Some philosophy professors, on top of all the work they do for the universities at which they’re employed, write public philosophy, and sometimes such writing is on the Substack platform, with some or all of what they write available only to paid subscribers. Is there anything wrong with this? Walter Veit (Reading) thinks there is something wrong with it, and makes his case here. Richard Chappell (Miami) responds here, arguing that we shouldn’t criticize philosophers for paywalling their writing. I’d go further and say, not only is there nothing wrong with it—it’s great! If you can convince a whole bunch of people that, of all the things in this world they could otherwise be spending money on, they should spend it on reading your philosophical thoughts, good for you. Your subscribers, in virtue of paying for your writing, are probably going to pay more attention to it than they otherwise would, and this attention begets further attention to you and your interlocutors—and to philosophy—in self-reinforcing ways. That people are paying for your writing is an easily legible signal to others that what you’re doing is valuable. You’re doing philosophy, so it’s a signal that philosophy is valuable, that philosophy is worth paying attention to. Further, a culture’s valuing of philosophy, and so the cultivation and maintenance of a public constituency for philosophy, is helpful for the continued existence of philosophy programs (which are often under threat in part owed to the perception of their lack of value), which is generally good. “But,” you might say, “philosophy isn’t the only thing that’s valuable. These writers could, as Veit suggests, charge a subscription fee and donate it to an organization that, say, saves lives. That would produce even more good.” It might. But, while sometimes it is wrong to choose to act in way that will produce less good than one otherwise could, you probably do not really believe that it is always wrong to do so. You’d need to make a case for why this “suboptimal” choice is wrong, and that is going to be quite hard to do without thereby condemning many other kinds of actions you think are perfectly morally acceptable. “But,” you might say, “what if everyone did this? Then..

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