Robert D'Amico on philosophy and whether it has its own domain--a defensible province of its own. It's a question about the status of philosophy.
Alas the address goes nowhere. It remains stuck in the 1930s and the good old continental analytic divide. This kind of academic philosophy has run out of puff.
Hell, the academy can do better than that. Why not give up the navel gazing and turn to some issues that concern us as citizens--the significance of 9/11 for instance.
Or why philosophy matters to, and in, politics.
Why not philosophy engaging with the view of the US as an empire. Or a critically engagement with the economists over competition policy. The ris a huge gap there between the actuality of corporate giant-dominated economy and the ideal of the liberalist vision of a dynamic economic system made up of lots of small innovative entrepreneurs.
Why not contest the view of big business that says what is good for Australia are executive salaries like the Americans, tax rates as in entrepots like Singapore (20% corporate tax rates) and wages as in China and an authoritarian government that gets the job done.
The living heart of philosophy is critique. That seems to have been forgotten.