The PGR has always given substantial attention to the Continental traditions in post-Kantian philosophy, reporting, much to the self-interested consternation of those affected, the generally low opinion philosophers hold of the SPEP departments that would like to maintain an exclusive claim to these areas. But the SPEP partisans are tireless in promoting the canard that the PGR neglects the Continental traditions, even though it is obvious to anyone who looks that the reverse is the case.
This year, we had a large and diverse grew of evaluators for 19th-century Continental philosophy; I've added their institutional affiliation: Mark Alznauer (Northwestern), Jessica Berry (Georgia State), Lee Braver (South Florida), Taylor Carman (Barnard/Columbia), Maudemarie Clark (UC Riverside), Steven Crowell (Rice), Sebastian Gardner (UCL), Ken Gemes (Birkbeck), Gary Gutting (Notre Dame), Paul Guyer (Brown), Michael Hardimon (UC San Diego), Stephen Houlgate (Warwick), Andrew Huddleston (Birkbeck), Scott Jenkins (Kansas), Peter Kail (Oxford), Paul Katsafanas (BU), Pierre Keller (UC Riverside), Brian Leiter (Chicago), Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins), Dean Moyar (Johns Hopkins), Andreja Novakovic (UC Riverside), Brian O’Connor (Univ College Dublin), Michael Rosen (Harvard), Iain Thomson (New Mexico), Somogy Varga (Memphis), Georgia Warnke (UC Riverside), Eric Watkins (UC San Diego), Allen Wood (Indiana), Mark Wrathall (Oxford).
Probably the biggest divide among scholars who work on 19th-century Continental philosophy is between those whose focus is primarily on German Idealism, and those whose focus is more on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Fortunately, we had a good mix here: in the former group, we have Alznauer, Gardner, Guyer, Houlgate, Keller, Melamed, Moyar, Novakovic, Rosen, Watkins, and Wood, among others; in the latter group, Clark, Gemes, Huddleston, and Kail, among others. And several evaluators cut across these figures (e.g., Braver, Jenkins, Hardimon, among others).
Below the fold, the results followed by some comments:
| Institution | Rounded Mean | Median | Mode(s) | Group |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Columbia University | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4.5 | 1 |
| Boston University | 4 | 4 | 3.5 | 2 |
| Brown University | 4 | 4.25 | 4.5 | 2 |
| Johns Hopkins University | 4 | 4 | 4.0,5.0 | 2 |
| New York University | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 |
| University of Chicago | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 |
| University of Warwick | 4 | 4 | 3.5 | 2 |
| Georgetown University | 3.5 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| Indiana University, Bloomington | 3.5 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Syracuse University | 3.5 | 3.5 | 4 | 3 |
| University College London | 3.5 | 3.5 | 4 | 3 |
| University of California, Riverside | 3.5 | 3.75 | 3 | 3 |
| Yale University | 3.5 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Birkbeck College, University of London | 3 | 3.5 | 4 | 4 |
| Cornell University | 3 | 3 | 2.5,3.0,3.5 | 4 |
| Northwestern University | 3 | 3 | 3.0,4.0 | 4 |
| Oxford University | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| Princeton University | 3 | 2.5 | 2.0,2.5 | 4 |
| Purdue University | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| Stanford University | 3 | 3.5 | 3.5,4.0 | 4 |
| University of California, San Diego | 3 | 3.5 | 4 | 4 |
| University of Sheffield | 3 | 3.5 | 3.5 | 4 |
| University of Toronto | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
Additional programs not evaluated this year but recommended for consideration by the Advisory Board: University of Essex; University of Kentucky; University of New Mexico; University of Southampton
The big change this year is that Chicago is no longer #1 in this group, displaced by Columbia. Frankly, I've been surprised Columbia hasn't been tied for #1 previously, given the presence now of four scholars working on major figures of 19th-century Continental philosophy (Carman on Nietzsche, Gooding-Williams on Nietzsche, Honneth on Hegel and Marx, Neuhouser on German Idealism). The big change since 2014 is that Chicago's Robert Pippin (best-known for his Hegel work) is now over 70 (the other major Hegel scholar at Chicago, Michael Forster, has been part-time since before 2014). The medians and modes are also revealing: Brown (with Paul Guyer, Charles Larmore, and Bernard Reginster) has diverse coverage of 19th-century Continental philosophy, though no one who is primarily a Hegel specialist; while Johns Hopkins (with Eckart Forster, Yitzhak Melamed, and Dean Moyar) is outstanding for German Idealism, but weaker for the major figures after that–but in both cases, many evaluators would have ranked them higher. A place like Birkbeck (with Gemes and Huddleston working on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche) captures the dilemma of the category: a rounded mean of 3, but a mode of 4, no doubt reflecting the divergence of opinion among German Idealism specialists who view that field as crucial, while others working on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are less concerned with the weakness in German Idealism compared to the strength in (the really important!) figures; something similar can be said for the Stanford results. The flipside is Yale, with one well-known senior figure working on German Idealism (Paul Franks), but no one well-known for work on the later figures.
My personal opinion is that Riverside is ranked too low (Maudemarie Clark and Pierre Keller are both first-rate scholars of, respectively, Nietzsche and German Idealism) and UC San Diego too low (Hardimon works on Hegel and Nietzsche, Rutherford on Nietzsche, Watkins on German Idealism), but, as always, individual opinions of experts will differ from the aggregation of many different views. As I have long advised, students should not treat differences of a single grouping (e.g., Group 1 vs. Group 2) as significant in making their own decisions.
In any case, the important thing is for students to learn how to interpret the results. What's clear is that students interests in 19th-century Continental figures will do very well to start with this list of programs in figuring out where to apply.
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