Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

New Books in July

Authors and/or publishers kindly sent me these new books this month:

Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life by John Martin Fischer (Oxford University Press, 2019).

On Mercy by Malcolm Bull (Princeton University Press, 2019).

The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, volume 14:  Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Summer 1882-Winter 1883/84) trans. with afterword by Paul S. Loeb & David F. Tinsley (Stanford University Press, 2019).

Current Controversies in Philosophy of Religion edited by Paul Draper (Routledge, 2019).

A Philosopher Goes to the Doctor:  A Critical Look at Philosophical Assumptions in Medicine by Dien Ho (Routledge, 2019).

What is Scientific Knowledge?  An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology of Science edited by Kevin McCain & Kostas Kampourakis (Routledge, 2019).

Against Capital Punishment by Benjamin S. Yost (Oxford University Press, 2019).

In the Ruins of Neoliberalism:  The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West by Wendy Brown (Columbia University Press, 2019).

Hominessence by Michel Serres (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).

Discourse and Truth and Parresia by Michel Foucault, edited by Henri-Paul Fruchaud & Daniele Lorenzini (University of Chicago Press, 2019).

 

Tuvel-style mobbing comes to sociology: young Marxist sociologist pens critque of Black Lives Matter and its academic reception...

...and is now being pilloried because--you guessed it--he's white, didn't cite scholars of the preferred identity, etc. etc. etc.  The peer-reviewed article is here and the "open letter" of defamation is here.  (For those who don't recall the spectacular misconduct by some feminist philosophers in the Tuvel case, see here and here.) Black Lives Matter identified a real phenomenon--police violence--and then consistently misdiagnosed it, as Adolf Reed has written (and we've noted before).

Bayard Rustin, where are you when we need you?

Sociologists need to speak out, as so many philosophers did in the Tuvel case.

(Sorry I can't write more about this outrageous case now, but as noted a few days ago, I'm a bit overwhelmed.)

ADDENDUM:  The journal is standing by the article, as it should.

Nathan Oseroff and Christa Peterson are not victims, they are wrongdoers

Kate Manne (yes that Kate Manne) is now on Twitter misrepresenting (or just lying about?) their abusive treatment of gay and feminist philosophers like Kathleen Stock, Holly Lawford-Smith, Leslie Green and others:  for details, see here and here (the update).  (Oseroff apologized for his misconduct, because that's what it was, but he's been dissembling about it ever since.) 

UPDATE:  A  reader points out that Prof. Manne is also feeling bad for this maniac.  Apparently calling a philosophy professor a "vile fucking human" is OK with Kate Manne (indeed she "admires greatly" all these abusive adults).  Good to know!

FUNNY:  The Twitter Red Guard is responding to the evidence of what those mentioned above said and did (follow the links, it's all public evidence) by declaring it to be "lies" and "smears" (at least they didn’t call the actual news “fake news”).  (Addendum:  A reader sent a link in which one of the Twitter Red Guard zealots compared Stock, Lawford-Smith et al. to Milo Yannopoulos!)

Philosophy professor at Queen's/Canada awarded 25K for university's mistreatment of her

A strange and complex case; the finding against the university is certainly damning.

(Thanks to Steve Yates for the pointer.)

Amia Srinivasan to be next Chichele Professor of Social & Political Theory at Oxford

Professor Srinivasan, who has an eclectic set of interests ranging across epistemology, moral and political philosophy, and the history of philosophy (including post-Kantian European philosophy), is currently an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Oxford and Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford.  There was, I am told, something of a struggle as to whether the Chichele Chair (which is part of the Politics Faculty) would remain oriented towards philosophy (as it was, for example, during the many years that G.A. Cohen held it), or whether someone more oriented towards history would get it.  This is certainly a victory for philosophy at Oxford.

Part I of Arash Abizadeh's "Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics" available free on-line until August 31

Professor Abizadeh, a political theorist at McGill, was awarded the 2019 Canadian Philosophical Association Biennial Book Prize (English), and in recognition Cambridge University Press has made part of the book available for free through the end of August at http://ow.ly/Rqvf50vcvPw.

(Thanks to Victoria Willingale for the pointer.)

Who said it? Philosopher or football manager

This is rather amusing, and not so easy!  (It's mistitled as being about "Continental philosophers," but it's not.)

(Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.)

