“David Chalmers”:http://fragments.consc.net/djc/2005/05/frank_jackson_p.html has persuaded Frank Jackson to post many papers to the “Centre for Consciousness”:http://consciousness.anu.edu.au/papers.html website. One of them is Frank’s “review of James Franklin’s _Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia_”:http://consciousness.anu.edu.au/jackson/franklinreview.pdf. It starts with the following line.

bq. Philosophers are reluctant to take time off to do history, even the history of their own subject.

Now I know history of philosophy is not a big part of the mission at the Research School, but I never knew it had completely dropped off the radar screens!

I remember when this came out in print someone (and I can’t remember who) suggested the best interpretation was that he meant contemporary history, which would be relevant, given Franklin’s book, and make the claim true. So that’s the natural charitable interpretation. But as novel and unexpected sentences go, this one was fairly novel and unexpected.