B. Michael - What do philosophers talk about these days? I've not kept up. (Not that I'd ever kept up.) Kuhn's notion of "paradigms" gets rid of the need for super- deep universal foundations for the scientific enterprise, and Wittgenstein's "family resemblances" does the same for pretty much everything. So what's left for philosophy? Not that I think philosophy departments should disband, but if I were in one I'd transform it into the Department Of Roving Troubleshooters Who Have More Fun Than Sociologists Seem To Have, or something. But apparently people think there's still something more or less philosophical to talk about, and they do, though as I said I don't know what it is.
--Frank Kogan
Asked by
koganbot
Well. I am I suppose a failed PhD in a lot of ways. (In the most important ways, some might say.)
Professional philosophy is pretty balkanized. It’s like any other professional academics: There are fifteen people on the planet who can talk intelligently about any given thing. Everyone else argues about the validity of that thing and question whether that thing is a thing. None of it has anything to do with day-to-day life.
On the other hand, some European continental philosophers write about communism and responsibility. Zizek was almost a president. The analytic philosophers are literally dying. I have a poor outlook for any humanities academics, though. Husserl solved a lot of this (for the most part) back in the late 20s (30s?) I think.
