Historian and philosopher Richard Carrier, famous for his work on the historical Jesus recently published a lecture with the title “Is Philosophy Stupid?” In it, he surveys common and modern views of philosophy, gives an historical analysis of what philosophy was meant to be, and provides some ideas on how philosophy could improve in the future. As expected, he over-indexes on naturalism and scientism as examples of “progress” in philosophy but overall his polemic against critics and guidance for how philosophy should work are pretty decent.

His lecture notes are here

You can view the lecture itself here

Carrier’s blog posting

Thanks to Bob Seidensticker for the link (and check out Bob’s latest book, A Modern Christmas Carol here)