10 Reasons Why this is Not a Golden Age for Philosophy

If I am right, philosophy now is vastly richer than classical Greece, the age of reason, or any other golden age we care to name: far more (and more able) philosophers with much greater ability to collaborate and learn from one another, a wider understanding of the world around us, a long history of our predecessors who have cleared the way before us, and much else besides. Many, perhaps most, universities boast a philosophy department that puts the Lyceum or the Academy to shame. Although our chances of becoming a ‘great philosopher’ have fallen, our chances of getting to the truth have risen. Gregory Lewis @Dailynous [HT Liam Kofi Bright]

Let me stipulate that (i) this is a great age for professional philosophy, and (ii) the intellectual division of labor has genuine benefits, especially in areas of formal philosophy. It does not follow it is a Golden Age for Philosophy

1. I am responding to a pseudo-statistical-population argument with (bogus) assumptions like this, "Let’s pretend that philosophical greatness is a function of philosophical ability, and let’s pretend that philosophical ability is wholly innate. Thus you’d expect philosophical greatness to be a natural lottery..."* So, let me just say something about population and political economy (#2). As Lewis notes, there is a ‘field dilution effect;’ would-be-philosophical-greats (oh bleh!), have a lot of other potential outlets for their 'abilities'; lots of other academic disciplines compete for the winners (bleh) in the (more bleh) 'natural lottery.' But I think he underestimates the effect: outside the academy, lots of would be philosophical talent is payed highly and wasted in consulting, tax-accounting/evasion, tax-lawyers (evasion, etc.), marketing, and large-scale bureaucracies that pay tax-free Euros/dollars for talent, etc. To put it simply, the price of economic progress, has been enormous competition for smarts. Not to mention that professional philosophy has done a terrible job at attracting non-males (fill in your favorite sordid fact, etc.).
2. Philosophers in the past had leisure (bought by slave-labor and feudal-property arrangements as well as lack of diversions)--again Lewis notes this. But he does not note that the vast number of today's professional philosophers lack leisure. They are kept busy (by administrators, by grant agencies, by excessive publication expectations, etc.) or keep themselves busy (I love conference planning and hopping, but I wouldn't call it conducive to leisurely thought). To say this, is not to deny that there are quite a few professional philosophers working today in circumstances that from a historical point of view are near-ideal, but the vast majority today do not; our purportedly superior demographics does not automatically translate into better philosophers.   
3. Professional philosophy is by definition scholastic. While I am no basher of scholasticism, it is worth noting that our scholasticism is not conducive to philosophical splendidness. (Here's a bad argument: only 2, Aquinas & Kant, out of the 10 on the top-10-list-greats are the product of a scholastic environment, and Kant benefited greatly from coming on the tail end of the anti-scholastic Enlightenment. So, let me try this:) while the Islamic and Christian scholastics had the benefit of shared background commitments (about providence, a source of value, etc.) that allowed a framework in which progress is possible, our scholastics are completely un-moored; this entails that we are extremely vulnerable to (i) fashion (I dare you to deny this) and (ii) the suggestiveness of professional power (i-ii are connected, of course). [I love contemporary metaphysics, by the way.]
4. The common background commitments that Scholastic had also helps explain why they were good at systematicity, and we suck at it (and are still rediscovering the ways in which various fundamental commitments entail/constrain each other). There is a related reason why we suck at systematicity: we simply don't do and lack time to explore second-hand, most of the other sciences. To give an example I am familiar with: until very recently, the vast majority of contemporary political philosophers were largely clueless about demographics, political economy, education, or military affairs--it didn't matter, they thought. But the earlier technical familiarity with all these areas allowed earlier generations to think more systematically about political philosophy. 
5. In addition, there was also something at stake for the Islamic and Christian scholastics -- you know, salvation, damnation, affinity with the infinite intellect -- that is probably more conducive to philosophical truth than, say, being-in-a-top-10-department.
6. Professional philosophers do not know how to read (unless the text is composed of declarative sentences that lack all ambiguity--the kind of thing a four year old gets to read) and write. (I suspect this is due to our lack of poetic or Scriptural culture, which generates sensitivity to polysemy, metaphor, and other pathways into multi-dimensional landscapes.)  This means that the vast majority of the stuff we produce lacks durability. More subtly, it means we also inflict a kind of mental tedium on each other. (Evidence: if reading each other's work were uplifting, then refereeing would not feel like 'service.') This has predictable effect: people don't read widely and this means lots of fantastic would be interesting ideas are gathering digital dust on JStor.
7. There is enormous amount of conformity and narrowness due to professionalization and the incentives that accompany it. For example, it was great news recently that the new editors at one of the top journals, Mind, publicly announced that it was broadening its remit. This means that for over a century (!) it refused to publish stuff outside its rather narrow mission: leaving aside non-analytic philosophy, value theory broadly conceived and history were less-than-welcome there. If value is unwelcome you are systematically ignoring not just stuff that really matters, but also not exploring a fundamental metaphysical option (it's value all the way down). If history and non-Western philosophy are systematically unwelcome it means that there is no arbitrage on good, overlooked ideas.
8. We often think and tell each other that as a profession, we are pursuing all the truth-conducive projects, but when you step back a bit it is noticeable how much parroting there is that seems primarily designed to ensure a minimum number of publications with the least amount of hassle without being at the tail-end of some fashion. (To be at the tail end of a fashion can be career destroying if you are N-th year PhD.)
9. The gospel of progress is wearing thin: I love economic growth, but we will be lucky if we avoid Environmental catastrophe and (accidental) nuclear holocaust during the  next century. Meanwhile, daily our species practices massive, industrial cruelty on animals, and during the last century there has been at least four genocides. I have no idea what the cultural preconditions are for philosophy to thrive, and I am willing to grant that science, logical, and mathematics, and the internet are swell, but if you read the fashionable philosophies of a scholarly generation ago almost all of it fails to prepare us to think our way through (to use pompous language) humanity's existential needs for philosophy. To paraphrase Nietzsche, professional philosophy keeps our intellects focused on small problems, while we must have faith that as a by-product the big problems are being solved--that's just incredible. 
10. If you are so great, why do you constantly recycle Memes about your fantastic progress? <--That's a rhetorical question.  (Yeah, I know Nietzsche is a great bragger.) In fact, all the repetitive and thoughtless rhetoric of progress reveals is your anxiety.

