What is philosophy?
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Searle on P.F. Strawson
Galen Strawson kindly shared this address John Searle gave at a memorial for Peter Strawson, which includes, among other things, a charming description of tutorials with Strawson: Early on, Searle writes that while studying at Oxford in 1954-55, I attended lectures and seminars not only by Peter, but by J L Austin,Paul Grice, Isaiah Berlin,…
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What is it like to be a philosopher? Briana Toole edition
Courtesy of Clifford Sosis, as always. A really interesting trajectory into philosophy, I encourage folks to read this one. (What she says about UT Austin, although after my time, does ring true. I hope it’s better now.)
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Habermas’s destruction of the Frankfurt School, an ongoing saga
I’ve remarked on this for years (and more systematically), and although Habermas has a lot of groupies and loyalists, occasionally others do remark on this as well. This rather uneven piece by the philosopher Lorna Finlayson is the latest example. (You have to skip the first part of the essay to get to the interesting…
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“Philosophy in 3D”
Wittgenstein and Kant. Pretty weird! Has anyone tried these? Are they any good? (Thanks to Guy Elgat for the pointer.)
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Who were the invited guests at Alfred North Whitehead’s 70th birthday party in 1931?
There’s a website that answers this pressing question! It’s an interesting snapshot of philosophy and elite intellectual culture at the time. Among the guests was the logician Henry Sheffer, about whom we learn: Henry Maurice Sheffer (1882–1964) was born in Odessa, Russia (now Ukraine) later becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States (1904). He…
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The demand for “philosophy of AI” in job ads is as huge as you thought it was
Based on this analysis by philosopher Charles Lassiter, more than 20% of job ads now mention AI. This is going to result in a lot of weak appointments, given how few philosophers really have expertise in this area.
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Habermas and the Israeli mass killings in Gaza
As is well-known, Habermas and others issued a statement of “solidarity” with Israel about a month after the October 7 atrocities by Hamas. This was, no doubt, borne of his long efforts to resist any attempts to whitewash the Nazi atrocities, which brought the state of Israel into being. And a month after the October…
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What is analytic philosophy?
I came across this chart on FB, and it’s not a bad description of analytic philosophy when it existed (except, of course, the image next to Kripke is not Kripke!):
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The persistent myth that Williams was significantly influenced by Nietzsche
(Moving to front from yesterday–file link fixed) I usually like Jane O’Grady’s work, but this popular piece is quite misleading. There are some superficial similarities between Williams and Nietzsche, but the differences are far more profound, including in their completely different understanding of the Greeks. Williams’s critique of morality is also quite tepid by comparison…
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Consciousness, computation, and animal minds
Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith discusses.
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Nietzsche on Plato
From The Twilight of the Idols (“What I Owe to the Ancients,” section 2): I am a complete skeptic about Plato….In the end, my distrust of Plato goes deep: he represents such an aberration from all the basic instinct of the Hellene, is so moralistic, so pre-existently Christian–he already takes the concept “good” for the…
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Leo Strauss was mostly a charlatan, redux
Longtime readers will know that there are three characters who get called “philosophers” that I really think are a disgrace: Jacques Derrida, Ayn Rand, and Leo Strauss. They each have acolytes, who hate me for saying out loud what any serious scholar or philosopher knows. Rand is most obviously an ignorant buffoon, but Derrida and…
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Thomasson redux
A propos this, here’s a much friendlier (and more informative) review by Huw Price, a “fellow traveller,” as it were.
And the second paragraph?