Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Leiter from Texas to Chicago

So it’s been a complex six months or so, but my family and I have finally decided that we are moving to Chicago next summer, where I will take up a Chair at the University of Chicago Law School and Direct Chicago’s new Center for Law, Philosophy, & Human Values, which will support “the reflective, critical and philosophical study of human values, with a particular emphasis on the conceptual, historical, and empirical foundations of the normative systems—moral, political, and legal—in which human beings live.” In addition, my treasured part-time colleague here at UT, Leslie Green (who is now Professor of the Philosophy of Law at Oxford) will switch his visiting professor stint from Texas to Chicago, starting in 08-09.

This has been such a difficult decision because of my great colleagues in the Law School at Texas, and the tremendous support from our wonderful Dean, Larry Sager, and our former Dean and now UT President, Bill Powers. The University of Texas School of Law has been an extraordinarily stimulating place to teach and write about law and philosophy for the past dozen years. The University of Chicago Law School is, of course, renowned as the leading center for law and economics in the country, and now, with the generous support of Saul Levmore, the Chicago Law Dean, and my new colleagues there—especially Martha Nussbaum--I am hopeful we will be able to make Chicago as strong a presence in law and philosophy and, in particular, make Chicago the top choice for philosophically-minded law students, especially those thinking of teaching careers.

Martha Nussbaum and I will continue to offer the Law and Philosophy Workshop at Chicago (which students take for credit); sometimes we will do it jointly, sometimes just one of us will do it with the new Law and Philosophy Fellow that the Law School will host each year. I’ll be offering a basic jurisprudence course every year (similar to what I do here), as well as a new course covering from a philosophical point of view topics in moral, political, and social theory of interest to lawyers and legal scholars. Martha and I will both continue to offer a variety of seminars on topics in moral, political, and legal philosophy, as will Les Green when he visits each year, and the new Center will sponsor additional speakers and conferences. I suppose the main thing that will distinguish Chicago from the other leading law-and-philosophy centers in the country is that Chicago will have both a stronger historical orientation than is typical among those working in law and philosophy (whether it is attention to Aristotle or Mill or Marx or Nietzsche) and a more interdisciplinary conception of philosophical work. Interested students should feel free to contact me.

Colin McGinn Did Not Like Ted Honderich's Book

So many people have been calling my attention to Colin McGinn's review of Ted Honderich's On Consciousness (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004) from Philosophical Review, vol. 116, no. 3 (2007), that I thought I should comment on it.  Here is how the review opens:

This book runs the full gamut from the mediocre to the ludicrous to the merely bad.  It is painful to read, poorly thought out, and uninformed.  It is also radically inconsistent....The second half [of the book] tries to develop a new theory of consciousness, according to which the positive theses of the first half of the book are all wrong (not that this was signposted while the first half was assertively in progress) and the fact is only slyly acknowledged toward the end of the discussion--hence the radical inconsistency I mentioned.  Throughout, the book is woefully uninformed about the work of others and at best amateurish.  Honderich's understanding of positions he criticizes is often weak to nonexistent, though not lacking in chutzpah.  And the view he ends up defending is preposterous in the extreme and easily refuted.

That's just from the first paragraph.  The review makes good (i.e., offers prima facia plausible evidence) on most of these charges.  It concludes:

Is there anything of merit in On Consciousness?  Honderich does occasionally show glimmers of understanding that the problem of consciousness is difficult and that most of our ideas about it fall short of the mark.  His instincts, at least, are not always wrong.  It is a pity that his own efforts here are so shoddy, inept, and disastrous (to use a term he is fond of applying to the views of others).

Perhaps most remarkable of all, the review begins with a footnote that says:  "The review that appears here is not as I originally wrote it.  The editors asked me to 'soften the tone' of the original; I have done so, though against my better judgment."  What did the original review look like, one wonders?

Disputes about "tone" almost always mask, of course, disputes about "substance," which is probably why McGinn was disinclined to "soften the tone" since he presumably thought it properly matched to the substance.  Assuming the substance of the criticisms are sound, what do readers think about the "tone" of the review?  Are the two separable?  It seems to me that there are too few honest book reviews out there, and too many puff pieces.  But even if one agrees with me about that one might still think McGinn's approach to this is wrong.  I find McGinn's approach refreshing, but I wonder what others think?  As usual, non-anonymous postings are far more likely to appear (and they will have to be signed if you plan on criticizing McGinn or Honderich).  Post only once!  Comments may take awhile to appear.

Murphy from Cal Tech to Sydney

Dominic Murphy, currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the California Institute of Technology, will move next June to the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney, where he will take up the post of Senior Lecturer.  (An informative review of Murphy's book Psychiatry in the Scientific Image recently appeared in NDPR.) 