Busy week, not much blogging

As some friends know, we're in the process of helping my father move into assisted living, a complicated business, including of course moving him out of the apartment he's occupied for the last eleven years.   So there will be less new materials the next couple of weeks, although I'll try to get things, like memorial notices, up in a timely way.  Thanks for reading and for your patience.

In Memoriam: Tom Campbell (1938-2019)

Professor Campbell, who wrote widely in legal, political and moral philosophy (especially on rights and human rights), taught for more than twenty years in Scotland, at the Universities of Glasgow and Stirling, before joining the Australian National University law faculty in 1990.  He retired in 2001, and was at the time of his death an emeritus Professorial Fellow at the Charles Stuart University.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

(Thanks to Matt Kramer and Brian Bix for alering me to his passing.)

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Jerusalem, "Frustration," 1972

Britsh hard rock band, that toured widely as an opening act for major hard rock acts in the early 1970s, this is the b-side of the one single from their one and only album:

 

Blast from the past: when the Associate Editors of Hypatia defamed Rebecca Tuvel

Back in 2017. 

In Memoriam: Bryan Magee (1930-2019)

He may have been the best "popularizer" of philosophy of the last fifty years.  We noted this lovely profile of him earlier this year.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

Richard Marshall interviews Olufemi Taiwo (UCLA)...

...at 3:16 am.

The purge of academics in Turkey by the fascist Erdogan

A chilling account.

Blast from the past: speaker controversies at the Society for Christian Philosophers and the Society for Analytical Feminism

Both back in 2016.   Philosophy hasn't gotten much saner since!

Mark Twain on the Internet

"A lie can travel around the world while the truth is just putting on its shoes."

--Mark Twain

"A lie can travel around the world while the truth is just putting on its shoes."

--Mark Twain

What is it like to be a philosopher? Agnes Callard edition

Here, and it includes a photo of her office (you've never seen anything like it, I've done many "dissertation chats" (as they call them here) in that office!

Twitter is not the real world, an ongoing saga

Twitter is the only place where people think that the bloggers at the trashy on-line tabloid Above the Law are (a) reliable, and (b) authorities.  When I tell this to my legal practitioner and legal academic friends, most can't believe it's true!

UPDATE:  Since most of my readers do not use Twitter, I realize the latter was a bit opaque--sorry!  Briefly, one of the dopey bloggers at Above the Law was mocking me last week for allegedly thinking I could copyright my tweets so no one can retweet them, and then other people retweeted his mockery.  This would have been silly, but it had nothing to do with the issue I was raising.  What was omitted is that my Twitter account is protected (i.e., only approved followers can see my tweets--much better, I must say!); when your account is protected, not even your followers can retweet anything you post to your account.  Yet someone then among my followers was taking screen shots of my tweets, and then reposting them elsewhere and sending them to non-followers--which defeats the point of protecting the tweets, of course.   The Twitter terms of service do not directly address the status of protected tweets, but one extreme possible solution, suggested by my lawyer (who is an actual lawyer specializing in intellectual property and defamation for 25 years, not a failed lawyer like the ones at Above the Law), was to register the copyright for the protected tweets.  Not worth the trouble, obviously, and in any case the problem has been solved by other means since.   What's amazing is that even nominally adult tenured faculty--like Jacob Levy (McGill) and Kate Manne (Cornell)--retweeted the Above the Law nonsense (Manne makes a particular fool of herself with her commentary).  I'm not sure what explains their gullibility:  malice?  stupidity?  both?  Oh well.

ANOTHER:   One might have hoped Prof. Manne would have learned something about the risk of relying on out-of-context snippets from a protected Twitter account, but it appears not yet.  In any case, I hope she can  get over her obsessive Twitter vendetta against me (of which the above was but one example over the last few weeks) and move on to more productive activities.

The latest Amy Wax fiasco

Some brief comments at my law blog.

Every interview with Mayor Pete from South Bend rolled into one

This is funny.  The good news is, despite raising a lot of money, he can barely crack 4-5% in most polls; Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Harris dominate.

"Legal Positivism as a Realist Theory of Law"

This is essentially the final version (minus some citations and formatting) that will appear in The Cambridge Companion to Legal Positivism, which will probably be out in 2020 (and is being edited by Patricia Mindus [Uppsala] and Torben Spaak [Stockholm]).

This class action on behalf of defendants in campus Title IX proceedings...

...could have major ramifications nationwide.

