Why so few philosophers communicate with general audiences? As if they had nothing important to say in the public arena. In most cases, they do their job within the academic environment, as they did it decades ago. The university and college people are the only target audience, as it was a century ago. They teach in a classroom, give speeches at low attended conferences and publish their texts in highly specialized journals. Their complicated language of communication is a serious barrier to non-philosophers. The problems they try to solve aren’t ones that the members of the public would recognize as problems. It’s not often that they give public speeches and TV interviews, unless they enter the political world. Very few attract a public attention. I am thinking about it because the Internet has become such a public sphere. Is it a sort of obligation for philosophers to use it?
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