 End of rant.

*Here's more: "The population of modern day Attica (admittedly slightly larger geographically than Attica in the time of Plato) is 3.8 million. If we say Plato was the most philosophically able in Attica, that ‘only’ puts him at the 1 in 300,000 level. Modern Attica should expect to have around thirteen people at this level, and of this group it is statistically unlikely that Plato would be better than all of them."

Comments

[Michael Kremer]

Great rant. Note that in #8 I think you mean "maximum" not "minimum."

Also I think you are being a bit unfair to Mind of years past -- "over a century" is just wrong. Take a look at the table of contents of Mind for Oct 1939 -- just picking at random: 4 articles, one is on "Hume's Account of Sensitive Belief" and one is on "Kant and Greek Ethics (II)." I think it isn't until much later that Mind becomes as narrow as you portray it as being.

[Schliesser, Eric]

Good point about Mind. Should I have said, half a century?

I am debating if I should change minimum to maximum!:)

[Michael Kremer]

Oh, I see, you meant "minimum acceptable." (Otherwise I suppose you would mean zero.) I just thought it was a typo!

[Michael Kremer]

As for Mind, I think 50 years is safe -- but I haven't carefully investigated, you might even be able to back further. Not over 100, though.

[Mskochin]

"until very recently, the vast majority of contemporary political philosophers were largely clueless about demographics, political economy, education, or military affairs--it didn't matter, they thought."
This is why I turned down Goldfarb's offer of admission to the graduate program in Philosophy at Harvard to study political science. Of course, if I had read any Cavell (not that he knew any of these things) then everything would have been different.