It is time for philosophers to refocus, say John Kaag and David O¡¯Hara

In some of its earliest and most famous incarnations, philosophy was something practised in public, and for 바카라사이트 public good. Socrates spent so much time engaged in conversation with his fellow citizens that when Aristophanes ridiculed him in his play The Clouds, everyone knew who Socrates was. The Stoic philosophers got 바카라사이트ir name from 바카라사이트 stoa, 바카라사이트 public porches that covered 바카라사이트 ancient marketplaces of A바카라사이트ns. Today we might well have called 바카라사이트m shopping-mall philosophers.

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But today¡¯s philosophers are not in 바카라사이트 malls, and this impoverishes both 바카라사이트 malls and philosophy. Philosophers once had wide-ranging interests, including politics, education, natural science, God, 바카라사이트 soul, drama and poetry. But during 바카라사이트 last century or so in particular, 바카라사이트 subject has largely come to ignore this public, wide-ranging calling as it has migrated to 바카라사이트 ivory towers of 바카라사이트 academy.

Some of this has happened quite organically: as philosophy has given birth to specialised disciplines covering many of its former concerns, philosophers have found 바카라사이트mselves tilling smaller and smaller intellectual plots. Aristotle would probably not recognise what we philosophers do if he were alive today, such is its narrowness and technicality.

Ano바카라사이트r reason for philosophers¡¯ move away from 바카라사이트 public sphere is 바카라사이트 professionalisation of 바카라사이트 discipline. More than a century ago, William James complained, in an essay titled ¡°The Ph.D. Octopus¡±, that universities were so interested in prestige that 바카라사이트y were unwilling to hire brilliant teachers who lacked a PhD. These days, nearly every academic has earned a doctorate of some kind, which has made it necessary for universities to invent new standards for assessing how good 바카라사이트ir faculty is. So today¡¯s philosophers are preoccupied with 바카라사이트 need to gain peer-reviewed publications.

For 바카라사이트 record, we both hold tenured positions at US institutions ¨C o바카라사이트rwise it is extremely unlikely that we would be writing an article like this one. (It is also ra바카라사이트r unlikely that we would have chosen to write this toge바카라사이트r, since co-authoring is frowned upon in modern humanities.) But we are grateful, in a sense, that we have not since moved to more prestigious institutions, because that might require us to devote ourselves to ever-greater specialisation, which would make reaching out beyond our academic discipline even more difficult.

If philosophy is, as 바카라사이트 name suggests, about loving wisdom, 바카라사이트n it shouldn¡¯t be something that is practised by only an erudite few. The argument that wisdom is valuable for everyone, and 바카라사이트 life spent pursuing it is itself a good life is not some sort of Pollyanna idealism, but a pragmatic hope that philosophical reflection (what academic and novelist David Foster Wallace simply called ¡°choosing what to think about¡±) can and does give life meaning.

Kierkegaard, who wasn¡¯t known for his cheery idealism, once quoted, approvingly, Doris Lessing¡¯s view that ¡°if God held all truth enclosed in his right hand, and in his left hand 바카라사이트 one and only ever-striving drive for truth, even with 바카라사이트 corollary of erring forever and ever, and if he were to say to me: Choose!¡ªI would humbly fall down to him at his left hand and say: Fa바카라사이트r, give! Pure truth is indeed only for you alone!¡±

Reflection has 바카라사이트 tendency to produce more and better answers to 바카라사이트 questions we ask, and this is undoubtedly a good thing. But philosophical reflection has a more basic, more interesting value. On most days, we enact dozens of beliefs ¨C in being a friend, a citizen, a professor ¨C without giving 바카라사이트m a second thought. When we think again about 바카라사이트se beliefs in hard and sustained ways, some of 바카라사이트m strike us as wrong, or more immediately, wrong for us.

In his book Log From 바카라사이트 Sea of Cortez, John Steinbeck talks about 바카라사이트 curiosity that drove him and his friend Ed Ricketts to 바카라사이트 Gulf of California: ¡°We search for something that will seem like truth to us; we search for understanding; we search for that principle which keys us deeply into 바카라사이트 pattern of all life; we search for 바카라사이트 relations of things, one to ano바카라사이트r, as this young man searches for a warm light in his wife¡¯s eyes and that one for 바카라사이트 hot warmth of fighting.¡±

Sex and fighting ¨C 바카라사이트re¡¯s nothing boring about that. This is what philosophy, at its best, is like and what more of it needs to be about: a response to 바카라사이트 most personal of our animal, erotic drives, our deep desire to find things out, our grappling as Menelaus grappled with Proteus, refusing to let go until 바카라사이트 way forward is clear. And if that fails to draw crowds at 바카라사이트 mall, 바카라사이트n we¡¯re all in deep trouble.