ancientatcontinental

Philhopeful's comments were very nice and generous. I hope you get into a nice program. That attitude will help when teaching. Still, I think it would be best for Findley to stop wasting his own time. People have been suggesting that Findley here apply to continental programs. I have to say, it doesn't matter; this application will not make it into any Ph.D. programs. It's not like only the top 20 programs have a boatload of applicants; smaller, continental, pluralistic, etc. programs also often get 300 or more applicants. It's standard to eliminate any applicants which don't meet certain GRE and GPA minimums (e.g. at my continental/history of philosophy department, they eliminate any GRE's below the 90th percentile in verbal). Letters of recommendation are a must. Moreover, Findley, your attitude is terrible. Graduate school is a professional program. You don't like that? Then don't apply. You want people to send you money just because you think you're smart? It's not going to happen; this is not how graduate programs work. I aspire to someday be a philosopher, but my graduate program does not somehow give me that. I work hard and do this because I like teaching, I like scholarship, I like the environment, and I love philosophy. For me, I think of graduate school as a necessary but not sufficient condition to being a philosopher, a teacher, a scholar, etc. Other people perhaps can do without it - great! But for me, I need to work on these things, and even getting through grad school is no guarantee that I will be talented at any of them, I do not think I would be able to do any of those things without it. Also, a lot of people have been very nice, and giving your 'book' the benefit of the doubt. Sorry, but it's terrible (and not even close to what a dissertation in continental philosophy looks like). On the very first page you start with an Heidegger misquote with no citations. Heidegger says, at the beginning of his Introduction to Metaphysics lecture series (1935): "why are there beings rather than nothing?". I am not a Heideggerian, but this is just egregious (keep in mind that one of Heidegger's most famous positions is that there is a difference between Being and beings!). Then there is clearly an extended case of not knowing what words mean - phenomena, noumena, dynamism, etc. You talk about things being "Eleatic" or "Hegelian", but there is clearly no attention to what Parmenides or Hegel actually said (or poor Schelling!). Lastly, this is the 21st fricking century - stop it with the gender biases in your writing! Oh, is MAN the culimination of 'metaphysical dialectic'? Seriously, this is merely sexist. Your work is not just poor scholarship, it's poor philosophy. My advice. If you really want to be a philosophy professor, then this is what you have to do: Stop wasting your money and time on applying to Ph.D. programs. Your only bet is to rework your application completely and apply to MA programs (one of the ones you have to pay for, because funded MA's are just as competitive as Ph.D.'s). Totally change your attitude. Throw out all your own 'philosophic research'. Genuinely let it go. Devote yourself to scholarship for a while - read the classics, read commentaries on them. Research small-scale questions, or investigate the history of philosophy. I am all for breadth, but in your case you have sacrificed all depth. Hell, just pick out a single work and take your time figuring out what is really being said here - use secondarily literature as well! This is obviously not what you want to hear, but you should know that you are not going to get into any programs. If you apply to more schools next year with the same application, you still will not get into any programs. You are wasting your time and money. You need to completely change things from the ground up, and even then you're going to have to work your way up from the bottom of the field. My guess is that none of this is palatable for you. Ok, then do something else with your life. Sorry, academia is incredibly competitive. It's bloated with talented and hard working students who didn't write off their early modern philosophy professors. Every year, there are so many great and smart applicants who don't get in, and a lot of them even do everything 'right' (sorry everyone!). And this is just the beginning. What about when you want to apply for fellowships? When you need to teach courses? Adjuncting? How about that dreaded job market? You want somebody to fund your studying? Get a part time job and live within your means. Take your free time to study. Hell, most graduate programs pay you well below the poverty line anyway! And adjunct professors get paid so far below minimum wage it's atrocious (e.g. $3000 to teach a course that meets three days a week). You think you don't need all this academic bullshit, then don't deal with it. Maybe he is a troll though! If that were so, then I acknowledge the greatness of the trolling and am glad to be fooled.

http://www.newappsblog.com/2011/12/2011-pgr-20th-c-cp-board.html http://choiceandinference.com/2012/04/17/manufactured-assent-the-philosophical-gourmet-reports-sampling-problem/ http://web.missouri.edu/~ernstz/Home_files/emperor-1.pdf I think Leiter's opinions should be taken with a grain of salt, especially when it comes to continental philosophy. Places like chicago are definitely 'pluralistic', and some continental does get done there (although with any program, you need to be more specific - can you study Hegel or Nietzsche at Chicago? Yes. Is it the best place to study Irigaray or Deleuze? I am tempted to say not at all). But Leiter dislikes SPEP and anything associated with it (honestly, SPEP is filled with bad philosophy, but there is great stuff there too) even though it's the political and professional center for continental philosophy. There's a lot more that can be said, but it's a mistake to think the gourmet and Leiter are in representative of the graduate environment. They might be helpful at giving you a sense of schools, but you need to consider what you are really interested in, look at faculty at schools, talk to students, etc. etc. If you want to study Hegel, you might apply to Pitt and Georgetown, but you probably should also consider Depaul, Duquesne, and NSSR. If you want to study Foucault, then you'll have a new list. Early Modern? There are some great scholars for that in analytic, continental, and pluralistic programs alike. Etc... background: I am ABD at a continental school. I work on ancient. I have taken graduate courses at analytic departments. I have presented papers at all sorts of places (spep, analytic depts, ancient phil places). Etc.