Medically-assisted dying and "suicide"

Philosopher Jerry Dworkin (emeritus, UC Davis and Illinois/Chicago) comments.

Williamson and Kripke talk about language, logic, and the future of analytic philosophy

The interviewer is a bit hard to understand, but it doesn't much matter.

"Bernard Williams's Debt to Nietzsche: Real or Illusory?"

This is a revised version of the paper I gave in Lund last month at the excellent conference on Williams organized by Paul Russell (British Columbia/Lund).  There were some predictably first-rate papers by Stephen Darwall (Yale), Miranda Fricker (CUNY), Gideon Rosen (Princeton), and Russell, among others, but readers interested in moral philosophy and Williams will want to keep an eye out for work by Geraldine Ng (Reading) and Matthieu Queloz (Oxford), who also gave excellent talks.  My paper is very much a work in progress, so feedback from philosophers interested in Nietzsche and Bernard Williams is welcome.

Statement in defense of the academic freedom of philosophers to discuss sex and gender

Kudos to philosophers Ned Hall (Harvard) and John Schwenkler (Florida State) for drafting the initial statement, and to those philosophers who have joined them: Jose Bermudez (Texas A&M0, Clare Chambers (Cambridge), Cordelia Fine (Melbourne), Benj Hellie (Toronto), Thomas Kelly (Princeton), Jeff McMahan (Oxford), Francesca Minerva (Ghent), Peter Singer (Princeton & Melbourne), Nicole Vincent (Technology Sydney), and Jessica Wilson (Toronto).   From the statement:

• We affirm the right of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals to live free of harassment and abuse, and we welcome them enthusiastically as fellow participants in the profession of philosophy.
• We reject calls for censuring or deplatforming any of our colleagues on the basis of their philosophical arguments about sex and gender identity, or their social and political advocacy for sex-based rights.
• We condemn the too frequently cruel and abusive rhetoric, including accusations of hatred or transphobia, directed at these philosophers in response to their arguments and advocacy.
• We urge that the philosophical discussion of sex, gender and related social and political issues be carried out in a collegial and mutually respectful manner, reflecting the full range of interests at stake and presuming the good faith of all parties.

I strongly agree with this statement, and I am hopeful the majority of philosophers also agree.  (Professors Hall and Schwenkler shared an early draft with me, but we agreed that since I have been out front longer and louder than anyone else defending gender critical feminist philosophers from harassment and vilification I should not add my name.)

UPDATE:  In keeping with the freak show that is Twitter, the overwhelming response from many of the culprits this statement is meant to target has been denial, ridicule, and disbelief.  (In the real world, everyone agrees, and is puzzled the statement was needed.)  Several readers, who have not been following the misconduct on social media, did ask whom the statement is referring to with this:  "We condemn the too frequently cruel and abusive rhetoric, including accusations of hatred or transphobia, directed at these philosophers."  Among the philosophers, faculty and graduate students (the latter marked with an *), who have been guilty of such rhetoric, and sometimes worse, directed not only at gender critical feminists but anyone perceived as supporting them (or even just supporting their right to express their views) are B.R. George (Carnegie-Mellon), Jonathan Ichikawa (British Columbia), Rebecca Kukla (Georgetown), Eugene Marshall (Florida International), Rachel McKinney (Suffolk), Rachel McKinnon (Charleston), Garret Merriam (Cal State-Sacramento), *Nathan Oseroff (King's College, London), *Christa Peterson (Southern California), *Keyvan Shaifiei (Georgetown), *Joshua Stein (Calgary), and Matt Weiner (Vermont), and that's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, but these are the worst offenders (some are really sick puppies, like Shaifiei and Stein).   Professor Stock has documented many other instances of attacks on the academic freedom and free speech of gender critical feminists, mostly by non-philosophers.

Earlier this summer philosopher Jennifer Frey (South Carolina) called out the hypocritical nonsense of Christa "Fuck Brian Leiter" Peterson, one of the worst offenders for "cruel and abusive rhetoric":

Ms. Peterson has been leading the Twitter charge against Gender Critical feminist philosophers for the last year, dishing out insults, mockery, lies, half-truths, and more, and then playing the victim when anyone calls her on it.  (Her capacity to misread and thus misrepresent what she cites is also breathtaking; I suppose she counts on most of her Twitter followers not bothering to actually check.)  We first encountered Ms. Peterson more than a year ago denouncing an essay by radical activist and feminist Robert Jensen (UT Austin) as "dumb as shit."  She also denounces as "shit" this post by feminist philosophers Sophie Allen, Holly Lawford-Smith and others, refers repeatedly to philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) as "a noted bigot" and mocks her continuously, calls the views of Leslie Green (the Professor of the Philosophy of Law at Oxford University) "repulsive and deeply unserious," and on and on and on, to the order of hundreds if not thousands of tweets full of sneering mockery, misrepresentation, and abuse of philosophers.

