Bentham and Mill never held a philosophy job; today almost every philosopher does
Many of the nineteenth century's great thinkers were journalists, politicians, clergy or civil servants. Then philosophy turned into a profession with doctorates, departments and peer-reviewed journals. That shift, beginning with Hegel's state appointment in 1817, defines the contemporary era and explains why so little philosophy now reaches ordinary readers.
Contemporary philosophy is the current period of Western thought, dated from the early twentieth century, when the discipline professionalised and split into analytic and continental camps. It should not be confused with modern philosophy, an earlier era, or with postmodernism. Professionalisation means setting standards of conduct and qualification and separating the credentialed from amateurs. One visible side effect, as Thomas Kuhn's account quoted in the literature notes, is that the book gives way to short technical articles written only for colleagues.
Germany led. At the end of 1817 the Prussian education minister made Hegel the first philosopher appointed professor by the state, a product of Napoleonic-era reform. American universities followed the German model, and the historian James Campbell describes doctorate holders, often trained in Germany, rapidly replacing ministers and theology graduates in the classroom. New journals such as The Monist in 1890 and The Philosophical Review in 1892 appeared, and the American Philosophical Association was founded in 1900. Its Eastern Division meeting still draws around 2,000 philosophers each December and doubles as the country's biggest hiring fair for the field.
In Britain, Henry Sidgwick generously named T. H. Green the first professional academic philosopher, though Sidgwick himself and William Hamilton are rival contenders. Between Mill's death in 1873 and G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica in 1903, Green helped separate philosophy from literary and historical study, built an Oxford curriculum and encouraged specialist periodicals like Mind.
The cost is distance from the public. Unlike science, philosophy has little popular media, though Michael Sandel's Justice and Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit both became New York Times best sellers. Geography still divides the field: analytic work dominates Britain, Canada and Australia, while continental work prevails across much of Europe. John Searle insisted the deep problems cut across both traditions, which share everything up to Kant and part ways over figures such as Hegel.
Source: Contemporary philosophy
