I think we need to be always careful in proclaming the end of things such as philosophy, literature, art, cinema, that I have seen proclaimed in several contexts: we should, more humbly, talk, if anything, of end of one kind of of philosophy, not of philosophy as such. It is the end of philosophy meant as domain over concepts, things, but actually, surreptiously, domain over people. In this context, the choice to teach literature, be interested in poetry, or in politics, can considered a symptom of need for a new way of meaning philosophy. The way Kierkegaard talks about time or eternal present is not a metaphysical way, is not a language organized in a dominating way; he talks in an existentialist way.
After realizing that we need a weak philosophy, we need to build a good relationship with metaphysics, because the things of the past cannot just be put in the bin and forgotten. I think that a good relationship with metaphysics should be in the form of a dialogue, rather than adopting passively metaphysics as if it was contraditions-free and well working to get domain over things, reality and people. Metaphysics can be helpful to tell literature and poetry that, even if we have a certain human ability to shape and even create reality, nonetheless we cannot ignore that we need to face humanly humiliating experiences, such as suffering, death, contradictions, inconsistency, forgetfulness. At the same time, we cannot be just pessimistic, because weak or postmodern philosophy, as well as art, literature and a lot of other human experiences, are able to show that we can make miracles, unpredicted wonders.
In this context philosophy ceases to be the place where people look for conclusions, answers, solutions, formulas, that is all stuff to exercise domain, and becomes instead perspective to work, do research, open dialogue, plan comparisons, explore horizons. When we realize this, we can see that philosophy is far from beind ended, there is lot to do and to work on, and it doesn’t need to retrieve any disguised metaphysics or masked realism to gain reputation or to keep afloat. — Angelo Cannata

That was perhaps off putting what I said, but philosophy is not going anywhere ELSE as I see it. As you would have it, it would devolve into the "philosophy of" this and that. For me, philosophy's world is the most basic questions, and these face foundational indeterminacy. Where Joshs says, "Derrida is no sceptic, and he never argues that knowledge is ‘impossible’, only contextually embedded," I say, this is simply putting basic questions on a par with auto mechanics, and you can't do this. Philosophy is that "undiscovered country" dimension of our actuality, not some theory that can be argued away. Heidegger's What Is Metaphysics was very Kierkegaardian, sans the religious fixation. This is the "existential" margin or threshold, and it affects different people in different ways. For some it is not an intellectual impasse, but momentous encounter with the Other of our existence. Levinas, Marion, Henry, et al, and their so called French theological turn explore this.

See Caputo on Derrida. I agree with this: Derrida brings us to the death of philosophy, where to speak at all is to put forth distance. We tend to treat our basic indeterminacy as something familiar, we "totalize" it, as Levinas would say. What is it not to totalize? See Husserl's epoche, for a start. From there, one stops asking, like the Buddhist, the answers are revelatory.

THE foundational insight is not intellectual, which is essentially pragmatic. It is affective. Rorty is right, the truth is made not discovered. But what good is truth as truth? None. This is just a confusion. Truth is, as Dewey put it, merely consummatory, and this is of a piece with the body of experience which is inherently affective. The division is analytic, merely. There is no division, really. Philosophy's real job is to "reduce" the world to its essential presence so that it may be encountered.

For me, philosophy's world is the most basic questions — Constance

Philosophy's real job is to "reduce" the world to its essential presence so that it may be encountered. — Constance

We cannot say what philosophy is before doing philosophy. What philosophy is is determined and evolved in the course of doing it. What the most basic questions are is determined and evolved while we deal with those ones we think they are.

I think that now philosophy is more and more realizing that the basic questions are about humanity, how to be human, rather than trying to understang how things work to master them, that is metaphysics.

We cannot say what philosophy is before doing philosophy. What philosophy is is determined and evolved in the course of doing it. What the most basic questions are is determined and evolved while we deal with those ones we think they are.

