The Daily Sabbatical

The legendary MacArthur “genius” grants have been awarded for 2008, and it’s an interesting assortment of folks.  Check em out here.  I have to say I’m always disappointed that philosophers don’t make it onto the list more often, and the philosophers who do are usually incredibly well established, which does not seem to be the trend in many other fields in which the grant seems to find “rising stars.”  Since the award was founded, here are the philosophers who have received it:

Compared to the list of recipients from other disciplines, this is a very short list indeed.  In the humanities, we have more than classics, biography and musicology, but are whomped by religious studies, literary studies, History of Science, History, Art History and Criticism, and American History.  Considering biography and arguably classics is a form of history (though classics no doubt can be grouped with literary studies as well) That leaves us ahead of musicology.  Surely philosophy has a larger place in the intellectual world than this!