From Football to Philosophy
I’m the first of my parents’ five children. We moved from Detroit to East Detroit, a small, working-class suburb, when I was six. My brothers and I spent a lot of time playing football and baseball – both the organized kind and pick-up games with the many neighborhood baby boomers. My father, whose primary job was delivering mail, always worked a second job back then – as a liquor store clerk for a while and then as a bartender. Even so, he found time to coach youth football and baseball teams. My three brothers and I played on some of them. My mother worked hard at home. I’ve always felt very lucky to have had wonderful, loving parents.
Although I didn’t take school very seriously in my childhood (and all the way through my first year of college, for that matter), my recollection is that I usually enjoyed it. One day, after my parents came home from a parent - teacher meeting at my elementary school, I noticed that they were treating me very differently. Suddenly, they were talking about me going to college, not wasting my talent, and the like. I found this very strange; I was only nine years old, and college certainly wasn’t on my radar. Sometime later, I surmised that I had performed very well on a standardized achievement test – shockingly well, it seems, from the perspective of my unsuspecting parents and teacher. From then on, it was clear to me that I’d be going to college; I couldn’t let my parents down. The special treatment faded away after a couple of days, as I recall.
I was recruited by the Kalamazoo College Fighting Hornets football coach after receiving all-city high school football honors in Detroit and “honorable mention” all-state honors. I enrolled there in 1969, during the Viet Nam war. At that time, full-time college students were exempt from the military draft. So I had at least one excellent reason to continue my studies beyond high school. I’d had enough of football by the time football practice started, and Kalamazoo just wasn’t my kind of town. At the end of my first year, I transferred to Wayne State University, back in Detroit. My first child was on the way, and that fact inspired me to get serious. In addition to my student activities, I had work-study jobs in an inner-city recreation program for kids and at a mental health out-patient facility. I also worked at a scrap yard on weekends. We’d go into abandoned factories, rip out as much metal as we could, and haul it back to the shop. I seem to recall being paid $1.60 per hour.
At one time, the Wayne State philosophy department had some very influential members: Héctor-Neri Castañeda, Edmund Gettier, and Alvin Plantinga come to mind. They had moved on by the time I arrived (Castañeda in 1969), but they hired an excellent group of young philosophers whose classes I very much enjoyed. What hooked me on philosophy, I think, was a class in ancient Greek philosophy. Seeing brilliant minds tackling an amazingly broad range of deep issues was mesmerizing. I wound up writing my dissertation on Aristotle’s theory of human motivation a few years later at the University of Michigan, and I spent the first few years of my career writing journal articles on Aristotle’s treatment of such issues as weakness of will, practical reasoning, action explanation, and happiness (along with some non-historical pieces on weakness of will, self-control, and self-deception).
In the early 1990s I was asked to write a short piece on how I became a philosopher. Reading it again reminded me of a pivotal detail. One day, on a bus ride home from school toward the end of my college career, I ran into a teacher of mine. He asked about my post-graduation plans. When I replied that I hadn’t given it much thought, he suggested graduate school. And when I asked where I might apply, he recommended the University of Michigan, which, unbeknown to me, had a very prestigious philosophy department. So I applied there – and only there. Fortunately, I was admitted. Frankly, I don’t know what I would have done after college if I hadn’t had that encounter.
I count as a first-generation philosopher because my parents didn’t go to college and I’m a philosopher. I never felt that my being a first-generation college student presented me with any special challenges. When I was a student, it didn’t even occur to me to distinguish between first-gens and others; and in retrospect, I have no complaints. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the Wayne State students at the time were first-generation college students. The student body was very diverse, and I fit right in – or so it seemed to me. Of course, I realize that things might have been very different for me if I had gone to an Ivy league university (or if I had been born in 2001 rather than 1951). Also, a college degree would have been a longshot if I hadn’t been fortunate enough to have all my tuition covered by scholarships.
It’s possible that my blue-collar background had an influence on my research interests. I can’t help but notice that human behavior is at the heart of things for me. My primary topics over the past forty-five years are weakness of will, self-control, self-deception, intentional action, action explanation, motivation, decision-making, human autonomy, free will, and moral responsibility – topics that fall under what is sometimes called “practical philosophy.” Would my interests have been different if my parents had gone to college? This counterfactual is difficult to assess. A study of the specialty areas of first-generation philosophers and other philosophers would provide some guidance.
I’ve been invited to offer some advice to other first-generation college students and philosophers. To the latter group I can say that what worked for me is focusing my attention on the issues that excited me most. I never worried that I might not be tackling the most fashionable issues at the time. I found my philosophical work very enjoyable and rewarding, and that’s what kept me going. To first-generation college students I might recommend something that I didn’t do. Give some thought to what sort of life you would like to have; and once you have some pretty clear ideas about that, think about how your time as a student can help you get to where you want to be. Here’s something else I always tell students who ask, and it’s something I learned to do long ago: get your less pleasant tasks out of the way first; that will make the more pleasant ones even more enjoyable.
Alfred Mele is the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor at Florida State University.