Like another bad actor, Nathan Oseroff (who did finally apologize for his misconduct), Ms. Peterson is an adult in her late 20s.  She is free to be as rude and abusive as she wants, but she can't complain when others comment on it.  She can be held to account for what she says in public, just like anyone else.  As someone in Twitter-land once observed:

 

 

A friendlier take on Habermas's 90th birthday

We previously noted Raymond Geuss's skepticism, now here's a friendlier take from philosopher James Gordon Finlayson (Sussex).  Finlayson notes, "Habermas has never been one to endear himself to the academic and political establishments. That's partly because he voices opinions even when they are unpopular. For example, as early as 1953 – presciently we now know – he called out Heidegger, the doyen of German philosophy, for being an unrepentant Nazi," which of course he was.  (Habermas never, to my knowledge, called out the other unrepentant Nazi, more his contemporary, Gadamer.)   Habermas was undoubtedly a valiant voice against Germany's disgrace and those who would whitewash it.    But in another way, as I have argued elsewhere, he was the perfect vehicle for Marxism in a country where communism was made illegal in the 1950s.  As I wrote:

In West Germany, [the repression of communism] culminated with the 1956 decision of the Constitutional Court declaring the German communist party, and any successor party, to be “unconstitutional."  With legal strictures and professional sanctions in place, it is hardly surprising that the primary Marxist intellectual movement in Germany, the Frankfurt School, should devolve into an academic Kantian exercise.  Whatever criticisms one might make of Habermas, his work could not fall within the scope of the 1956 decision declaring communism unconstitutional.

 

[1] Aug. 17, 1956, 5 Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts [BVerfGE] 85. An English translation of the decision, can be found in, Gerd Pfeiffer and Hans-Georg Strickert, eds., Outlawing the Communist Party, trans. W.P. von Schmertzing (New York: The Bookmailer, 1957), at 225-227.

Prospect's "top 50 thinkers" in the world

What an eccentric list!  A mix of philosophers, economists, politicians, historians, activists, and others--some very good, some fashionable, some not so good.  Identity politics and "diversity" seem to have been the overriding consideration for inclusion; I didn't see any Marxists, for example.  Everyone should write in "Robert Paul Wolff" if they vote! 

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Weed, "Weed," 1971

After leaving Uriah Heep, Ken Hensley went to Germany and recorded one album with a group of German rock musicians; this is the title song, an instrumental very much in the Uriah Heep style:

 

In Memoriam: Agnes Heller (1929-2019)

Professor Heller, a philosopher and student of Lukács, has passed away.  She lost her academic position after the 1956 uprising in Hungary and eventually taught for many years at the New School in New York City.  In recent years, she was an admirably vocal critic of the fascist Orban.

(Thanks to Igor Shoikhedbrod for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  There's a more informative obituary (in German) at Die Zeit. (Thanks to Charles Parsons for the pointer.)

Richard Marshall interviews Alec Walen (Rutgers)...

...at 3.16 AM.

Three philosophers elected Fellows of the British Academy

They are:  Gregory Currie (York), Susan James (Birkbeck/London), and Robert Stern (Sheffield).

