. But you’re a photographer. Yeah, that’s what a lot of people would just think would be a wonderful retirement, but I guess a low nowadays, well, you have an iPhone, you don’t have all those chemicals. What fun is that?

Debra Satz
This is one thing actually the United States does reasonably well, which is it invites people back to education, there’s not like one ramp. And if you’re off that ramp, you have no chance, again, of going back and being educated people at all ages can make use of whether it’s the community college system or adult education, it’s a really good thing. And it’s a point about, you know, staying engaged and vital as being a lifelong learner. And we always tell our students, we want them to be lifelong learners.

John Perry
Deborah, when I interviewed you to hire you, I said, What’s your most fundamental belief? And I believe you said, From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs, I don’t know where you got that. That was that was the younger. But it wasn’t me immediately struck by the possibility that does that have? Does that suggest to you a way we ought to handle retirement?

Debra Satz
Well, I, you know, I do think that thinking about wages as tied, you know, just to productive work, as opposed to having a broader idea of productive contribution that people make over the course of their lives, taking care of children taking care of their elderly relatives, would free us from this idea that there is a working life that’s, you know, these years, and then your you know, is just put it out to fallow.

Ken Taylor
Welcome to Philosophy Talk. So what’s your comment your question?

Speaker 6
Thanks. So I think, you know, on this topic of lifelong learning, it’s one thing to hang up your hat. And it’s another thing to put down your pen. It’s one thing to retire from Philosophy Talk. And it’s another thing to retire from philosophy itself. And I guess my question is, insofar as you know, even now just said, Oh, I hope to keep reading. I’m going to keep reading, I’m going to keep writing. Do you ever see, is there a time either for you or even for philosophers past? When one puts down the pen? When one says all right pencils down? Like I I’ve written my last word, or is it a continuous rage against the dying of the light a continuous pursuit of philosophy and tell it cannot be done? I

Ken Taylor
want to quote Charlton Heston. My from my cold dead. end for me, anyway, what’s your?

John Perry
Well, by? No, I would say the latter. And you know, at my age, you can’t help but think about civility and even Alzheimer’s. And so I’ve been wondering, does Alzheimer’s really affect your ability to do philosophy? I mean, because I, you know, my father had Alzheimer’s. I mean, later on, you can do anything. But in the earliest days, you can’t remember anybody’s name, you can’t remember what you fed the dog. Actually, that’s been most of my life. But you don’t need to do those things to sit and, and read and write about Frager or, or Ken Taylor’s most recent book. So I would say I’m looking forward to finding out the answer to that question. But I have no plans to drop the pin and actually have a real pen, real fountain pen, fountain pens, and typewriters are another thing that if I were an elder than in charge of everything, would be much more common than they are.

Josh Landy
So you’ll be you’ll be writing your last chapter with that pen.

John Perry
Yes, right. Tell me, which is hard to find these days. So

Ken Taylor
John, on that point, that note, I’m going to thank you for joining us. It’s been a pleasure having you back as a guest. That’s a little bit of a weird experience having you as guests, but it’s been a real pleasure.

Our guest has been the one and only John Perry. He’s a professor emeritus of philosophy at Stanford University. He’s the CO creator and co founder of this lovely program, and now he’s graduated to being our host emeritus of Philosophy Talk. This conversation continues at philosophers corner at our online community of fingers, where our motto is get this Cogito ergo Blago. I think, therefore I blog. YouTube can become a partner in the community by registering and our website, Philosophy Talk.

Debra Satz
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, either here or on the radio, we’d love to hear from you. Send your questions to us at comments at philosophy talked about org and we might feature it on the aforementioned blog.

Josh Landy
Now let’s hear from someone who speaks through any crossroads. It’s in shows the 62nd philosopher.

