The Professionalization of Philosophy and the Criteria of Philosophical Knowledge

In this paper, I investigate the issue of the professionalization of philosophy, taking as my starting point the debate triggered by the publication of Diego Marconi’s monograph, Il mestiere di pensare (Thinking as a Trade, ). This debate about the state of the art of Italian philosophy and the increased tendency towards specialization in philosophy is still on-going. It raises the issue of how to understand the putative split between analytic and continental philosophy, and how to establish standards or criteria for evaluating the quality of philosophical research. I conclude by posing the question about what needs to change in our knowledge practices and suggest that what is needed is an overhauling of our conceptions of trust, reliance, testimony, and justice, with a view to re-defining how social identity affects the way we operate in philosophical practice and how we establish our credibility.