Thus Spoke Voltaire

"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere."

--Voltaire

Stich on Morality

Four video lectures here, under the general title "Moral Theory Meets Cognitive Science."  (I found this via the always interesting "Experimental Philosophy" blog.)

Plato on SSRN!

Here.  Who knew he was so tech-savvy?  Well, actually, it is new translations of four dialogues by philosopher Cathal Woods at Virginia Wesleyan College and one of his students, Ryan Pack.

Friday Poem: "Something I Forgot"

Something I Forgot

We're sitting side by side
a woman half my age
and I both waiting
but for different doctors

We chat softly as if
we have been friends for years
beginning when an addled patient
marches across her foot
and I respond sympathetically

But then she's called
and then I'm called
and focus shifts to pain

Later as I emerge
she appears again  I hear
her doctor tell her to relax
I see the band aid spot
where blood was likely drawn

As we settle up we talk some more
I diagnose amnesia when
she tells the clerk she's forgotten
something the doctor said
she repeats the word as if
in recognition but then
I'm done and so we say
goodbye goodbye

Outside in the parking lot
I remember something I forgot
and head back just as she
comes out a woman wearing
shorts sandy-haired no name

As I rush by she asks if
I'm all right   just something
I forgot I say and dart inside

This is when a great sadness
settles over me

And does not leave

6/15-6/29/96, 6/15/07

Copyright 1996, 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Help Sought: What Language is This?

My short essay on Richard Rorty's Dewey Lecture at the University of Chicago Law School has just appeared, but not only in English!  Unbeknownst to me, it was translated for publication in the journal Kritika & Kontext, vol. 12, no. 34 (2007), which has just arrived in the mail.  (The translation seems to have been done from the version I posted on SSRN awhile back.)  The English title, "Science and Morality:  Pragmatic Reflections on Rorty's 'Pragmatism," appears as "Veda a moralka:  Pragmaticke reflexie Rortyho 'pragmaatizmu.'"  (There are a couple of accents missing.)  What language is this?  Is it Czech?  The journal is published in Slovakia, but seems to publish in a number of Eastern European languages.  I'm sure some reader can enlighten me.  Thanks.  (Any information on the journal, which looks interesting [some of it is in English, and there are other (translated) contributions by Rorty, Michael Walzer, and Steven Pinker, among others] would also be appreciated.)

Mindpapers

David Chalmers (ANU) introduces a new on-line resource with some 18,000 papers in philosophy of mind (broadly construed).  (Also check out the list of most-cited works by philosophers in philosophy of mind.)  Looks like a great resource!

Trends in Higher Education in the UK

Thom Brooks (Newcastle) comments on recent proposals here and here.

"Why Evolutionary Biology is (so far) Irrelevant to Law"

A revised, penultimate version of this paper I wrote with the philosopher of biology Michael Weisberg is now on-line for those who might be interested.  It will appear some time in 2008.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

English-Language Obituary for M. Frede Finally Appears in Major Newspaper

From The Telegraph.  (Thanks to Ophelia Benson for the pointer.)  I've added the link to my original notice as well.

UPDATE:  Several readers have pointed out that the London Times also ran a substantial obituary several weeks ago.  I've opened comments for readers to post any others. 

None of the obituaries address what a Princeton grad student at the time called "one of the great mysteries of contemporary scholarship on ancient philosophy":  namely, Professor Frede's unusual speech "tick" when speaking English.  I can still recall attending the first meeting of Frede's lecture course on Aristotle at Princeton almost 25 years ago.  (That was an excellent course, by the way.)  Since this was difficult material, I felt it important to take meticulous notes.  Again and again, though, there was some word Professor Frede said that I could not make out.  I tried writing down his sentences word for word, but the unintelligible sound--it sounded like "svine" with a long "i"--came in places where it didn't make sense:  "Aristotle's svine metaphysics," and so on.  A grad student subsequently explained to me that Frede inserted this sound into his sentences while speaking English, a kind of speech tick like those who use the word "uh," though "svine" appeared at strange places.  I was told he didn't have this tick when speaking German, and that it didn't happen when he read an English paper.  I did not hear Professor Frede speak in the last two decades, so, I wonder, did he continue to do this?

Deontic Logic and Jurisprudence

Who knew it was so controversial?

Law Professor Smears Scholars Critical of Israel for Political Reasons

Readers concerned about academic freedom (including the case of Professor Finkelstein), as well as those who enjoy case studies of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, may find this discussion of intellectual dishonesty by a law professor of interest.

