Philosophical Dictionary

Philosophy started in the marketplace: Socrates talked to anyone who would answer and Diogenes ate in the agora. Plato’s Academy gave us the word “academic”, the Stoics named a school after a public porch, and philosophy cafés pulled it back onto the street. So who does it better, and is the degree worth the money?

Inkompetenzkompensationskompetenz sounds like a typing accident, but the German philosopher Odo Marquard meant it seriously: philosophy, once competent for everything, is left with one skill. Career websites now use the word for bluffers. Who is right, and what can philosophers actually do that nobody else does?