Having happily accepted that an academic job is unlikely to happen. I've started writing with joy, and without pressure. Grad students who are constantly publishing, and not taking time to enjoy what they actually produce will burn themselves out.

There is a real issue here. If Graduates feel obliged to pyblish that amount - and it is not just Graduates, our discipline has not only become infested with terrible people - but will become alienated from itself in the way Marx's talks about.

The job market has been shaped by Capitalism and tastemarkers (re: @deontologistics) which have mounted prestige has the necessary consequence of philosophical endeavour. Rather than endeavour being the main goal of philosophy.

A vast majority of work published today does not allow one to engage with in an exploratory manner. The style and rhetoric of modern philosophy closes the gate on finding out new ideas, and creating dialogues. Exploring the new.

As much as their positivity annoys me some times, @Iron_Intellect embraces this idea of exploration like no other. Not everything is good, or worthwhile, but they do make an effort everyday to look for it. Publishing 18 articles in threee years is not what we should be about.

Philosophy is already an alienating topic. The discussions we get into are weird, wonderful, grotesque and illuminating. But in the rush for the scant jobs by flooding journals with articles, we're engaging and supporting the bureaucratizing of a discipline.

That philosophy is now basically bureaucracy is a terrible indictment of how we have gone about it for the last 50 years. Not just in analytic philosophy - though the results are readily perceived in that space - but in all forms of philosophy.

My advice for PhDs, which comes from someone who is submitted a couple years ago is enjoy the work. It's hard, anxiety-inducing work. But also the experiences you have and gain during this period can be the best. Have fun with it.

As so many independent scholars have shown, you can still do brillant philosphy outside academia. You can still publish and engage in ideas. You can still explore the vast limits of knowledge that we encounter. That's the rant.