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Professors of philosophy, not philosophers

Turned into a university trade, the philosophy that promised to teach thinking now speaks mostly to its own specialists: papers answering papers, in a language the outside world does not read.

Objects to Clarifying thought

Thoreau · Walden · 1854

1. Critical examination has become a profession: careers, specialized journals, conferences, sectarian disputes. Rigor gains by it, but in a form so technical, and on problems so finely carved, that the outside reader hardly recognizes their own questions in it anymore.
2. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers, wrote Thoreau, who granted that professing is admirable, provided one lives what one teaches: to philosophize is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The objection extends of itself to today's university: a clarification that promised to untie everyone's confusions devotes much of its strength to knots it tied itself.
3. While the specialists grow ever more specialized, the demand for meaning does not go away: it shifts to others, popularizers, coaches, ideologues, who do speak everyone's language. A clarity that circulates so little leaves the field open to public confusions.

Therefore So, to the extent that it speaks only to its specialists, philosophy would fail its own task: a clarity that does not circulate clarifies nothing for anyone, and the examination of ideas, turned into a career, would risk ceasing to be the examination of life.