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An article published in this same venue opens with a grievance: ‘We lack the philosophers that we require for an era marked with agitation and occupation’ It is a common enough complaint and one worth listening to – not for its own merit, but for what it reveals about the politics that produce it Turn it inside out into a research question: ‘Do we have the philosophers we need?’ and it reveals itself as a rejection of responsibility; as if new, radical philosophy is handed out to a generation like a pamphlet or a lecture A philosopher is not something we possess, no matter what college boards have advertised They, for a time, possess us Presupposing for now that there is a ‘we’ to talk about, let’s ask a question, the answer to which would directly implicate us: ‘Why are we – the self-styled Left – failing to conjure the philosophers that we need? ‘ The answer, I suspect, will begin with an admission: ‘Because we don’t have the stomach for them’ If we can arrive at the point when we openly admit this physiological problem, then we might finally be ready to raise real philosophical questions and even draw out the people who can shoulder them   I am not the first person to suggest that philosophy will have to leave its current academic confines and become a tool for education, institution building, and politics But I can add – looking at how the past few generations of the Left have conducted themselves – that the desire for a philosophical education has disappeared Philosophy scuttles and groans in a closet, and those who are still able to dream of a different world, sleep uncomfortably   In our period of advanced capitalism things change in conditions of near-total acquiescence, as almost everyone feels invested in the current socio-economic system In the West, slavery (in the form of wage-labour at home and abroad) is accepted and promoted by all classes, even as a precondition of their parliamentary freedoms If the society had any political volition at