The good news is that everyone you know will fail in some way, so there is no reason to be envious. However, like hell, there are levels of failure.
1. Your work will fail to become a canonical part of anybody's construal of the dialectic.
2. 200 years from now no students will be reading anything by you in philosophy classes anywhere (not even in some crank's classroom who is convinced that you are unfairly neglected).
3. 200 years from now students will not be reading anything that mentions your name in a footnote.
4. Today your papers are not being read in other people's graduate seminars.
5. Brian Leiter does not mention you as a goodmaking feature of your department.
6. Nobody had discussed any of your arguments in published work.
7.Brian Leiter does not mention your department.
8. Nobody has footnoted any of your work.
9. Brian Leiter mentions you, your department, or the place you got your Ph.D pejoratively (props to anyone who doesn't regard this as a fail).
10. You put letters to your local newspaper under the "publications" section of your vita.
11.You end up in administration (with apologies to Etchemendy, whose other successes and kindness more than balance out this fail).
12. You don't end up in administration, but nonetheless do as little research as people who do. Despite the success what any reasonable person should regard as a scam (you are being paid to research after all), you still take very little joy in life.
13. [hat tip Mark Silcox] You cease reading books altogether.
14. You don't end up in administration, but nonetheless get very active on committees charged with implementing and running parts of your campus' insultingly useless and soul deadening "assessment" endeavors, which Stockholm Syndrome has convinced you is something other than time destroying violations of academic freedom dreamed up by a very stupid educational-industrial complex. You have no idea what your colleagues say about you behind your back.
Any other levels of failure? Please suggest some and provide the appropriate number. For example if you propose one that is between what is now five and six, just number it 5.5 and I'll incoporporate it with a citation later.
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