I think its fruitful to view philosophy as something that evolves rather than progresses. At its core, philosophy is nothing more than a disciplined approach t

I think its fruitful to view philosophy as something that evolves rather than progresses. At its core, philosophy is nothing more than a disciplined approach to acquire knowledge about anything that the human mind is curious. The approach is usually through systematic questioning and applying logic* to the received answers, and iterating till satisfied. What happened was things changed. When "philosophy" first burst onto the scene, everything that man was curious about was ripe for exploration - life, universe, creation, numbers, sexuality, morals, shapes, thoughts, politics - everything. A cursory look at the kinds of topics that were discussed by ancient philosophers (not just the Greeks) should show the same. In time, all these pieces of knowledge got specialized and got separated into their own fields. Now, physics deals with the universe, maths deals with numbers and so on. Knowledge is not a Pangea anymore. All the low hanging fruits have been picked, eaten, digested and turned into manure. That is how the specialization happened. The deep and meaningful questions in each of these fields can only be asked if one is well versed in them. Human knowledge has outgrown the human capacity to be Renaissance men. Thus, we can't expect an outsider like Berkeley take down calculus anymore (but I guess they still do), and such tasks must be left to the experts with a philosophical bent. This leaves "philosophy" with very little to tackle. To me it seems only the question of existence and the meta question about nature of knowledge are left untouched by other fields, but I suppose theology often trespasses. I think this is why most people feel philosophy is boring and useless - the questions are either too abstract or they produce nothing but never ending debates and flamewars with no results that improve the knowledge. Philosophy has evolved. Philosophers must evolve too. I honestly have no idea what philosophers do (probably graduate and teach, and the cycle continues?) but they are left with two things to do to make themselves relevant again (not sure if they feel irrelevant) - pick a field of interest, learn it deeply and ponder over it, or infuse philosophical outlook to the students of various fields who would be better equipped to do the pondering. --- * For sake on convenience, I consider logic as a tool that already exists. To me logic is philosophy in its own right, and it bootstraps philosophy.