Free Will & Determinism Comics

Here.  (Thanks to Saul Smilansky for the pointer.)

Friday Poem: "Squandered"

Squandered

We squander our hope
On those who possess us
Each of us tugged
This way and that
By desire's calculus
Its glib technology
Both sexy and fat

And the hoary ballet
Of the ritual ballot
The candidates preening
In the shadow of death
Makeup lights money
Their vanity glowing
The people unknowing

For what they are given
Is that which they'd given
To those who have taken
All that they had

10/29/99, 1/11/00, 1/20/00, 1/24-1/26/00, 9/22/07

Copyright 2000, 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Jacquette from Penn State to Bern

Dale Jacquette, Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, will take up the Senior Professorial Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Bern in Switzerland in fall 2008.  "Logic and metaphysics" doesn't really do justice to the scope of his work; do see his homepage for more details.  This loss merely adds to Penn State's already substantial woes, about which we have written before.

The Otago (New Zealand) Supplement to "The Philosophical Lexicon"

Courtesy of Charles Pigden (Otago): here.  Pretty funny...if you know your Kiwi philosophers!

Academic Freedom and Finkelstein's Tenure Case at DePaul

You can listen to talks from the recent conference at the University of Chicago here.  I have listened to bits and pieces of most of them.  The most striking, I think, is the talk by John Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, who makes an absolutely compelling case that Finkelstein should have been tenured on the merits of his scholarship and that the only explanation for the tenure denial was political interference.  (This is notable, in part, because Finkelstein has been a critic of Mearsheimer and Walt's thesis about the influence of the Israel Lobby.)

Wright on McDowell...and the Nature of "Analytic" Philosophy Yet Again

I had occasion recently to re-read one of the best review essays I have ever read:  Crispin Wright's essay on John McDowell's Mind and World, which appeared under the title "Human Nature?" in European Journal of Philosophy 4 (1996):  235-253.  The essay itself is a densely argued critique of the two central theses of McDowell's book ("that experience must be conceived as conceptual, and that one should look to a conception of Second Nature for a reconciliation of the normative and the natural" as Wright puts it), but the concluding passages of the review turn to questions of style, which resonate with a discussion we have had here more than once about the nature of "analytic" philosophy.  Here is Wright (p. 252):

If analytical philosophy demands self-consciousness about unexplained or only partially explained terms of art, formality and explicitness in setting out of argument, and the clearest possible sign-posting and formulation of assumptions, targets, and goals, etc., then this is not a work of analytical philosophy....At its worst, indeed, McDowell's prose puts barriers of jargon, convolution and metaphor before the reader hardly less formidable than those characteristically erected by his German luminaries.....[T]he stylistic extravagance of McDowell's book--more extreme than in any of his other writings to date--will unquestionably color the influence it will exert...[T]he fear must be that the book will encourage too many of the susceptible to swim out of their depth in seas of rhetorical metaphysics.  Wittgenstein complained that, "The seed I am most likely to sow is a certain jargon."  One feels that, if so, he had only himself to blame.  McDowell is a strong swimmer, but his stroke is not to be imitated.

Is what Wright describes as characteristic of "analytical philosophy" not characteristic of, e.g., Hume and Descartes and, in many ways, Aristotle as well?  If so, then what conclusions should be drawn about McDowell or, for that matter, Hegel?  I am curious what readers make of Wright's remarks.  No anonymous postings, and post only once.  Comments may take awhile to appear.

A New Political Philosophy Blog

"Public Reason" is the name; several good young political philosophers are among the initial contributors.

Geuss's Skepticism about Rawls

I have been reading around in Raymond Geuss's quite interesting and iconoclastic set of papers, Outside Ethics (Princeton University Press, 2005), and found the essay on Rawls, "Neither History nor Praxis" especially striking.  Responding to Rawls's autobiographic statement that his service in World War II stimulated his interested in the theory of justice, Geuss comments (p. 31):

One can easily imagine a person confronted with the events of the Second World War being motivated to ask various questions, for instance about European history, about the dynamics of political systems under stress, about the economics of competitive international markets, about human social psychology and the structure of collective action.  What, however, would one have to believe about the world to think that "What is the correct conception of justice?" is the appropriate question to ask in the face of concentration camps, secret police, and the firebombing of cities?  Are reflections about the correct distirbution of goods and services in a "well-ordered society" the right kind of intellectual response to slavery, torture, and mass murder?  Was the problem in the Third Reich that people in extermination camps didn't get the slice of the economic pie that they ought to have had, if everyone had discussed the matter freely and under the right conditions?  Should political philosophy really be essentially about questions of fairness of distribution of resources?  Aren't security and the control of violence far more important?  How about the coordination of action, the sharing of information, the cultivation of trust, the development and deployment of human individual and social capacities, the management of relations of power and authority, the balancing of the demands of stability and reform, the provision for a viable social future?

