Lovers of Wisdom

Lovers of Wisdom: George Santayana remarked in one of his books that there is no good reason for a philosopher to make his living teaching in a university. He would probably be better off as the man who collects umbrellas and checks coats in a small, seldom-visited museum. And Santayana’s onetime colleague at Harvard, William James, more or less seconded the motion: What an awful trade that of professor is—paid to talk, talk, talk. . . . It would be an awful universe if everything could be converted to words, words, words.
As Justin Smith points out, the word coined by the Greeks 2,500 years ago meaning love of wisdom and implying a simple, serene way of life has come to mean a credentialed, cordoned-off university profession consisting of people who do philosophy the way others do accounting. He brings up a prominent professor (unnamed) who, in 2014, threatened to sue another, lesser-known professor for having written that he was not a philosopher (because, despite his standard academic credentials, he was in a different department). Smith wonders what it could mean if one could plausibly conceive of 'philosopher' simply as a sort of license or accreditation, and thus . . . think of the claim that someone is 'not a philosopher' as a simple denial of something that is factually true.