“When the main reason why people do x is so that someone else can evaluate their ability to do x, it seems to me that something has gone wrong.”
Seems to me that part of the problem with philosophy (and those who make it, especially for a living) is that no one, except perhaps a few practical crackpots and conspiracy theorists, seems to acknowledge or admit there is connection between this basic flaw in how philosophies are presented and evaluated and the way that flaw presents itself across a spectrum of other life activities – in the evaluation of experts by non-experts, in the insistence that celebrity makes for better theories, etc.