Geuss, to be sure, has specific, substantive doubts about the resulting Theory of Justice.  Why, he asks, think that there would be any agreement in an "original position":  "No matter how long they discussed matters, there might remain at the end different groups with different views" (p. 32).  And even if there were an agreement, why should it "have any relevance whatever to us, who do have concrete 'identities,' parts of which sometimes can be of importance to us, and who live in a concrete situation in a complex real world" (p. 32)?  The "difference principle," Geuss suggests, both (1) helps explain why the theory's "political effects..has been close to zero" (p. 33), since it "turns out to be extremely difficult to assess in practice whether or not a certain existing inequality is or is not allowed by the difference principle" (p. 33), and (2) is itself "morally very repellent" since "increases in the absolute standard of living of the poor can, in principle, justify very great inequalities" (p. 33).

Geuss is no fonder of the argument of the later Law of Peoples, noting that Rawls believes that,

Outlaw states may not be exterminated ad libitum, but "liberal" states have a right to keep and deploy nuclear weapons for deterrent purposes, and may attack outlaw states with military force under certain circumstances if that is necessary to prevent violation of human rights.  This does not even purport to be a view from an anonymous universal "original position," but is, even on the most superficial inspection, a specifically American political position--more enlightened, perhaps, than that of George W. Bush or Condoleeza Rice, but generically the same kind of thing.  Of course, no one can object in principle to citizens helping to elaborate the national ideology (provided it is not actively vicious), but philosophy has in the past often aspired to something more than this.  (p. 34)

Noting that the huge growth of the academic industry surrounding Rawls's A Theory of Justice coincided with increasing inequality and a rightward turn of the Western industrial democracies, Geuss asks (p. 38):

Is it,...or should it be, of any significance that the "normative" moral and political theory of the Rawlsian type has nothing, literally nothing, to say about the real increase in inequality, except perhaps "so much the worse for the facts"?  This is not a criticism to the effect that theoreticians should act rather than merely thinking, but a criticism to the effect that they are not thinking about relevant issues in a serious way.

Geuss favors an approach to political philosophy in which one studies,

history, social and economic institutions, and the real world of politics in a reflective way.  This is not incompatible with "doing philosophy"; rather, in this area, it is the only sensible way to proceed.  After all, a major danger in using highly abstractive methods in political philosophy is that one will succeed merely in generalizing one's own local prejudices and repackaging them as demands of reason.  The study of history can help to counteract this natural human bias....

One of the great uses of history is to show us what, because it has in the past been real, is a fortiori possible.  This can give rise to various illusions.  Something can be thought to be politically possible now because it actually existed in the past, but it may have been possible in the past because of circumstances that have meanwhile changed.  This is a case in which further development of the very historical consciousness that gave rise to the problem will contribute to clearing it away.  (pp. 38-39)

From the preceding reflections about how to approach political philosophy, Geuss concludes:

For those of us with views like these, Rawls is not a major moral and political theorist, whose work self-evidently deserves and repays the most careful scrutiny.  Rather, he was a parochial figure who not only failed to advance the subject but also pointed political philosophy firmly in the wrong direction.  (p. 39)

I'm curious what philosophers think.  I have given, of course, only excerpts from the Geuss essay, and it is obvious enough how Rawlsians might respond to some of the particulars of Geuss's doubts about the theory of justice.  But what about the more general criticisms of this approach to political philosophy and its relevance and value?  Post only once; posts may take awhile to appear.  Non-anonymous postings preferred, though, anonymous or otherwise, only substantive contributions will be approved.

UC Riverside Makes Bid for Leading Nietzsche Scholar, Clark, at Colgate

The Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside--already one of the top choices for students interested in 19th- and 20th-century Continental philosophy--has voted out an offer to Maudemarie Clark at Colgate University, the most influential senior figure in the field of Nietzsche studies.  If she joins Pierre Keller, Georgia Warnke, and Mark Wrathall at Riverside, that program will be at least as strong a choice as Chicago's for students interested in German philosophy of the 19th- and 20th- centuries.  (Riverside would have the advantage over Chicago of being deeper and broader in its other philosophical strengths [e.g., in philosophy of language, mind, and action], while Chicago would remain more appealing for those primarily interested in German Idealism or with strong cognate interests in ancient philosophy.)  Students applying to graduate school this year will want to keep an eye on what develops.