I think that now philosophy is more and more realizing that the basic questions are about humanity, how to be human, rather than trying to understang how things work to master them, that is metaphysics. — Angelo Cannata

Not a new era of nuts and bolts metaphysics. Religion is philosophy's new task. Popular religion did not survive the Enlightenment (as we witness its violent death throes today), but the issues that religion was there for on the first place are now exposed and open. Metaphysics is now REAL metaphysics: the encounter with the foundational ethical/affective deficit of being human minus the narrative and the faith. This deficit is of course an epistemic one, that is, we don't know, but the knowledge sought is not more of the Same (Levinas).

Yes, yes, about humanity; but humanity at the threshold, not the ethical nihilism of Rorty (see Critchley's critique of Rorty's private ironist). I think you are in this boat, committed to ethical nihilism, for what is this if not the refusal allow philosophy is proper place: as THE new "religion". Metaphysics can finally be purified, if you will, freed from God, freedom and and soul and useless metaphysics. What IS metaphysics, asks Heidegger? What is that primordial wonder? One thing: it is not a vacuous metaphysics. Why did Kant HAVE TO talk about noumena? Because it was there in the midst of phenomena, only he missed the grand point, didn't he? Phenomena revealed noumena because phenomena IS noumena.

Literature is an evolving concept. It reflects the issues that arise and complicate our lives, and it has in this "relevance" and moves with the times. This is very different from philosophy which has its world grounded in basic questions, questions that do not change with politics, ethics and social norms. — Constance

The history of philosophy shows changes in the issues philosophers take seriously.

I agree, essentially. At this point, the problem is to find a good way as a continuation of philosophy. You said “religion”, I think that the concept of religion is too connected to an idea of perfection, referred either to God or to something else. I cannot Imagine a religion having something limited, imperfect, not completely consistent, as a central reference point. Isn’t actually metaphyisics a quest for a system of ideas that is expected to work with absolute perfection? I cannot conceive a metaphysics of something imperfect. In this context, I think that “spirituality” is better, because it has more human connotations, although a lot of people conceive it as a belief in some kind of transcendent realities. Hadot has already shown us that the first ancient Greek philosophers conceived philosophy as a spiritual experience, rather than an abstract, detached reasoning about the basic questions of the world.

Literature is an evolving concept. It reflects the issues that arise and complicate our lives, and it has in this "relevance" and moves with the times. This is very different from philosophy which has its world grounded in basic questions, questions that do not change with politics, ethics and social norms. — Constance

All modes of culture, including the sciences, literature and philosophy, are evolving concepts which move ‘with the times’. This is why historical movements such as the Classical period , Renaissance, Enlightenment, Modernism and the Postmodern are defined by the inseparable interrelations among these cultural modalities. It’s meaning less to say that philosophy always asks the same questions if the sense and meaning of the questions changes with the times , which it does. If philosophy really asked the same questions over and over, it would come up with the same answers.

Heidegger (2010) expresses this well :

“Every questioning is a seeking. Every seeking takes its direction beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness.... As questioning about, . . questioning has what it asks about. All asking about . . . is in some way an inquiring of... As a seeking, questioning needs prior guidance from what it seeks. The meaning of being must therefore already be available to us in a certain way. We intimated that we are always already involved in an understanding of being.”

... of the following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say, " how can he demand of us that we read him with pertinence, precision, rigor? How can he demand that his own text be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood ..., — Joshs

So Derrida after all believes somehow in "meaning-to-say"? Interesting. But in what sense Derrida's texts make sense? (I , for my part, have had many experiences where they make sense.)

All modes of culture, including the sciences, literature and philosophy, are evolving concepts which move ‘with the times’. This is why historical movements such as the Classical period , Renaissance, Enlightenment, Modernism and the Postmodern are defined by the inseparable interrelations among these cultural modalities. It’s meaning less to say that philosophy always asks the same questions if the sense and meaning of the questions changes with the times , which it does. If philosophy really asked the same questions over and over, it would come up with the same answers. — Joshs

Just two things. One is that lack of signified. The self effaced signified is meaning self deconstructed. That is, deconstruction is self deconstructing, what Meister Eckhart was looking for is his plea to be rid of God, the way to apophatic affirmation. The other is ethics and value. It may be that the spectral analysis of star is bound to context for its meaning, but being in love is not. When we put words to it, certainly, but it HAS an altogether mystifying stand alone presence (knowing full well that my utterances here about this are contextually bound).
Sartre called it the superfluity of existence--this is really about the superfluity of value or affectivity. The philosophically the human situation is grounded in value, not vacuous signifiers. Another word for the lostness of signifiers-in-play is metaphysics (not the ridiculous kind), and this is no less than the palpable presence of affective meaning.

