To quote AL Daily:
Philosophy now comes to us in one form: the peer-reviewed article, published (preferably in English) in an academic journal. No wonder philosophy has become so irrelevant.
Philosophy now comes to us in one form: the peer-reviewed article, published (preferably in English) in an academic journal. No wonder philosophy has become so irrelevant.
Philosophy broadly defined is as vital and important as ever, though. I can't imagine a world in which trying to understand it is no longer important. Not everything there is to know about the world has been systematized enough to be considered a science, and any time you have a knowledge domain where the boundaries are fuzzy and poorly understood, there is going to be a place for philosophers to try and bring some order to it, even if it takes a few thousand years.
Same. I used to take strong exception to the idea that philosophy was worth any amount of time to study... but then I realized any argument to reject it or degrade its utility is necessarily philosophical and changed my tune.
Does that distinguish philosophy from the sciences or other areas of academia?
IMHO the appropriate position of philosophy in modern academia would be as "metascience", i.e., their writings should be clearly useful to scientists across other sciences, they should be informative and relevant for people doing their own science outside of pure philosophy. IMHO it currently mostly isn't.
I don't think we should draw too many boundaries over what's 'appropriate' philosophy -- there's a lot of stuff to think about and a lot of people around to think it. I just hope that people don't think that obscure philosophy from academic journals is the only 'real' philosophy.
Which ones?
> To complicate matters, often fiction writers (think Dostoyevsky, Huxley, or Borges) turn out to be particularly insightful philosophers, and so do filmmakers — such as Bergman, Kurosawa, and Tarkovsky — who philosophize just as insightfully on screen. All these entanglements and contaminations mark philosophy profoundly — indeed, they make it what it is.
These two quotes are compatible only if the author thinks that modern fiction writers and modern directors are no longer insightful philosophers.
Mmm, I see. The quote you referenced was in the context "mainstream philosophy", which the author implies is synonymous with academic philosophy. (Even though more people have watched Bergman films and read Borges than have ever read an academic philosophy paper.)
Still, I think the author shifts the definition of philosophy too much, and in such a way that it bends to fit the thesis, rather than the other way around.
When Randy Cohen ran "The Ethicist" column in the NYT, and a similar program for NPR ... didn't most non-academics consider it philosophy?
When people talk about "The Trolly Problem" ... isn't that also philosophy?
So it seems to me that many more people are engaged in philosophy - "not only our cognition, but also our imagination, emotions, artistic sensibility, religious impulses" - than the author acknowledges.