> <i>I have continued to read philosophy over the years. Next on my list is the new translation of Maimonides, which on first glance seems like a big improvement. However I read much less philosophy in refereed journals than I used to. Frankly, I think most of it is not very philosophical and also not very interesting. It is not about real problems, but rather tries to carve out a small piece that is both marginally noticeable by an academic referee and also defensible, again to an academic referee. That strikes me as a bad way to do philosophy. It worked pretty well say in the 1960s, but these days those margins are just too small.</i><p>> <i>Most professional philosphers seem to me more like bureaucrats than philosophers. They simply do not embody philosophic ideals, either in their writings or in their persons.</i><p>There are various reasons for this, but one of the <i>really</i> big ones is the retreat from metaphysics and the decline in influence of the Church. All of the great old names in philosophy were interested in the metaphysical and ineffable -- in questions that only philosophy, theology, and <i>perhaps</i> physics can answer -- even if it wasn't always their focus. Today's academic philosophers recoil from those questions as though they were radioactive.<p>I'd add to Cowen's list (which I mostly disagree with, lol at Douthat and Callard,) that physicists and mathematicians like Stephen Wolfram, Gregory Chaitin, and David Deutsch are outstanding contemporary philosophers. They're the ones still trying to answer the big questions.