Isn’t actually metaphyisics a quest for a system of ideas that is expected to work with absolute perfection? I cannot conceive a metaphysics of something imperfect. — Angelo Cannata

Not perfect systematizing of our affairs, but perfect happiness. The former is an entanglement, and the confusion take place in thinking the logical grid "upon which" the world sits and is divided (thinking of Wittgenstein's Tractatus here; but also Kierkegaard before him) is a model for human perfection. Such is the plight of rationalism). Call nirvana? But really, closer to home, think of Wordsworth and childhood. Was there not once a time when the world was almost perfectly realized? The trouble was, we were infants, we were, if you will, nobody, no reflective agency to realize the significant depths of the what was happening. Language and culture make this happen: in the evolvement of a human being there is that Heideggerian moment of geworfenheit (Kierkegaard called this posting spirit; Husserl's epoche is clearly in this-- I'm sure he had read Kierkegaard. Something of a profound moment, for me, anyway, this existential line that is crossed where all things recede in their implicit knowledge claims that possess everyday affairs, and the world is shrouded in mystery, Heidegger's "wonder" in What Is Metaphysics? But is it the vacuity of nothingness? Or is it a liberation?)
Is Emerson simply passé and naive? Certainly that "transparent eyeball" is an amusing image, but that walking through a bare common, glad to the brink of fear...curious at least. Is religion, essentially, just about systems of organizing our thinking about metaphysics? Or is it revelatory, and deeply profound?

The history of philosophy shows changes in the issues philosophers take seriously. — Jackson

Granted. But it can be argued that all of the elaborations and elucidations in philosophy are far more determinatively based that literature. The latter is the broad and inclusive world of engagement, the body of which is the body of literature. Philosophy is the aloof observation, closer to science, really, which is why philosophers often place themselves within the same rigor of standards of validation: it is specialized, like science, and has focus.

Having said this, philosophy as an historical discipline is at its end, or it will be, as soon as it completes its housekeeping duties, the "cutting out" of Occam's razor, of the legacy of religion and its language and the "bad metaphysics" that so entangles basic questions. I think Husserl points to the residua that remains once the coast is clear.

Literature is messy, in comparison, like life itself, allowing insights to emerge from the original fabric, but more poignantly. A great philosophical value of literature is that, not only does it not dismiss the affectivity of our lives, it highlights them. Rorty understood this.

But it can be argued that all of the elaborations and elucidations in philosophy are far more determinatively based that literature. The latter is the broad and inclusive world of engagement, the body of which is the body of literature. Philosophy is the aloof observation, closer to science, really, which is why philosophers often place themselves within the same rigor of standards of validation: it is specialized, like science, and has focus. — Constance

I do not think philosophy has anything to do with science.

I do not think philosophy has anything to do with science. — Jackson

The aim of the Meditations is a complete reforming of
philosophy into a science grounded on an absolute foundation.
That Implies for Descartes a corresponding reformation of all
the sciences, because in his opinion they are only non-selfsufficient members of the one all-inclusive science, and this is philosophy. Only within the systematic unity of philosophy can
they develop Into genuine sciences. (Husserl, Cartesian Meditations)

The aim of the Meditations is a complete reforming of
philosophy into a science grounded on an absolute foundation.
That Implies for Descartes a corresponding reformation of all
the sciences, because in his opinion they are only non-selfsufficient members of the one all-inclusive science, and this is philosophy. Only within the systematic unity of philosophy can
they develop Into genuine sciences. (Husserl, Cartesian Meditations) — Constance

Okay.

