Why is serious philosophy dominated by academics?
Honestly, that a philosopher/scholar would TEACH for a living was totally new when Kant did it, now we all assume that a person can't really be a serious philosopher if they're not in academia.
What gives with the institutionalized constraints?
are they beneficial to the field or detrimental? or if it's a mixture, how so and to what degree for each?
It's not that i think Kant was the first professional teacher, it's that I know that Kant was the first, --- I'll qualify -- in over 1,000 years, who was both a well known philosopher and a teacher.
people just couldn't make enough money. philosophers were usually rich playboys reading books from an early age or monks who had no need for money. not really a point of contention, check it out. He taught, for example, the first anthropology class. He taught logic, sciences, geography, whatever needed taught, in order to make ends meet.
That's not really the point anyways. The point is that until about 130-150 years ago, philosophers were not college professors, now they are professors exclusively.
in the name of all that is holy, the point isn't whether or not plato taught socrates, (as I say in the last edit), the point is that professional philosophy means academicians, and this IS a new concept, new in the last 150 years or so at least.
again, between aristotle and kant, most philosophers were rich folks with time to spend on studying or monestarians who were obligated to make a study of ontology or theology... it just wasn't the case that people taught in universities as the rule -- the only well-known philosopher to do so after aristotle was kant, that's all i said and all i meant... the QUESTION was *WHY* is philosophy dominated by academicians, not whether or not some unknown was an exception to the rule before kant.
people read what they want, and not what is, i suppose.