In the well-known professional philosophy blog, The Daily Arse, and elsewhere online, some people have been claiming that Crispin Sartwell is suffering from “mental health” (what an awful, but aptly Foucauldian, euphemism) “issues,” and that this explains away whatever is going on. The charge has the triple-benefit of: 1. Making the charger appear so very … [continue reading]
The Unbearable Leiter of Being. By V.
APP Editors’ Note: V is a full professor of philosophy at a research university–and a star gazer. The stars. There are so very many stars. And we are so small. Yet, some would make us smaller still. To have been given a fine brain and to use it for petty and ignoble ends is bad … [continue reading]
The Double Infantilization of Professional Philosophy. By Ms Pratte and David Chalmers, With an Afterword by Z.
I. KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOM RULES, by Ms Pratte. 1. We listen and do. 2. We sit, stand, and walk properly. 3. We treat others the way we would like to treated. 4. We take turns and share. 5. We respect the personal space of others. 6. We do not leave the classroom without permission. 7. We … [continue reading]
What It’s Like to Exit Professional Philosophy: Crispin Sartwell. By Z and Crispin Sartwell.
APP Editors’ Note: What is it like to exit professional philosophy? The first item below is re-posted from Crispin Sartwell’s blog. It refers to the amazing “Out.” The second is new and exclusive to APP. And this just arrived from CS: “update. i have been removed from my campus on the grounds that posting miranda … [continue reading]
Abusive Speech vs. Edgy Speech: Professional Philosophy’s Fanny Squeers and Professional Philosophy’s Lenny Bruce. (APP's Non-Readers Talk Back! Again, and EotS Re-Post)
APP Editors’ Note: FS is a tenured full professor of philosophy at a state university somewhere in Texas, and Crispin Sartwell is a tenured associate professor of philosophy at Dickinson College. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If both the facts and the … [continue reading]
Hyper-Disciplined Minds: The Professionalization of Philosophy and the Death of Dissent. (Re-edited March 2018)
1. Recently I’ve been reading and thinking about an amazing book, Jeff Schmidt’s Disciplined Minds. It was published in 2000, so 16 years ago, and I was gobsmacked that I’d never heard about it until last month. Here’s a good, short summary of the book. For my purposes, what matters is Schmidt’s main thesis, which … [continue reading]
APP is Not Alone 6: “Add Your Own Egg” (The Point Re-Post) By Nakul Krishna.
The Point, 2016 APP Editors’ Note: Nakul Krishna is currently a Temporary Lecturer in Philosophy at Cambridge University. I was summoned to my tutor’s office a day or so after I’d arrived in Oxford. It was the last day of summer. A bumpkin from the tropics, I’d never seen an autumn before. I watched the … [continue reading]
From Professional Vocabularies and the Ethics of Terminology to Presentational Polymorphism: A Conversation about Otto Paans’s “The Pre-Structured Professional Philosopher.” (Re-edited February 2018)
Z: OP’s essay, “The Pre-Structured Professional Philosopher,” leads in many fascinating directions, and has correspondingly many important implications. But before I get down to that, I want to quote, between the horizontal lines directly below, a few pages of a highly APP-relevant, prescient, and characteristically beautifully-written, jargon-free essay by Susan Haack from the late 2000s, … [continue reading]
APP is Not Alone 5, Double Feature: 2. “Wanted: A Future for Philosophy” (CHE Re-Post). By Adam Briggle and Robert Frodeman.
Chronicle of Higher Education, July 16, 2014 How goes it with the institution of philosophy? Consider the situation of “Jeremy,” a Ph.D. student in the graduate program at the University of North Texas. As a second-year student, he has a teaching fellowship. This means that in addition to taking nine credit hours of graduate coursework, … [continue reading]
APP is Not Alone 5, Double Feature: 1. “A New Philosophy for the 21st Century” (CHE Re-Post). By Adam Briggle and Robert Frodeman.
Chronicle of Higher Education. December 11, 2011 We have devoted our lives to philosophy. We want the field to survive and, if possible, prosper. But it is increasingly doubtful that academic philosophy can thrive in an era of declining budgets, soaring debts, antipathy to tax increases, and new technologies such as distance education. Of course, … [continue reading]