I am not saying philosophy is a science. But consider taht language itself is an application of the "scientific method", the hypothetical deductive method: I see an object, but what is the event of its recognition? It is a temporal event that has a beginning and an anticipation and a "success" in the satisfaction of this anticipation. The cat walks and behaves just like I anticipate her to do, and this happens so seamlessly and spontaneously, I think I am in a direct relationship with the cat, only I am not. The past rises up constantly in the stream of events of experience, and is met with confirmation in things turning out exactly as anticipated, as when you put your foot down on the pavement and having the resistance and forward motion all come to pass as it should. Dewey thought like this, I and think he was in the right ball park.
Of course, this all gets very interesting further on.

I am not saying philosophy is a science. But consider taht language itself is an application of the "scientific method", the hypothetical deductive method: — Constance

Philosophy does not require a reference to physical objects in order to discuss an issue.

Philosophy does not require a reference to physical objects in order to discuss an issue. — Jackson

Philosophy discusses the presuppositions of knowledge relationships. No object, then nothing to discuss.

Philosophy discusses the presuppositions of knowledge relationships. No object, then nothing to discuss. — Constance

Notice I said, physical. Physical object.

But consider taht language itself is an application of the "scientific method" — Constance

This presupposes there is such a method to arrive at knowledge. But is there truly? Wouldn't we be able then to write a computer program, feed it with sensory data, and run the program?

Notice I said, physical. Physical object. — Jackson

All knowledge relations

All knowledge relations — Constance

Are you claiming belief is a physical object? Explain.

This presupposes there is such a method to arrive at knowledge. But is there truly? Wouldn't we be able then to write a computer program, feed it with sensory data, and run the program? — Haglund

I believe that would be the algorithm.

Are you claiming belief is a physical object? Explain. — Jackson

Pull back from this, whatever it means. All things that are known to be can be analyzed as known in a knowledge relation. This relation bears analysis. Don't get hung up on object classifications.

Pull back from this, whatever it means. All things that are known to be can be analyzed as known in a knowledge relation. This relation bears analysis. Don't get hung up on object classifications. — Constance

Ok.

I believe that would be the algorithm. — Constance

Not sure if gathering knowledge follows a program.

Not sure if gathering knowledge follows a program. — Haglund

It's forward looking process of programmed responses. If......then..... is essential the structure. This reflects the basic structure of experience itself as it engages the world. What is a coffee cup? It is one of a number of this structures. If I hold it and lift, then the cup will rise, enabling access to the mouth, and so on. There are presumably an infinite number of such "programmed respo0nses," variations of such things, and on and on, in our relationships with the world. What is anything at all? Well, IF......THEN.....What is nitroglycerin? If it is thrwon with a certain velocity.....THEN it will impact in such and such a way.
We are all of us living laboratories, confirming hypotheses and theories about what the world is. The "is" of this is pragmatic.
Of course, this is just a construct. Our actual relationships (???) is pure metaphysics.

Is religion, essentially, just about systems of organizing our thinking about metaphysics? Or is it revelatory, and deeply profound? — Constance

Surely not “just about systems of organizing our thinking about metaphysics”, but nonetheless it is an aspect that is needed. The only alternative for a religion, to having “systems of organizing our thinking about metaphysics”, that, as such, need to be conceived as perfect, would be to conceive its roots as a human creation.
For example, let’s think about the faith in God that is in Christianity. In this context, God cannot be conceived but perfect. The only alternative, in order to conceive God as not perfect, would be to conceive God entirely as a human creation. If God is not a human creation, then he must be perfect. If God is a perfect being, he is exposed to all the contradictions implied by perfection, that are, in a synthesis, all about being not human. But we, as humans, need something human. This is the problem of all religions: they have depth, profoundness, they are revelatory, but they lack humanity, exactly because they need to be based on something conceived as perfect, otherwise, if it is not perfect, it cannot escape being a human fantasy.
This problem is solved by (secular) spirituality: it is revelatory, deeply profound, it is human, there is no problem at conceiving it entirely as a human fantasy, it doesn't need any metaphysics, it doesn’t need any kind of perfection.