Summary of Major Faculty Moves and Tenure-Track Hires for 2006-2007

MOVING TO FRONT, WITH CORRECTIONS/ADDITIONS, from September 23

This is a compilation of major (tenured or equivalent) faculty moves and tenure-track hires/losses involving PhD programs since the last PGR survey (fall 2006), for the benefit of students using the PGR in choosing graduate schools this coming academic year.  It covers the top 53 US departments, the top 10 U.K. departments, the top 4 Canadian departments, and the top 4 Australasian departments.

This list includes only faculty moves that were not reflected in the faculty lists for the Fall 2006 surveys. Remember, those faculty lists were based on expected faculty profile for fall 2007, so included some announced, planned moves. 

Many or most of the tenured faculty moves recorded here are likely to affect the specialty rankings for the areas in which these faculty work. Where relevant, I comment on how the moves are likely to affect the overall reputation/ranking of a department.

Please post corrections and additions in the comments; no anonymous corrections/additions will be approved.  I list programs by their 2006 overall rank.

Departments most improved since last year are pretty clearly NYU, Yale, and Northwestern.

U.S. Departments

1.  New York University:  Added Samuel Scheffler (moral and political philosophy) from Berkeley, Ted Sider (metaphysics) from Rutgers, and Crispin Wright (philosophy of language, math, and logic; epistemology) from St. Andrews.

2.  Rutgers University, New Brunswick:  Added Jeffrey King (philosophy of language) from Southern California, Martin Lin (early modern philosophy) from Toronto, and Brian Weatherson (epistemology, decision theory, metaphysics, philosophy of language) from Cornell.  Lost Frank Arntzenius (philosophy of physics) to Oxford, Stephen Neale (philosophy of language) to the CUNY Graduate Center, and Ted Sider (metaphysics) to NYU.  Tenure-track hire:  Ishani Maitra (philosophy of language, feminist philosophy), MIT PhD, previously on tenure-track at Syracuse (joint with Rutgers-Newark). 

3.  Princeton University:  Added (part-time) Frank Jackson (philosophy of mind, metaphysics, metaethics) from the Australian National University.   Tenure-track hire:  Sarah McGrath (metaphysics, ethics), MIT PhD, previously on tenure-track at Brandeis; tenure-track loss:  Karen Bennett (philosophy of mind, metaphysics) to Cornell.  Adam Elga (philosophy of science and physics, decision theory), Thomas Kelly (epistemology, ethics) and Hendrik Lorenz (ancient philosophy) were all granted tenure.  Paul Benacerraf (philosophy of mathematics) retired.   Bas van Fraassen (philosophy of science and physics) will conclude his phased retirement at the end of 2007-08, and move to San Francisco State University.

3.  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor:  Added Sarah Buss (philosophy of action, ethics) from the University of Iowa.  Losing Stephen Darwall (ethics, history of ethics) to Yale University and Peter Ludlow (philosophy of language) to the University of Toronto. 

5.  University of Pittsburgh:  Michael Thompson (ethics) has an offer from the University of Chicago.  Cian Dorr (metaphysics) and Kieran Setiya (ethics) were granted tenure.

6.  Stanford University:  Tenure-track hire:  Alexis Burgess (metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophical logic), Princeton PhD.  Krista Lawlor (philosophy of mind) was granted tenure.  Christopher Bobonich (ancient philosophy) has an offer from Rutgers.  Allen Wood (Kant, 19th-century German philosophy) and Rega Wood (medieval philosophy) have offers from Indiana.  J.M.E. Moravcsik (ancient philosophy) has retired.

7.  Harvard University:  No changes.

7.  Massachussetts Institute of Technology:  No changes at senior ranks.  Tenure-track hire:  Brad Skow (philosophy of science, metaphysics), NYU PhD, previously on tenure-track at U Mass/Amherst.

7.  University of California, Los Angeles:  Lost Calvin Normore (medieval philosophy, political philosophy, logic) to McGill.  Tenure-track hires:  Sam Cumming (philosophy of language), Rutgers PhD.  Tenure-track loss:  Christopher Smeenk (philosophy of physics) to Western Ontario.  Pamela Hieronymi (ethics) was tenured.

10. Columbia University:  Losing Thomas Pogge (political philosophy) to Yale University.  Wolfgang Mann (ancient philosophy) has an offer from Indiana. 

10. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill:  Added (part-time) Simon Blackburn (ethics, philosophy of language and mind) from Cambridge University.  (Blackburn will teach at UNC one semester per year for the next six years, except for 2009-10; the appointment stretches beyond his retirement from Cambridge, although the first visits will run in parallel with that position, occupying terms of leave.)    Thomas Hofweber (metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics) was granted tenure.  Tenure-track hire:  Ryan Preston (ethics, philosophy of religion), NYU PhD.  Michael Resnik (philosophy of mathematics) retired.

