… like a great deal else, philosophy isn't what it used to be, is it? One longs for those passionate, not-suffering-fools-gladly, intemperate, entertaining, exasperating, eccentric characters of yore: Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Leopardi (a poet-philosopher or a philosopher-poet, as you wish), and Wittgenstein come to mind. Or, to go back even further: Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Heraclitus.
When it comes to sensibilities such as these, one has the feeling that philosophy is a matter of life and death, that it has something vital to do with how we live and how we die. Now, we have academic philosophy. Shot through with politics, social "science," and semantics, as one would expect. Posturing and word-play.
There is often quite a difference between a philosopher and a professor of philosophy.
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