Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Blast from the past: when Errol Morris defended his views on Kripke and Kuhn

Back in 2011.

Blast from the past: best Anglophone philosophers of law since 1945...

...who were at least 60 in 2016.  One thing that is certain is that a similar poll in a generation will not be so Oxford-centric.

Blast from the past: How do you know if your paper idea is "original"?

Back in 2013, with a discussion.

Blast from past: Smear merchants at "Campus Watch" object to being correctly described

Back in 2017.

Blast from the past: Cochrane v. Krugman...or the pseudo-science of macroeconomics implodes

Back in 2009, with a discussion.

Blast from the past: "Generation Wuss"

Back in 2014.

Blast from the past: "Most influential" philosophy books in the last 20 years, based on Google Scholar

Back in 2020.  Someone was lying on Twitter about this post, which reminded me of it.

Blast from the past: Most important Anglophone philosophers since WWII up until 2000

Back in 2015, with a discussion of the results.

Blast from the past: Annals of Twitter hypocrisy: the case of "condescension from below"

Back in 2018, but not much has changed on Twitter, as we've noted before.

Blast from the past: Garrison Keillor on the Republican Party

And this was back in 2004!  It's a helluva lot worse now.

Blast from the past: Gender (or other) quotas for entering PhD classes: what do we know about their effects?

A discussion back in 2013.

Blast from the past: "The conservatives of all ages are thoroughly dishonest"

Back in 2011, but the point is timeless.

Blast from the past: recommendations of advanced introductory texts in philosophy

Back in 2015.

Blast from the past: Sean Kelly (Harvard) on the renewed interest in phenomenology

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--SOME INTERESTING COMMENTS, INCLUDING FROM PROF. KELLY

Back in 2008.  How do things look today?

Blast from the past: Christopher Pynes reflects on APA Committee service

Back in 2016.

Blast from the past: Is philosophy in the doldrums? Poll results and discussion

Back in 2015.

Blast from the past: on the proposition that "there was no persuasive moral case agianst the Iraq war"

Back in 2006, but relevant again given some of the strange claims about the Iraq war now being made in the Ukraine thread!

Blast from the past: 20 "Most Important" philosophers of all time

A poll back in 2009, with comments from readers.  This post still gets visits almost every day!

Blast from the past: Most cited Anglophone philosophy books published since WWII (according to Google Scholar)

Back in 2017.

Blast from the past: Against "secret waitlists" in admissions

Back in 2017, but will soon be timely again. Do see the comments as well.

Blast from the past: On an irony in the evolution of "standpoint epistemology"

Back in 2016.  And see also.

Blast from the past: Farewell to the Eastern APA, Hello to Skype!

Back in December 2010, and of course the change has largely come to pass (albeit with Zoom mostly taking the place of Skype).

Blast from the past: Capitalism and culture

Back in 2015, with reading suggestions from readers.

ADDENDUM:  Reader Don Sudduth suggested opening comments for relevant literature on this topic since 2015.

Blast from the past: top 50 U.S. research universities based on membership in the National Academy of Sciences

Back in 2018, probably not much different now.

Blast from the past: Colin McGinn did not like Ted Honderich's book

Way back in 2007, the first in what became an ongoing series of harsh book reviews.  Reader reactions to the McGinn review (in the comments) varied.

Blast from the past: "There is no general metaphysical picture our best science supports"

Back in 2009, with comments by readers.

Blast from the past: Fish v. Boghossian on relativism in the NYT

Back in 2011, with a discussion by readers.

Blast from the past: most important philosophers of language since WWII

Back in 2016, with a discussion of the results.

Blast from the past: "My five favorite Americans of the 20th-century"

Back in 2018.  Many readers voted for MLK, unsurprisingly.

Blast from the past: when English professor Jennifer Doyle (UC Riverside) actually came to the defense of Judith Butler's defense of Avital Ronell

Back in 2018.  I still puzzle about how people like this made it into universities, since it's all so crazy.

Blast from the past: The "slave revolt" in philosophy, redux

Back in 2016 (with a new PGR, it is timely again).

Blast from the past: the 2014 attempt to take down the Philosophical Gourmet Report

It failed obviously.

Blast from the past: when philosophers and other academics spoke out in defense of Rebecca Tuvel and in condemnation of the former associate editors of Hypatia

Back in 2017.  The good news is there has been less of this bad behavior in philosophy since 2017 (alhough not none).

Blast from the past: Carrie Jenkins, Alan Soble, and the "chasm of crap"

Back in 2018.

Blast from the past: Tales from the American oligarchy

Back in 2008.

Blast from the past: Why do rich private universities still want to block unions for their graduate student TAs?

Back in 2016, prompted by the NLRB decision to give the green light to the union at Columbia now striking, as noted earlier.

Blast from the past: the state of philosophy in 2007 compared to 1997?

An interesting discussion, back in 2008.

Blast from the past: departments ranked by citations to faculty in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Back in 2014.

Blast from the past: Most important contributors to metaethics, 1945-2000

Back in 2019, with a discussion.

Blast from the past: MIT's ups-and-downs in the Philosophical Gourmet Report

Back in 2018, but the lesson there should be borne in mind this time around too (not specifically with regard to MIT, which continued to do well, but with regard to other departments that moved up or down).

Blast from the past: On defending the powerless and vulnerable, and giving them a voice

Back in 2018.

Blast from the past: "Social Justice [sic]" kittens: the calendar

Back in 2019.

Blast from the past: MA students and PhD applications

Back in 2010, with comments from readers.

Blast from the past: Janiak & Mercer on forgotten early modern female philosophers

Back in 2015, with some discussion in the comments as well.

Blast from the past: What is philosophy?

Peter Hacker's take, back in 2013, with a discussion.

Blast from the past: Ted Honderich, persona non grata

Back in 2005, with some interesting comments from readers.

Blast from the past: the most important philosopher of the past 200 years?

A poll back in 2009.

Blast from the past: Regulating speech on campus

Some comments on the law, back in 2015.

Blast from the past: Robert Paul Wolff's memoirs

Here's a post from 2010 with a link to several chapters.   Many readers at the time greatly enjoyed Wolff's evocative and well-written memoirs of personal and acadedmic life, and his portraits of different philosophers; a new generation of readers deserves to know of them!

Blast from the past: How the PGR helped one student decide a PhD in philosophy was not for him

Back in 2015.