For example, let’s think about the faith in God that is in Christianity. In this context, God cannot be conceived but perfect. The only alternative, in order to conceive God as not perfect, would be to conceive God entirely as a human creation. If God is not a human creation, then he must be perfect. If God is a perfect being, he is exposed to all the contradictions implied by perfection, that are, in a synthesis, all about being not human. But we, as humans, need something human. This is the problem of all religions: they have depth, profoundness, they are revelatory, but they lack humanity, exactly because they need to be based on something conceived as perfect, otherwise, if it is not perfect, it cannot escape being a human fantasy. — Angelo Cannata

But philosophy's job is avoiding the devolvement into fantasy. I take issue with it "all about being not human". God is constructed out of what is human. The issue is to avoid the enlightenment philosopher's talk that misses that misses the side of the barn by parsecs. See what Rorty says in a footnote:

All that I (or as far as I can see, Derrida) want to exclude is the attempt to be no propositional(poetic, world disclosing) and at the same time claim that one is getting down to something primordial--what Caputo calls "the silence from which all language springs."

See, he wants to commit to idea that the whole of our world, the logical grid of the tractatus, the being-in-the-world of B&T, Levinas' "totality" (which he gets from Heidegger and this probably comes Husserl somewhere), simply has no metaphysical foundation. My thinking is that it is ALL metaphysical, but not the extravagant Platonizing; just the, as Levina put it, realization that the desideratum exceeds the desire and the ideatum exceeds the idea. That is, our indeterminacy at the level of basic questions.

Anyway, the missing the barn door is here: it is not "the silence from which all language springs," as Caputo put is, but from which all affectivity springs! Language is nothing without affectivity; it is simply an abstraction. We are beings bound to a world of caring, of music and art, loving and hating, and on and on, and this is what cries out for meaning beyond the totality: it is that ethical/aesthetic dimension of our being. E.g., why are we born to suffer and die? And have blisses and miseries and horrors, and so on.
Non Christian philosophers almost Never go here. Metaethics has been theology and affectivity, well, a matter of "taste".

I agree that affectivity has a great importance in whatever is human. But it needs a language, we can say a language made not only by words, but made by life, by everything. This language has never been clarified, so that today affectivity is exploited in many ways to deceive people and make pseudo-science, pseudo-philosophy, pseudo-everything, that essentially means industrial, commercial science, commercial philosophy and so on. Is affectivity a good place to work on a meaningful, expressive and efficient language? And, after all, if we give so much importance to affectivity, what is the difference from psychology? These are some more reasons why I consider spirituality more suitable: it is philosophy practiced as an experience, involving the whole of our humanity, rather than just as reasoning. As such, it includes in itself the whole universe of affectivity, and we can also include love, passion, emotions, empathy. This way we are like a step forward from a purely rational philosophy and we don’t fall in the confusion with psichology, because psichology is not philosophy practiced as an experience. Spirituality (secular spirituality) is philosophy practiced as a human experience.
In the context of spirituality, language can be studied, settled, to avoid ambiguity and confusion. Today the language of spirituality is extremely confused and ambiguous just because common people understand it as belief in supernatural realities. But, once we clarify that spirituality is not a belief, but rather philosophy practiced as a whole human experience, the language of spirituality is automatically set in the context of philosophy, and philosophy has in itself a long and strong tradition about cleaning language from confusion.

But, once we clarify that spirituality is not a belief, but rather philosophy practiced as a whole human experience, the language of spirituality is automatically set in the context of philosophy, and philosophy has in itself a long and strong tradition about cleaning language from confusion. — Angelo Cannata

Well yes, something like this I would agree with. The devil is in the details. Hesse's Siddhartha imagines a world where every young boy wants to be a sadhu, just run out to the forest and meditate and find God. No more than a nostalgia, now. I suppose for a society to take philosophical religion (??) seriously, it will require serval cultural revolutions. Perhaps when AI delivers us from all labor, or Skinner's Walden II catches on. Who knows.

it will require serval cultural revolutions — Constance

I don't think it is such a hard job, because something like religion of philosophy, with spiritual exercises, was already practiced by the ancient Greek philosophers: Pierre Hadot has shown us this. Today there are several movements, like philosophy experienced as life, secular spirituality, atheist spirituality, postmodern religions, atheist Christians and so on. I think they just need to clarify their positions, to gain awareness of what the core of their tendency is. I think all of this can be fruitfully embraced by the umbrella term "spirituality", once it is cleaned from its confusion and ambiguities.