NY Review Editor Silvers Replies to Earlier Thread

Robert Silvers, the long-time editor, wrote in response to this item:

In a recent blog post, you refer to the "long-standing hostility of the NYREOB's editor, Robert Silvers, towards philosophy." 

This statement is untrue. During recent years, we've published many articles by the following philosophers, and I could cite more: Ronald Dworkin, Colin McGinn, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, Peter Singer, and Jeremy Waldron. 

Since the Review was founded we have published many essays by Isaiah Berlin, Hannah Arendt, Bernard Williams, Stuart Hampshire, H.L.A. Hart, Richard Wollheim, Martha Nussbaum and Avishai Margalit, again, to name only some. 

Many of the people I have named were, or are, friends of mine and I have no sense of hostility toward philosophy or philosophers. 

I'll be grateful if you could publish this letter in order to make it clear that the claim of "long-standing hostility" isn't true. 

Yours sincerely,

Robert Silvers 

As I told Mr. Silvers in reply, one of those he mentions was one of those who had described him as "hostile" to philosophy.  I am also not entirely reassured that "many" of the philosophers that do get published are "friends."  One may contrast the representation of philosophers in the LRB, or Boston Review, or TLS to see the differential attention accorded the field by these publications.  In any case, I hope that having drawn attention to this issue, we will see more, and more wide-ranging, treatment of philosophy in the New York Review.