Having time free from teaching is really valuable pre-tenure if one has not yet learned how to juggle teaching a research efficiently, and because one’s prospects for tenure depend enormously on producing publications. Post tenure, producing publications is a much less high stakes matter and, one would hope, one has mastered the relationship between teaching and research (which, for philosophers, can be a much more symbiotic relationship than it can for many other scholars—a great deal of my research “output”, for example, including some of the best of it, originated in my undergraduate teaching).

Don’t take this the wrong way, but what do philosophy grants typically pay for?

Not, ah, that I wouldn’t be doing it out of pure love of philosophy & education, of course….

I need to check, but I am pretty certain that national boundaries are not relevant for this—ie, that scholars from any country are eligible to apply for funds.

As for your comment: I agree with your observations, fwiw. This makes me think (again!) about the ideal-nonideal debate that we need to have here one day – and that day will be sometime in July or August.