Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. David Wallace's avatar

    This is sharply at variance with my understanding of the situation. The general consensus for some while has been that…

  2. David W Shoemaker's avatar

    This is shocking and tragic news. I’ve known Dale since we tried to hire him at Bowling Green State way…

  3. Dan Dennis's avatar

    On the plus side, advances are being made in missile defence – including in laser technology (‘star wars’) – which…

  4. mark bernstein's avatar
  5. Peaceful IR Realist's avatar

    Yes, Ellsberg’s experience was in the 50s and 60s. I don’t know enough about these issues to have anything meaningful…

  6. Mark's avatar

    I haven’t read The Doomsday Machine, but wasn’t Ellsberg’s experience in the 50s and 60s? When Eisenhower was writing pre-delegation…

  7. Peaceful IR Realist's avatar

    On point 4, in The Doomsday Machine, which is based on the author’s personal experience as a RAND consultant advising…

In Memoriam: Dale Dorsey (1976-2026)

Professor Dorsey, who moved a couple of years ago from the University of Kansas to Oxford University, was perhaps best-known for his work in moral philosophy. Philosopher Aaron Garrett writes:

It is with great shock and sadness that I report the sudden passing of Dale Dorsey. Dale recently moved to Somerville College Oxford after having taught for many years at Kansas. As those who knew him will attest, Dale was an exemplary philosopher and a wonderfully open-minded human being full of curiosity, wit, and overflowing with good humor. As a philosopher he had great range and depth and published widely. He was of course a central figure in discussions of well-being and welfarism. His book The Limits of Moral Authority challenged entrenched assumptions about our requirement to conform to moral demands. His forthcoming book On Fellowship, where Dale argues for the importance of the many sociable pleasurable human interactions in a good life which are not love or even friendship, captures the pleasures of casually speaking with Dale about Kraftwerk or the pleasures of crate digging. Dale was also an insightful historian of philosophy and wrote important work on Francis Hutcheson, including the SEP entry. Dale is and will be profoundly missed.”

Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Dorsey or for those who would like to comment on the significance of his work.

Leave a Reply to David W Shoemaker Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

One response to “In Memoriam: Dale Dorsey (1976-2026)”

  1. David W Shoemaker

    This is shocking and tragic news. I’ve known Dale since we tried to hire him at Bowling Green State way back in the mid-aughts when he was coming straight out of grad school at UCSD, with something like seven excellent publications already. He was a publishing machine, but none of his eventual zillion publications were half-assed or throwaways. They were always sharp, careful, and creative. He set agendas in work on well-being and practical reasons. I co-organized a little moral/political philosophy read-each-other’s-papers workshop every year in New Orleans for a long time (when I was at Tulane), and Dale was always an automatic invite and attendee. He had something sharp to say about every paper (including his own!), but he also reveled in New Orleans–he loved life–and I can still hear his hearty laugh and rich baritone holding forth on topics in philosophy, the profession, and music. We had so many rollicking dinners together. I will miss him. He was an excellent philosopher and an excellent human.

Designed with WordPress