Ian Shoales
He shows the other day I was walking to the farmers market a homeless woman who sells Beat sheet every day was heading my way yelling obscenities at some other homeless guy. As I pass he asked if I wanted to make a donation she said she was clocking out. It was three in the afternoon I thought keeping bankers hours now are we a little early to leave the office, isn’t it? That arratia doesn’t have an office just a corner and probably does not even have a clock. She was 70 something and did not seem employable. And yet she still thought of herself as a working gal on the job. Americans have very mixed feelings about retirement you get congratulations and a life well lived. Enjoy your golden years with its hearty farewell golden watch from us. Your co workers used to get a pension but that money got siphoned off when the company got sold to pay for that former CEO his golden parachute is the former CEO retired now he’s consulting is on the board. He’s powerlifting. He’s golfing, which is now considered work. And he’s envied the retired or hated. Why do you get to watch Judge Judy all day while I’m still crunching numbers miles away from a corner office much less a window. And also the onus of anybody not working you sick you don’t learn when you walk you look okay to me get back to your cube. And we do have leisure activities. It’s always golf. You got to spend money in clubs and lessons and memberships and drinks and lunches. And you can’t just play the game you have to obsess over it and you watch other games like football. Again, you can’t just watch it you have to use taxpayer money to build a stadium and win football players who are working hard for their money dare to have the opinion by kneeling for the national anthem. We threaten to boycott football which means empty stadiums your team moves to Vegas, and your town goes bankrupt even faster. And athletes retire young when they invest all their money in restaurants or car dealerships and lose it makes us feel a little better mixed in with bitterness and gloating, both enjoyed enormously by retirees. Some people never retire at all gunslingers generals, judges, horses don’t retire they put out to study. We don’t do that with humans. We could know that we have Viagra. But getting women to enter that pasture would be problematic. It’s moot anyway. Soon we’ll all be retired when robots take over driving and running corporations will all paint and write novels. Novelist never retired. John McCarthy is in his 80s and still writing. And of course college professors never really retire you get a pizza or a Nobel or tenure and become amortized emulated and that’s to contribute a blurb to a book or write a review of some upstarts book trying to undo what you did 20 years ago. Is retirement an insult or an honor it’s relative because here’s another thing about retirement many Americans conservative To be frank, do you pensions as a big wasted pie. It’s just sitting there being nibbled away by people not doing anything for it. Mark my words the pension haters will eventually get their way they can’t stand to see it just sitting there like a lake. You got to jump into it. Make it move fill it up with water skis and Parana. But not going to take your pension away. No, they’re going to put it on the market invest it for you. Which means set fire to it with unique new financial tools that only robots understand. And when it’s all gone well it will be your fault. You shouldn’t be tired. Maybe you can find the gold watch for some broccoli. Oh, and the street cheap vendors did the farmers market take Bitcoin that’s a pro tip. I gotta go

Amber Gougis
Oh, then hands at midnight. Need the starry sky. Nice work good. You can get it and you can get it if you try.

Ken Taylor
Philosophy Talk of KL W local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Jr. Jr University. Copyright 2017.

Debra Satz
Our executive producers are David Demarest and Matt Martin. Special thanks to the Stanford philosophy department the School of Humanities and Sciences in the Office of Public Affairs.

Josh Landy
Thanks also to Dan Rand and Conchita paralysis, and our musical guests and the gorgeous and Margaret castle.

Debra Satz
The senior producer of Philosophy Talk is Devin stralla vich. Laura McGuire is our Director of Research our marketing director is Sydney Prince bound.

Josh Landy
Sport from philosophy taught comes from various groups at Stanford University and from the partners and our online community of thinkers.

Debra Satz
The views expressed or mis expressed on this program don’t represent necessarily the opinions of Stanford University or our funders,

Josh Landy
not even when they’re true, unreasonable. The conversation continues on our website Philosophy Talk dot o RG where you too can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m Josh Landy,

Debra Satz
I’m Deborah SATs.

Ken Taylor
I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

John Perry
And thank you for thinking.