Brian Leiter has made the point that there are three distinct models of doctoral education in philosophy, with regard to the English-speaking world. He calls them by their most distinguished representatives: Princeton, MIT, Pittsburgh. They are distinguished from one another by how they regard the history of the field. Is the history of philosophy itself a matter of doing philosophy?
On the Princeton model, history is treated as important, but distinct. The department will incorporate courses on the great historical schools and interests. There will be other course, though, about contemporary hot topics in Anglophone/analytic philosophy. This two-track model is dominant in the US, and it has exemplars elsewhere, as at Oxford and Toronto.
On the MIT model, Leiter continues, "the focus is almost entirely on contemporary research in analytic philosophy, with one or no lines set aside for history of philosophy."
Finally, on the Pittsburgh model, "the history of philosophy and contemporary topics are much more integrate, and it is quite common for faculty to have serious research that includes both historical figures and contemporary topics." Such integration sounds good, Leiter says, but there can be drawbacks, "e.g. when Hegel turns out to be an inferentialist."
I have no idea what that last bit means. What does one even mean by calling Hegel an inferentialist and who does so? Somebody at Pittsburgh?
Maybe that is a research program.
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