dgswaim

He wrote both. "Superior" does have a better comic quality though...

I think it's more than a little insulting when he makes claims to the effect that people doing work on Derrida, Badiou (apparently), Bataille, etc., should be relegated to literature departments. He often then goes further to insult the work being done by people in literature departments. Edit: I also find it telling that the specialties breakdown only distinguishes "continental" philosophy in terms of 19th and 20th century work in the field, etc., while "analytic" philosophy is broken down extensively into a wide range of subfields. Why can't we give a category to hermeneutics? Phenomenology? Deconstruction? Critical theory? Race theory?

I thought Hegel was the God of philosophers...?

Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking declared the uselessness of philosophy altogether. Can we unite and attack those guys?

Dear God I hope dfindley is lurking in these forums and reading this.

This is all my fault for having suggested that rankings not be taken so seriously. I regret it now.

I think there's some truth in this. I applied mainly to programs that respect both the analytic and the continental tradition, because it seems odd to study one to the exclusion of the other, in my opinion.

The question, really, is this: What isn't dfindley?

I find what Leiter does to be very useful. I read his rankings and his blog. But I do fear that people can forget that his rankings don't capture everything one might want to know about a given department: placement, quality of teaching, supportiveness of the faculty, department atmosphere (i.e. open mindedness, pluralism, etc.), funding for travel to conferences, and so on etc. Also, I tend to disagree with Leiter (somewhat) in his assessment of much of the work being done in contemporary european philosophy. But it probably isn't fair to say he has a thoroughgoing bias against the continental tradition tout court. I mean... he is a Nietzsche guy, right?

I don't think my point (if I have one) is that cutting the rankings off at 50 is precisely the problem. I would say that there is something rather problematic in saying that UC Riverside is substantially better as place to do graduate work in philosophy than, say, Rice or Purdue. Is the school occupying spot number 17 really that much better in terms of rigor and quality of scholarship than number 41? I suspect not.

I disagree. Based on what I see they do a reasonably good job of finding work for their people. Further, it only tracks initial placements, and probably not all of them. I personally know 3 people who have gone through their program, and two of them have long-term visiting positions and one is in a tenure-track position. I really don't want to get into a whole thing about this. I'm beginning to regret ever having brought up the PGR.

"My metaphysics are awesome"

I'm not as familiar with Julia Kristeva, but I've done some limited work on Irigaray and Badiou relative to certain questions in philosophy of religion (religious epistemology, in particular), and I found their work both engaging and rigorous. Come on Leiter...

YES!!! YES!!! YES!!! YES!!! Where do I invest?

Did he really say that about Badiou? I'm not even of a particularly continental leaning and I find that statement utterly absurd.

There are a lot of great programs that aren't in the top 50. Boston College, Fordham, Purdue, Illinois UC, Iowa, Utah, Marquette, St. Louis and so on etc.

South Florida, for instance, is only mentioned once on the PGR for its strength in 20th century continental philosophy, and I'm pretty sure its one of those ones that's been "inserted by the board." But USF has a number of research strengths across the discipline, including early modern philosophy, philosophy of science, and epistemology (plus a really cool track in philosophy and religious studies, which I have applied to). The people I've talked to there say that their students regularly land tenure-track positions and long-term visiting positions.

There are a lot of really great schools that are nowhere to be found in the PGR. Ultimately one should just do the work of researching various departments and deciding whether or not it seems it would be a good place to study given the properties a given student finds relevant. The PGR is helpful; I can grant that. I don't think it's very controversial to suggest that it is also very limited.

Maybe we need a Leiter Rankings debate thread?

Can anyone claim Urbana-Champaign? Odd time of day...

Sure. I never claimed that rankings (or the Leiter rankings) are useless tout court. That would be a difficult position to defend in any case. I just find it's a limited way to think about graduate education in philosophy. Many non-Leiter schools do well in job placement. I think we just differ somewhat in opinion, and that's fine.

Um... what?

Agreed. I also don't understand the obsession with rankings... but I think I'm in the minority there.

Another thing: stress is not the only thing that one need learn to cope with. Also: boredom.

I think Hofstadter told a similar joke in his book "I Am a Strange Loop." It's a good one.