Page 127 - JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS

or the last two decades I have taught as a professor of phi-
losophy at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz,
Germany. Throughout my academic career I have mostly
F specialized in the area of analytical philosophy of mind and
cognitive science. This has mainly involved working on theories
of consciousness, self-consciousness, and subjectivity in a strongly
interdisciplinary manner, always keeping an eye on the latest devel-
opments in related fields like neuroscience, empirical psychology,
or artificial intelligence. I have travelled a lot, have interacted with
researchers all over the world, and all in all have taught philosophy
in eight German universities.
If you live the life of an academic philosopher, you meet a lot of
truly great minds. You regularly encounter extremely sharp and
intelligent people, women and men who are much smarter than
you have ever been or could ever be yourself. Sometimes you may
not even grasp how much smarter than you some of your colleagues
actually are. But you quickly learn to feel humbled by intellects
much clearer and faster than your own. It is certainly true that in
academic philosophy, the overall psychodynamics and the social
patterns of interaction are often highly pathological. Yet still, it is
here that many of humankind’s greatest minds gather. Here, you
will meet truly impressive scholars, researchers whose knowledge
is profound and substantial, deep thinkers with an overview of the
history of philosophy and a command of the canonical literature
that is utterly unbelievable to an ordinary person. (I sometimes
secretly call these people ‘libraries on legs’.) You will occasionally
witness experts in formal logic and other highly technical subfields
who are so brilliant that only a few can follow them. Some of them
live lonely lives, because they operate on levels of abstraction so
rarefied that few even understand the fundamental importance
of the philosophical problems they are trying to solve. And then

*I am greatly indebted to Dr Emily Troscianko for editorial help with this contribution.

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