I can think of economists and political theorists whose ideas have changed my life. I can think of engineers, inventors, jurists, even artists, who have upset the equilibrium of my days, not always for the better. But the philosopher wanders the scholastic desert alone, skirting any oasis where he might find beings who speak a common tongue. The heirs of Socrates and Aristotle, Erasmus and Hume wrestle with each other apart. Perhaps we have dumbed so far down that we celebrate sheer abstruseness.
Philosophers embody pure learning, pure irrelevance.
We value them not as intellectual snobs but as ascetics, hermits defying the draconian quantification of David Blunkett 's quality auditors. Yet showering philosophers with awards lets them off the hook. There is work for them to do, urgent work that they seem to funk. I doubt if public policy has ever had a longer agenda for them to tackle, problems that would have delighted a Locke or a John Stuart Mill . Crime and punishment at present suffer acute philosophy starvation.