Topics Philosophers

Question I've heard, in the pre-Internet era of the 80s and early 90s, that because of academic specialization and professionalization in philosophy, one would be really hard pressed to discover a non-academic personal kind of philosophy like the kind found in Kierkegaard's journals and self-published writings in the 20th century. But now with the Internet in the 21st century, it seems that non-academics can put forth one's philosophy in blogs, websites and forums and even self-publish their own philosophy books and ebooks on online publishing sites very inexpensively. So, my question is can one discover a great philosopher like Kierkegaard in our digital Internet era? And more importantly, will we?

Accepted:
January 2, 2013

Comments

I assume there will be non-academic thinkers who are regarded by future generations (or even by others in the current generation) as great philosophers by some. As Aristotle said long ago, honor depends on those who bestow it, and so if enough people think that someone's blog or whatever is loaded with "great philosophy" then so be it. Moreover, I see no reason to think that even some groups of academics will find some the writings (or bloggings) of some non-academic worthy of the title, "great philosophy."

But I also think that we may be talking past one another here. For there are certain fields of philosophy that have become extremely technical, and I regard it as very unlikely that anyone who is not academically trained in these areas will be able to provide important advances in such areas. But of course, there might still come to be some self-taught genius who does just that. So who knows?

I suppose one thing that would be worth thinking more about would be what characteristics make some philosophy or philosopher "great." Speaking just for myself, it is not just obvious that I would call Kierkegaard a "great philosopher." I can't think of anything that I found in his writings that I would regard as "great philosophy," and at least some of it struck me as...well, at best a bit strange. But what do I know?