Because there are hundreds of other people writing dissertations in the field, and you're expected to contribute something original, you end up having to narrow in on a research topic that's really specialized. So specialized, in fact, that it strains the human ability to give a shit. Let's take a look at some recent philosophy dissertation topics. We've got: "Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutic Ontology: Between Aristotle and Kant" "A Gadamerian Analysis of Roman Catholic Hermeneutics: A Diachronic Analysis of Interpretations of Romans 1:17-2:17" "The Paradox of Nature: Merleau-Ponty's Semi-Naturalistic Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology" Fuck! Without the aid of Merleau-Ponty's semi-naturalistic approach, how are we ever going to develop an adequate critique of Husserlian phenomenology? This is a serious problem. Good thing someone spent the final years of his young life writing about it. Now to be fair I haven't actually read these dissertations. For all I know they could be really brilliant and interesting pieces of writing, despite having inaccessible, jargon-laden titles. But you see the point I'm trying to make. The philosopher Daniel Dennett said that much of academic philosophy amounts to discovering "higher-order truths about chmess," chmess being a variant on chess that nobody actually plays. I think there's a certain personality type that enjoys difficult intellectual problems for their own sake, and if that's you, academia might be a perfectly good place for you. But it's not for me.

Natalie Wynn

Contrapoints explains why she left the academia.

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Why I Quit Academia

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