Footnote to “Why Does Philosophy Exist?”

[1] I suspect some of the hostility to philosophy in certain academic circles arises from a sense that philosophy has no right to exist—that it is just an institutional holdover from earlier times. For the subject seems to persist without solving its problems and yet there is no good explanation of this fact. So the only reason for its presence must be the heavy weight of academic tradition. It would be different if philosophy dealt with problems about the incredibly small or impossibly remote! Then its lack of progress would be perfectly understandabe.