Western philosophy

Contemporary philosophy

Despite the tradition of philosophical professionalism established during the Enlightenment by Wolff and Kant, philosophy in the 19th century was still created largely outside the universities. Comte, Mill, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Schopenhauer were not professors, and only the German idealist school was rooted in academic life. Since the mid-20th century, however, most well-known philosophers have been associated with academia. Philosophers more and more employ a technical vocabulary and deal with specialized problems, and they write not for a broad intellectual public but for one another. Professionalism also has sharpened the divisions between philosophical schools and made the question ... (100 of 38,515 words)