Dear Gary et al,
Yes, only that article on the desiccation of philosophy comes about a
century late and a dollar short. Already in 1903 William James showed what
was happening in his short essay "The Ph.D. Octopus."
And Peirce's former student at John's Hopkins University, Thorstein
Veblen, skewered the deadening bureaucratization of the mind already
underway, not simply in philosophy, but in university life in general in
America in his book, *The Higher Learning in America*. It was originally
subtitled “A Study in Total Depravity,” but softened to “A Memorandum on
the Conduct of Universities by Business Men,” when it appeared in 1918.
Veblen noted:
“The school becomes primarily a bureaucratic organization and the first and
unremitting duties of the staff are those of official management and
accountancy. The further qualifications requisite to the members of the
academic staff will be such as make for vendibility, volubility, tactical
effrontery [and] conspicuous conformity to the popular taste in all matters
of opinion, usage and conventions.”
You can add "clever" to "conformity to the popular taste in all
matters of opinion." And Grant Procurement to "vendibility." The outcome is
a replacement of the passion for learning, the love of wisdom, the
"addiction to study":
"A substitution of salesmanlike proficiency -- a balancing of bargains
in staple credits -- in the place of scientific capacity and addiction to
study.”
And if anyone would like to see the results of "the act of
purification that gave birth to the concept of philosophy most of us know
today," they can be viewed here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orozco_-_Dartmouth_b.JPG
Gene
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