12. University of California, Berkeley:  Losing Samuel Scheffler (moral and political philosophy) to NYU.  Senior offer outstanding to Tommie Shelby (African-American philosophy, social and political philosophy) at Harvard.  Branden Fitelson (philosophy of science, logic, epistemology) was tenured.

13. University of Arizona:  Michael Gill (ethics, history of ethics) and L.A. Paul (metaphysics) were both tenured.

13. University of Notre Dame:  Added Richard Cross (philosophy of religion, medieval philosophy) from Oxford University.  Lost William Ramsey (philosophy of mind and cognitive science) to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  Tenure-track hire:  Grant Ramsey (philosophy of biology), Duke PhD.

13. University of Texas, Austin:  Lost Robert C. Solomon (Continental philosophy, philosophy of the emotions) who passed away.  Brian Leiter (philosophy of law, ethics, Continental philosophy) has an offer from the University of Chicago Law School.  Tenure-track hire:  Ray Buchanan (philosophy of language), NYU PhD.

16.  Brown University:  Added David Christensen (epistemology, philosophy of science) from the University of Vermont.  Tenure-track hire:  Katherine Dunlop (Kant), UCLA PhD.

16.  Cornell University:  Added Karen Bennett (philosophy of mind, metaphysics) from a tenure-track position at Princeton, and Tad Brennan (ancient philosophy) from Northwestern.  Lost Brian Weatherson (epistemology, decision theory, metaphysics, philosophy of language) to Rutgers.  Tenure-track hire:  Erin Taylor (ethics), UCLA PhD.

16. University of Southern California:  Lost Jeffrey King (philosophy of language) to Rutgers.

16. Yale University:  Added (or adding) Stephen Darwall (ethics, history of ethics) from Michigan, Thomas Pogge (political philosophy) from Columbia University, and Kenneth Winkler (early modern philosophy) from Wellesley.  Tenure-track hire:  Barbara Sattler (ancient philosophy), Freie Universtat (Berlin) PhD, previously on tenure-track at Illinois/Urbana.  Tenure-track losses:  James Kreines (19th-century German philosophy) to a tenure-track position at Claremont-McKenna College; Michael Weber (ethics) to a tenure-track position at Bowling Green State University.

Friday Poem: "In Time of War, 1942"

In Time of War, 1942

Weekly assembly
Bible reading
Principal intoning
Everyone white-shirted-bloused

Except for me
Whose sole white shirt
Unworn because unwashed
Which did not go unnoticed

An Assistant Principal
Castigator of trivial transgressions
Breathed fire upon me
Before my stony class

Melting me to a puddle of disgrace
In which I lay bleeding tears
And I never forgave
Even to this very day

What festered within her
To prompt such eager disdain
Heaping helpings of ineluctable shame
Upon a child in time of war

I see me weeping yet
Raise your hand who share my pain
Applaud she is by now forever dead
Whom lightning must have struck at last

10/3-10/6/07

Copyright 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

October "Jobs for Philosophers"

If anyone has an electronic copy of the new JFP (out yesterday), please e-mail it to me as an attachment (I let my APA membership lapse).  Alternatively, post in the comments a link to where it might be on-line somewhere (other than the APA site).  A reader suggested opening a thread for discussion of how the job market looks this fall, which I hereby do.  Post only once, and be patient, it may take awhile for posts to appear.  Substantive postings only, anonymous or otherwise.

UPDATE:  A kind reader has already sent me the JFP (within about five minutes of my posting this!).

ANOTHER:  I've given the October JFP a quick read through, and this looks to be one of the stronger October issues in awhile, with well over 300 job listings (not all tenure-stream jobs--probably more post-doc type positions than, say, ten years ago--but still lots of entry-level posts in the mix).  What do readers think?

Where the Action Is in Nietzsche Studies...

...one more time.

"David Horowitz Awareness Week"

John Protevi (Louisiana State) is running it!

Christian-Fascism Awareness Week

So the week after next, campuses across America will be treated to Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, since there is not enough awareness, it turns out, about Islam and fascism.  The event is the brainchild of well-known pathological liar and enemy of academic freedom, David Horowitz.  But we shouldn't pre-judge it on that basis, even if others will.

I know this may surprise readers, but I think this event is a great idea.  And I have an even better idea, which is we follow it up with:  Christian-Fascism Awareness Week.

