April 2013
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So-called “moral saints”
Interesting interview with the writer who has done memorable profiles of Parfit and the Churchlands.
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Lateral Hiring List Updated
I've updated my lateral hiring list here. It includes both junior and tenured hires.
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Who are the most significant moral philosophers in the history of Western philosophy?
So our poll got over 650 responses; here's the top 20: 1. Aristotle (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices) 2. Immanuel Kant loses to Aristotle by 364–227 3. Plato loses to Aristotle by 414–168, loses to Immanuel Kant by 349–241 4. David Hume loses to Aristotle by 494–95, loses to Plato by 378–197 5.…
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Wittgenstein is the lion who talks…
…or W. meets Robert Frost. (Thanks to Aleja Santos for the pointer.)
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Constitutional law scholar Eisgruber named Princeton President
Christopher Eisgruber, the current Provost at Princeton, a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, a law professor at NYU for more than a decade, and a leading scholar of constitutional law, especially the law of religious liberty, has been named the new President of his alma mater, Princeton University.
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New draft paper: “Nietzsche Against the Philosophical Canon”
This is a revised version of the keynote address I gave at the Danish Philosophical Association last month; the abstract: Nietzsche views the Western philosophical tradition as organized around a conception of philosophy deriving from Socrates. According to this (loosely) Socratic philosophical canon: (1) Philosophy, as the “love of wisdom,” aims for knowledge of timeless…
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Simon Critchley denies behaving badly: the saga continues
Jacob Blumenfeld, one of the three listed editors of the contested volume on anarchism, kindly sent me a copy of the reply sent on behalf of all three editors (including Critchley) to the allegations by Mr. Rousselle noted yesterday. Mr. Rousselle has posted that reply in its entirety along with his response, and I commend…
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Kloppenberg to Lead Santa Clara
University of Dayton law professor Lisa Kloppenberg has been named the new dean of the Santa Clara University School of Law. Kloppenberg was Dayton's dean from 2001 to 2011.
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Sattler from Yale to St. Andrews
Barbara Sattler (ancient philosophy), currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, has accepted a (permanent) appointment as Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews. This is the second loss in ancient philosophy for Yale in roughly the last year (the other being Bobzien's departure for Oxford). Verity Harte, a leading senior scholar in the…
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Simon Critchley behaving badly
Nothing like exploiting graduate student labor; an excerpt: In 2011, Simon Critchley, Chiara Bottici, and Jacob Blumenfeld organized a conference entitled “The Anarchist Turn” at the New School for Social Research. Naturally, the conference was exciting news for anarchist scholars…. I had heard it through the grapevine that the conference organizers were interested in turning…
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So which areas of law deserve more attention in the legal academy?
The results of our earlier poll, with over 200 votes cast: 1. Consumer Law (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices) 2. Energy Law/Natural Resources Law/Water Law loses to Consumer Law by 109–73 3. Employment Law loses to Consumer Law by 115–73, loses to Energy Law/Natural Resources Law/Water Law by 91–85 4. Alternative Dispute…
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Unionizing adjuncts?
If the SEIU (which is the most aggressive and progressive force in the American labor movement right now) succeeds in this initiative, it will change the economics of higher education for the next generation.
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First Things (magazine) on “Why Tolerate Religion?”
First Things is a conservative Catholic intellectual magazine. An unsigned editorial in the April 2013 issue opines that, A recent book by…Brian Leiter outlines what may well become the theoretical consensus used to reinterpret the First Amendment. "There is no principled reason," he writes in Why Tolerate Religion?, "for legal or constitutional regimes to single out…
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Shame would be too lenient a sanction…
…for the craven villains in the U.S. Senate (not to mention their morally deranged supporters). What a sick, pathetic country this is. UPDATE: A NY tabloid gets it right.
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Most significant moral philosophers in the history of Western philosophy?
Not much news right now, and we haven't run a poll in awhile, so here it goes. No living philosophers were included. I'm sure that almost everyone will think there is at least one outrageous omission, so I apologize in advance, but so it goes. Have fun! (Links now fixed, sorry about that.)
David J. Gunkel «Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21st Century and Beyond» (MIT, 2023) Link:…