DISQUS

Damn. You're right. I was visualizing the wrong pithy quote in my head: "all men by nature desire to know." I can practically see it on my mental page of my Pocket Aristotle. Sigh; that's what I get for relying on visual memory for quotations.

Actually, I think this may work. I've only skimmed some of the older stuff, and I think these people may have some adjusting to do when confronted with the typical range of commentary you get on blogs. But this is a chance to make these folks realize that what they consider neutral ground is actually comprised of their assumptions. Aristotle told us that the unexamined life is not worth living; I think these people may find out that they haven't examined themselves nearly as thoroughly as they thought they had.

Darned if I can remember the name of the movement, but I remember an epistemology course back in my college days in which the professor mentioned the New Excitement in Philosophy: approaching philosophy materially in the way Will described. I always thought of it as the "philosophers in the laboratory" school of thought.

That seems to be what Will thinks philosophers may be good for. I think it's something far more pragmatic: getting people to think. That's actually always been what philosophers are good for; Socrates gained notoriety (and condemnation) for getting the young to fight their way to their conclusions instead of just accepting them.

I think the difficulty right now is that due to the extreme specialization of philosophy and its subsidized life in the Academy, professional philosophy is done for other professional philosophers. Just looking throughout history, how often has that been the case? Consequently, does it not suggest the present ennui may be a result more of the structure of philosophical society rather than the water level in the philosophical well?

One final "besides": isn't it the height of hubris to essentially say, "We've got everything pretty much figured out now?" We laugh at those kinds of statements from past figures (no more patents needed in early 1900s, who needs more than 640K ram?). Why exactly are we making them now? I have no problem providing comic fodder for my great-grandchildren, but I'd like to do it deliberately, not ironically.