Now I don't want to interfere with Horowitz's effort, which is in the spirit of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan:  "fundamentalism is the enemy of all civilized humanity."  So one week devoted to Islamic fundamentalism seems right; but why not devote the next week to Christian fundamentalism?  The rise of Christian Fascism has gotten some attention lately, but not nearly enough in our "politically correct" culture.  Sure, the Christian Fascists aren't quite as scary, since they rarely commit terrorist acts (except against abortion service providers); on the other hand, they're right here in our midst (even in the White House some say), while the Islamic Bogeyman-In-Chief is in a cave somewhere in Pakistan.   Here's what one expert on Christian Fascism has to say:

Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told his students that when we were his age -- he was then close to 80 -- we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."

The warning, given 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and television evangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts toward taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire. This call for fundamentalists and evangelicals to take political power was a radical and ominous mutation of traditional Christianity. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.

He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He had been in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as the Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States. It was a suggestion he followed....

The Christian right has lured tens of millions of Americans, who rightly feel abandoned and betrayed by the political system, from the reality-based world to one of magic -- to fantastic visions of angels and miracles, to a childlike belief that God has a plan for them and Jesus will guide and protect them. This mythological worldview, one that has no use for science or dispassionate, honest intellectual inquiry, one that promises that the loss of jobs and health insurance does not matter, as long as you are right with Jesus, offers a lying world of consistency that addresses the emotional yearnings of desperate followers at the expense of reality. It creates a world where facts become interchangeable with opinions, where lies become true -- the very essence of the totalitarian state. It includes a dark license to kill, to obliterate all those who do not conform to this vision, from Muslims in the Middle East to those at home who refuse to submit to the movement. And it conveniently empowers a rapacious oligarchy whose god is maximum profit at the expense of citizens....

Adams saw in the Christian right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists rise under the guise of religion to dismantle the open society. He despaired of U.S. liberals, who, he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil or the cold reality of how the world worked....

Two decades later, even in the face of the growing reach of the Christian right, his prediction seems apocalyptic. And yet the powerbrokers in the Christian right have moved from the fringes of society to the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the House before the last elections earned approval ratings of 80 to100 percent from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups -- the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. President Bush has handed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid to these groups and dismantled federal programs in science, reproductive rights and AIDS research to pay homage to the pseudo-science and quackery of the Christian right....

The radical Christian right, calling for a "Christian state" -- where whole segments of American society, from gays and lesbians to liberals to immigrants to artists to intellectuals, will have no legitimacy and be reduced, at best, to second-class citizens -- awaits a crisis, an economic meltdown, another catastrophic terrorist strike or a series of environmental disasters. A period of instability will permit them to push through their radical agenda, one that will be sold to a frightened American public as a return to security and law and order, as well as moral purity and prosperity. This movement -- the most dangerous mass movement in American history -- will not be blunted until the growing social and economic inequities that blight this nation are addressed, until tens of millions of Americans, now locked in hermetic systems of indoctrination through Christian television and radio, as well as Christian schools, are reincorporated into American society and given a future, one with hope, adequate wages, job security and generous federal and state assistance....

So clearly there is a lot of awareness-raising to be done during Christian-Fascism Awareness week.  But, of course, the idea would not be to target Christians in general, most of whom aren't fascists or fundamentalists or zealots or theocrats or anti-democratic.  We'd just be targetting the extremists, the kind who advise George W. Bush and threaten to run third-party candidates in Presidential elections.  So there is no reason for most Christians to take offense.  We are just trying to warn everyone else.  Just like David Horowitz.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

The Latest Study of the "Political Ideology" of Academics

Details and a brief comment here.

Preparing a Tenure File

A young philosopher in a tenure-stream position writes:

You have done many posts that help out graduate students.  I'm hoping that you can post a request for info on tenure applications, for the benefit of faculty coming up for tenure.

What kind of statement is a tenure committee looking for?  A narrative regarding one's research, teaching, and service to the university?  What are cardinal sins to avoid?  What must one include?  What are the dos and don'ts?  How differently do philosophy faculty and administrators interpret or evaluate the tenure file?

Comments are open.  No anonymous postings.  Please post only once.

Carriero Staying at UCLA

John Carriero (early modern philosophy) at the University of California, Los Angeles has turned down the senior offer from the University of Notre Dame reported awhile back.  That's certainly a good break for history of philosophy at UCLA, which is taking a hit with Calvin Normore's move next year to McGill.  (For a small department, UCLA has an unusually serious and strong commitment to history of philosophy [except for post-Kantian Continental, sadly].)

Kelsen and Anglophone Jurisprudence Redux

Here.

