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14:15

(In »Syntheist temples and monasteries in the global empire«)

Nowhere is philosophy’s tragic academicisation as evident as in the servile acceptance of the discipline’s own specialisation. Instead of taking some form of responsibility and attacking, or at least problematising, the fragmentation of the social arena that the academic and the professional hyperspecialisation of the 20th century gives rise to, philosophy heedlessly contributes to precisely this triumph of fragmentation by prostrating itself for this development and letting itself be split into lots of small, limited subject areas without any overarching critical discourse. Philosophy surrenders masochistically to hyperspecialisation, internalises it and produces texts that both embody and uncritically celebrate the fragmentation per se. This is most apparent in academic philosophy’s escalating demonisation of metaphysics and its metanarratives under late capitalism.