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142 Herbert Hrachovec

with a one-sentence indication of my personal position: philosophy
disposes of an enormous amount of knowledge, some of which can
well be put to unauthorised use by newcomers and even dilettantes
as they take up a challenge previously unknown.

philweb

What I’ve been saying amounts to an extended answer to the follow-
ing question that was put on several mailing lists dealing with philo-
sophical topics on February 14, 1998:

I wonder what are the main email lists for philosophical dis-
cussions. I am not looking for a specific topic, but philosophy
in general. By main lists I mean lists where the discussion
includes all kind of philosophies, as well as reference to what
is going on today in the area.

As Jim Morrison was singing in the late sixties: “We want the world
and we want it now.” This is not going to work, but it is not com-
pletely crazy either. I was surprised at the courtesy with which this
inquiry was met, the sender simply being referred to some of the well-
known listings of philosophical resources. On closer inspection,
though, simple-minded interventions like the question quoted above
raise more interesting issues. What are we to expect from the ubiq-
uity of such naïve enquiries? Can mailing lists overcome the constant
danger of being deflated? Can philosophical activity be adjusted to
profit from the potential of permanent ad hoc disturbance?
One possible reaction is to settle for administrative information.
Philos-L offers professional services to English-language philoso-
phers and I have established a similar list (register) to serve the ac-
ademic community in German-speaking countries. 13 But such
undertakings, while clearly being useful, provide a very limited an-
swer to the general worry. Electronically addressing the members of
the profession is highly convenient and will undoubtedly become
even more widespread in the future—but what about content? Will
it be affected by its means of proliferation? It should by now be obvi-
ous that putting the issue in such general terms will only provide
utopian (or dystopian) guesswork. The question’s scope has to be re-
stricted and I will base a tentative answer on my familiarity with
the current employment of the Internet for philosophical purposes in
Austria, Germany and Switzerland.