Destroying Public Education in Texas: The Texas Taliban Never Rest

Those who carry water for the Texas Taliban in the state legislature engaged in quite a lot of mischief in the last session, in their unrelenting efforts to make public education in Texas an outpost of various Christian sects dominant in this part of the country.  This article from a Galveston newspaper is particularly good on one of the most venal and disruptive pieces of legislation passed and signed by the reprehensible Governor Rick Perry:

In the mythological world created for religious conservatives by people hustling those same for money and votes, Texas House Bill 3678 is an important law.

It’s meant to prevent religious students from being dragged off to gulags by federal marshals for such crimes as praying over their cafeteria hotdogs and saying “I love Jesus” in class.

The trouble is, such never happens anywhere except in the mythological world of religious conservatives, and yet the law also applies to those of us living in the real world.

The only question about HB 3678 — which lawmakers say we may refer to as the “Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act” or the “School Children’s Religious Liberties Act” and which has about as much to do with those things as the Patriot Act does with patriotism — is: Exactly how bad is it?

Is it just a gratuitous bone for conservative voters, or is it a real threat to the American concept of keeping state-sponsored religion out of public schools?

We think it’s the latter....

What the bill was drafted to do is side-step a 2000 Supreme Court ruling on a school-prayer policy at Santa Fe Independent School District, right here in Galveston County.

In that ruling, the court said Santa Fe couldn’t have a policy allowing hand-picked students to read pre-approved religious statements over campus public address systems at the beginning of every school day, every student assembly and every home football game.

The court said the district could have a policy allowing prayers before graduation ceremonies, as long as they were nonsectarian, nonproselytizing and not censored or otherwise controlled by the district.

The new law is supposed to guide school districts in allowing students to deliver short sermons before every sort of school event.

Not just any students, though. Only juniors and seniors picked from among such elites as “student council officers, captains of the football team and other students holding positions of honor as the school district may designate.” The rest of you may remain seated and keep silent.

What the Supreme Court understood in 2000, but our lawmakers still don’t get, is the other half of the expression exchange. It’s not just a matter of who gets to speak but who is compelled to sit there, captive in the classroom or auditorium or stadium, and listen.

The court rejected Santa Fe’s football-prayer policy in part because of frequency. The justices thought that having to listen to a classmate preach once in a high-school career was a reasonable burden; having to do so over and over again was not.

If this law stands, we suggest there ought to be another. Call it the School Children’s Plain-Old-American Liberties Act. The law would clarify students’ rights to hiss, catcall, boo, hoot, object or disagree via recitation of scripture or to just get up and walk out any time they’d rather not sit quietly captive through a classmate’s expression of a religious viewpoint.

Texas may be notable for how aggressive the local Taliban are, but let's not forget that these pathologies are nationwide, as a recent survey confirms:  take a look at the answers to questions 25, 26, and 27 in particular.

Friday Poem: "Used Book Sale"

Used Book Sale
   (sponsored by "Friends of the Library,"
   Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.)

Sarton, Blackmur,
Deutsch, Wilbur, Drew,
A Controversy of Poets,
Ariel, too,
Unlucky seventh at the top,
My modest cache of books
Culled from a skimpy crop.

To pay, I stop
Where the library's "Friends"
Stand about.
A young girl
Counts them out.

"She was my classmate,"
Says a "Friend"
Seeing Ariel
Above the pack.
"So much, of late,
About her."
It takes her back
To days at Smith
(With her, without her).

"You wouldn't know
What was in her, though,
Quite ordinary….
She tried to be…"
She hesitates.
"Like you and me?"
"Yes, but later
She was suicidal."
(But she was not idle.)

Pure white her hair,
Quite elegant and fair,
This "Friend" who stops to share
Her being there.
Her friend
Who steps across the floor
Makes quickly clear
She's heard these words before.

The girl hands my change to me,
Modeling impassivity,
"Enjoy,"  I think she said
(Although Ms. Plath is dead).

I bag my books,
The "Friends" have turned away,
I've bought the only copy
On display.

What more to say?

n.d. (ca.'95), 5/28/98, 9/29/07

Copyright 1998, 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Kelsen's Relative Neglect in Anglophone Jurisprudence

Discussion here.

Light Posting the Next Few Days...

...as Gordon Finlayson (Sussex) is here through Friday as a guest of the Law and Philosophy Program, giving workshops on the Habermas/Rawls debate and the normative foundations of the Frankfurt School (the Adorno/Habermas debate, as it were), among other topics.  Those interested in the Frankfurt School should be reading Finlayson, if they aren't doing so already.

How do philosophy departments evaluate the "teaching credentials" of candidates?

Michael Cholbi (Cal State, Pomona) has initiated an interesting discussion of the topic here.