June 2004
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Public Blog Stats
Being a computing genius, I only recently realized I can set the blog stats for public viewing–if you click on the counter at bottom left, you can see the stats for this site. Is there any reason not to make them public? Let me know: bleiter at mail dot law dot utexas dot edu. Thanks.
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Bush Destroys the United States (a continuing saga)
British journalist Patrick Seale writes: “Although the Bush administration is reluctant to admit it, the United States is facing what is arguably its worst crisis since the Second World War. It is a crisis of leadership, of reputation, of military capability and of moral authority. A radical change of strategy and of high-level government personnel…
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Moral philosopher Doris from UC Santa Cruz to Wash U/St. Louis
John Doris, who has been one of the leaders in bringing empirical psychology in to contact with moral philosophy (perhaps the liveliest development in the field in recent years), will leave the University of California at Santa Cruz for Washington University, St. Louis, starting in January 2005, and with appointments in both Philosophy and the…
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The Task of Higher Education in Blairite Britain
The quote from Nietzsche on the “task of higher education”strikes rather too close to home in Britain. Michael Ostuska (Philosophy, University College London) writes: “Nietzsche’s is a depressingly accurate description of the task of higher education in Blairite Britain. In response to pressure from government ministers and civil servants, PhD students at one fairly well-known…
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What must it be like to be David Brooks?
He “writes” a column which largely consists of quoting Michael Moore saying things that are more or less true, but which Brooks takes–self-evidently apparently–to be false, and to be discredited merely by quoting them. He purports, in the same column, to demean Moore by associating him with two of the most significant intellectual figures of…
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Thus Spoke Nietzsche
“‘What is the task of all higher education?’ To turn men into machines. ‘What are the means?’ Man must learn to be bored. ‘How is that accomplished?’ By means of the concept of duty. ‘Who serves as the model?’ The philologist: he teaches grinding. ‘Who is the perfect man?’ The civil servant. ‘Which philosophy offers…
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Conservative Front Groups and Their Misleading Names
Pharyngula asks: “Have you ever noticed how reactionary conservative organizations are so ashamed of their causes that they give them names that represent the ideals of their opponents? For example, ‘sound’ science has nothing at all to do with good science—it’s a smokescreen for hiding a corporate/political agenda under the pretense of legitimate scientific research.…
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Is Nothing Sacred?
Professor Bainbridge (Law, UCLA) has the details here.
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Freedom Isn’t Under Attack by the Government Only in the United States…
…as this new site about the assault on civil liberties in Britain–courtesy of John Gardner, the Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford–makes clear.
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Most Important U.S. Supreme Court Decision of the term (of the decade?) due on Monday
On Monday (maybe as late as Tuesday), we’ll find out if the rule of law still exists in the United States, when this case is decided. The issue is fairly simple: can the President of the United States, without any review by the courts, arrest United States citizens and hold them in communicado and indefinitely?…
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Why is “Butterflies and Wheels” Posting Nonsense Like This?
“Butterflies and Wheels” purports to be “fighting fashionable nonsense,” and they do some of the time. So why are they posting prominent links (this used to be on B&W’s front page) to tabloid trash like this, which misstates Foucault’s views from top to bottom, and offers no rational criticism of any view he actually held,…
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Is Philosophy at the “peak of maturity” or a subject in decay?
Dr. Lillehammer also raises an interesting question at the end of his review: “Is it a sign of maturity or decay when an area of philosophy reaches a stage where virtually every possible view, however implausible, is represented by a treatise-length study written in its defense? Do contemporary debates about modality, properties, causation, or the…
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The “companions in guilt” argument in philosophy
Hallvard Lillehammer (Philosophy, Cambridge) makes a nice point about a common (and not very compelling, to my mind) argumentative move in this recent review of a very nice new book by Russ Shafer-Landau: “The basic thrust of companions-in-guilt arguments in ethics is the idea that if we reject objectivism about morality, then we are forced…
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UC San Diego Makes Bid for Medievalist Pasnau at Colorado
Robert Pasnau (medieval philosophy, metaphysics) is the latest philosopher at the University of Colorado at Boulder to have an outside offer, this one from the University of California at San Diego. So far, this year, George Bealer has accepted an offer from Texas, Luc Bovens from the London School of Economics, and Christopher Shields from…
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The Relevance of Motives, or the Hermeneutics of Suspicion, or Ricoeur Meets Gettier
ORIGINALLY POSTED OCTOBER 10, 2003 ============= There is some discussion in the blogosphere about Paul Krugman’s tendency to make claims about the “motives” of Bush & co. One reasonable defense of the practice comes from Crooked Timber. The discussion, however, brought to mind an issue that arises with respect to what Paul Ricoeuer dubbed “the…
Georgy Maksimovich pointed me to this article in Russian: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/05/25/antisovetskie-filosofskie-kontratseptsii