2021 In Review - Daily Nous

This is the end, philosofriends…

…of 2021.

[photo by J. Weinberg]

By way of some overall remarks on the year, well, the main one is that it is difficult to make overall remarks on the year. COVID-19 continued to negatively affect our professional and personal lives in various and sometimes devastating ways. Yet it has also continued to familiarize us with technology and practices the usefulness of which may outlast the pandemic. The academic philosophy job market, though perhaps improving relative to recent years, is still rather dreadful. At least there is a greater recognition among philosophy programs of the need for taking non-academic job placement seriously. Several philosophy departments faced threats to their existence, their programs, and their faculty, yet new philosophy programs and projects arose with substantial new funding. Philosophers wrangled over issues related to demographic inclusiveness, but overall the discipline seems to be making progress in that regard. A high-profile public philosophy venue was shuttered, but new public philosophy programs and outlets emerged… So you can see the difficulty with overall remarks.

Here at Daily Nous, we saw the introduction of a new commenting platform and some back-end repairs early in the year that improved the operation of the site. There have been a few complaints about the quality of the comments. As before, I’m open to suggestions about that, and, also as before, I invite people to be the commenters they want to see more of at the site. As for site traffic, it continues to grow; according to Google Analytics, DN saw over 7.7 million page views in 2021.

Below, organized by topic, are a selection of the more popular or otherwise noteworthy posts at Daily Nous published in 2021. As usual, discussion is welcome.

I wish you all joy and beauty in the new year.

Justin

COVID-19

PHILOSOPHY, METAPHILOSOPHY, METHODS

PROFESSION ISSUES

PHILOSOPHY JOB MARKET

PUBLISHING & WRITING

TEACHING

GRADUATE PROGRAMS

EVENTS

PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY

TECHNOLOGY

ACADEMIC FREEDOM & RELATED NEWS

OTHER NEWS ITEMS

AMUSEMENTS

DEATHS

A number of philosophers died this past year. You can see posts about them here.

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V. Alan White

1 year ago

I really can’t imagine how utterly impossible it is to maintain this high-quality contribution to our profession while conducting your other professional duties and having a family, but I think I speak for many how also utterly grateful we are to have you doing this. May we have a year that finally provides some real hope despite all the challenges.

Justin Weinberg

Author

Reply to V. Alan White

That’s very kind of you, Alan. Thank you. I consider providing this service to my fellow philosophers to be a privilege — and even sometimes a pleasure. Happy New Year!

Fritz Allhoff

Thanks for the wrap-up; best wishes to you and your family in 2022!