Academic Philosophy Today

Two and a half years ago the Chronicle of Higher Education posted a biting discussion of philosophy as practiced as an academic speciality. Here's the URL: http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/07/16/wanted-a-future-for-philosophy/

I doubt much has changed in the intervening period. If I'm wrong, and something has changed, I would be happy to be better informed by a commenter here! Or if the authors were painting an inaccurate picture in the first place, I welcome readers of Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed who might tell me so.

Here is the bottom line of that article:

Too many graduate students chasing tenure-track jobs that are themselves disappearing; rising societal demands for accountability coupled with budget cuts; the loss of faith in ‘higher knowledge’; and an insular philosophic culture, in which professors write nearly exclusively for one another.

William James himself never sought a Ph.D. in philosophy. The university system was very diffe
rent in his day. His only post-graduate study was in medicine. The first lecture in psychology he ever heard, he tells us himself, was the first one he ever gave. And philosophy? -- he surely heard lectures in the field during his European travels, but there too he was self-taught, and his psychological works served as his credential for the field.

The insular philosophica culture described above is one that he warned about, though, as its preconditions were establishing themselves. And here is a URL for that:

http://wmbriggs.com/post/4078/

Comments

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Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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