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Articles

At the Festival of Philosophy

Over the last 150 years the commanding heights of philosophy have been captured by paid, university-based academics. A feature of this shift has been the growth of conferences – hundreds take place each year, tiny ones and vast ones, some devoted to narrow topics such as the Early Wittgenstein and others covering the whole range of human thought. Opinions are divided about conferences, with some seeing them as a substitute for actually doing philosophy and others regarding them as essential to the exchange of ideas which can spark genuinely creative work. Here we present two very different views of two very different conferences.

Martin Cohen was at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting, Boston, December 27-30th, 1999.

The 96th annual festival of pomposity is over. Meeting in the glittering halls of the Marriott Superhotelrestaurant complex in Bosstown, USA, the future of Anglo-American philosophy has been, if not decided, at least sketched out. For it is at meetings like these that the American universities choose their future professors, and with them, determine the shape of philosophy to come.

I went there to partake of the heady brew of lectures, interviews, and meetings and was duly impressed.

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