Thus spake Nietzsche

Wenn die Unterdrückten, Niedergetretenen, Vergewaltigten aus der rachsüchtigen List der Ohnmacht heraus sich zureden: „lasst uns anders sein als die Bösen, nämlich gut! Und gut ist Jeder, der nicht vergewaltigt, der Niemanden verletzt, der nicht angreift, der nicht vergilt, der die Rache Gott übergiebt, der sich wie wir im Verborgenen hält, der allem Bösen aus dem Wege geht und wenig überhaupt vom Leben verlangt, gleich uns den Geduldigen, Demüthigen, Gerechten“ — so heisst das, kalt und ohne Voreingenommenheit angehört, eigentlich nichts weiter als: „wir Schwachen sind nun einmal schwach; es ist gut, wenn wir nichts thun, wozu wir nicht stark genug sind“ — aber dieser herbe Thatbestand, diese Klugheit niedrigsten Ranges, welche selbst Insekten haben (die sich wohl todt stellen, um nicht „zu viel“ zu thun, bei grosser Gefahr), hat sich Dank jener Falschmünzerei und Selbstverlogenheit der Ohnmacht in den Prunk der entsagenden stillen abwartenden Tugend gekleidet, gleich als ob die Schwäche des Schwachen selbst — das heisst doch sein Wesen, sein Wirken, seine ganze einzige unvermeidliche, unablösbare Wirklichkeit — eine freiwillige Leistung, etwas Gewolltes, Gewähltes, eine That, ein Verdienst sei.

    --On the Genealogy of Morality, I:13

There's hardly anything worth left saying about the monster-child's latest verbal abominations...

...but this is an important and practical step that needs to be taken given that so many of his followers (a) own guns, and (b) will take his words as incitements to action.   Maybe the Secret Service can protect Rep. Omar, and the Capitol Police can be assigned to Trump for awhile?

Alex Gourevitch: Three facts about Trump's Presidency when it comes to foreign policy

Political theorist Alex Gourevitch (Brown) posted these interesting remarks on Facebook, and kindly gave me permission to share them here; I'll permit comments, which will be moderated as usual for relevance and substance (submit only once, they may take awhile to appear).   Herewith Professor Gourevitch:

 

So here are three facts about the Trump presidency, when it comes to foreign policy, that I think are worth thinking through.

First, in the history of the modern presidency - say FDR onward - he has been among those presidents most reluctant to use military force. There has been a lot - too much - attention to what he says, but not enough to what he does. There are very few American presidents who by their third year had not started a major war, dramatically escalated an existing one, or otherwise materially supported new, major conflicts in various countries. In terms of the actual use of force Trump is closest to Carter, Clinton first term, and Obama. And Carter and Obama were objectively constrained by Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan fallout respectively in ways that Trump is not, while Clinton was arguably more willing to send troops off in the first year (Somalia escalation, invasion of Haiti) than Trump has been during the equivalent period. There have been no new invasions of countries, no major increase in troop levels nor direct escalation of conflicts. If anything, Trump's tendency has so far been to de-escalate: threaten North Korea then walk it back and be the first President to set foot there, bomb an empty airport in Syria then move on, a half-hearted effort to stage a coup in Venezuela but again he just moves on, even Iran he calls of a strike and in the name of not wanting to kill Iranians! (Hard to imagine Hillary having said that had she been at the helm). He partially withdrew forces from Iraq more successfully than Obama. Yemen stands as a horrendous stain, but that has been more or less going along with the Obama policy he inherited, not some major escalation nor does it involve any major militarization of foreign policy generally. There is little evidence that Trump really has the stomach for a sustained, military engagement with significant casualties with anyone.

Second, the one place Trump has quite confidently sent troops - against the grumblings of the military itself - has been the border. The militarization of the border, not just the family separation stuff but the actual deployment of forces, has been, while not some radical departure from the past, a clear escalation. And there are the promised interior raids as well. He has pursued that project of militarizing the border and policing immigration with far more focus and consistency than any kind of foreign adventurism. Where the foreign affairs stuff has involved crazy tweets, full of bluster, without much follow through - to the clear frustration of the foreign policy establishment including his own neocon/warmonger advisors like Bolton and Pompeo - the control over borders has been a much more seriously pursued goal as a practical matter, not just as a matter of rhetoric.

IHE must be desperate for news...

...if they're organizing a story around tweets by random maniacs, ignoramuses, and self-promoters on Twitter.  And I say this as someone who doesn't much care for Professor Pinker!

The memorial notice for John Gardner from July 11 now has several updates

Here.

The McMaster summer school on capitalism, democratic solidarity, and institutional design

Even if you couldn't be there, you can now watch the videos!   Here's the nice interdisciplinary line-up of speakers:  Mark Blyth (Poli Sci, Brown); William Edmundson (Law & Philosophy, Georgia State); Robert Hockett (Law, Cornell), Stephanie Mudge (Sociology, UC Davis), Stefan Sciaraffa (Philosophy, McMaster), and Alan Thomas (Philosophy, York).

Attitudes towards "socialism" by undergraduate major

This is a curious study that several readers have sent along.  Philosophy majors lean more left than finance majors (who would have guessed?), but it's unclear whether this shows anything about "socialism" per se since it's unclear whether respondents all shared the same understanding.  One suspects that many respondents were thinking of what Europeans would call "social democracy"--regulated market economy with strong protections for workers and trade unions, together with extensive social insurance programs--since the best known "socialist" in America, Senator Sanders, is really just a social democrat, much like FDR. 

Strategies for writing: daily doer or holiday writer?

This is interesting and perhaps useful for some readers.

New open access "Journal of Modern Philosophy" will now accept submissions...

...on figures in 19th-century philosophy as well.  Good news for Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche scholars (among others) out there!

(Thanks to Paul Katsafanas for the information.)

*

The philosophy of Bernard Williams

Links to articles, interviews, videos and more (courtesy of philosopher Paul Russell [British Columbia/Lund]).

The unfolding Republican-made financial catastrophe at the University of Alaska

The latest (thanks to Jon Eddison).

Blast from the past: when the police arrested Henry Louis Gates, Jr....

...ten years ago.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Dirty Tricks, "Wait Till Saturday," 1975

Short-lived British hard rock band, this is a fine rocking tune that leads off their debut album:

 

Doris from Wash U/St. Louis to Cornell

John M. Doris (moral psychology, metaethics), Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, St. Louis, has accepted appointment as Peter L. Dyson Professor of Ethics in Organizations and Life in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and Professor in the Sage School of Philosophy, both at Cornell University, effective for 2019-20.  With the appointments of both Doris and Shaun Nichols from Arizona, Cornell will now probably be the top place for students interested in empirically-oriented moral psychology.

This week in Twitter crazy: Eve Keneinan thinks Peter Singer is "possessed"

No idea who this weird person is (but you can read her profile to see she's some kind of reactionary religious crazy), but she claims to be a philosopher and here's her powerful philosophical take on Singer:

 

In Memoriam: John Gardner (1965-2019)

It's particularly painful for me to have to report the untimely death (due to cancer) this morning of the legal and moral philosopher John Gardner, Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and before that the Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford.  I'm traveling, but will add more thoughts and links in the coming days.  This is a huge loss for legal philosophy at Oxford, and a great loss for the international community of legal philosophers, of which John was a beloved member.   My deepest condolences to his family.

ADDENDUM:  John has a wonderful personal page, with links to papers and talks, as well as photos and more.

A BIT MORE:  When John took over the Professorship of Jurisprudence, it had been held for nearly thirty years by Ronald Dworkin, who was part-time only, although that overstates his involvement.  Dworkin supervised hardly any students, and did almost nothing to organize events for the benefit of jurisprudence students.  John was the opposite, by several orders of magnitude.  John was tireless on the administrative and pedagogical fronts, doing what the Professor of Jurisprudence was supposed to do.   Quite apart from his commitment to the program, he was "very clever" as the Brits like to say, analytically acute, both in writing and in conversation.   He was an especially brilliant and amusing critic, as in his argument that a "constructive interpretation" of Dworkin shows him to be a legal positivist, or his critique (with his frequent collaborator Tim Macklem) of Scott Shapiro's book.

ANOTHER:   A memorial notice from the Oxford Law faculty, which includes several nice photos, including one of John overlooking the Texas Hill country during his and Les Green's joint visit to UT Austin back in 2004.  (Thanks to Les Green for sending this along.)

AND ANOTHER lovely memorial written by Annalise Acorn (Alberta).   (Thanks to Jake Woljtowicz for the pointer.)

ON A MORE PERSONAL NOTE John was always a source of sage advice and perspective on, shall we say, the peculiarities of the philosophy profession in the Internet era.   For posterity, I should now credit him as the author of two sets of sage and amusing remarks, here and the first comment here.  I shall miss his counsel.

ANOTHER:  An obituary (by Nicola Lacey [LSE]) at The Guardian.

 

I've apparently been keeping some of the lesser minds in philosophy busy "for decades"

This is Robin James (PhD, DePaul), Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, writing about me:

I did a search, and couldn't find any of the papers on the connection between my rankings, capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarcy.  I guess these fine scholars are still work-shopping them.  Exciting!

 

University of Chicago's new undergraduate admissions initiatives

Interesting, I was not aware of several of these.