Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

An interview in the "Shanghai Review of Books"

Yingnan Zhao, the translator of my Naturalizing Jurisprudence (OUP, 2007) into Chinese (published this year), posed a series of questions about my work in legal philosophy, on Nietzsche (Nietzsche on Morality [Routledge, 2nd ed., 2015] will appear in Chinese soon thanks to the work of Liu Jin Ze), and on philosophical naturalism, and has now translated the interview in Chinese for the Shanghai Review of Books.   (The English version is here for those who might be interested:    Download Shanghai Review of Books interview 2025.)

Spring quarter at UChicago starts today...

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 24

...and it's my busiest teaching quarter this year (my choice, it allowed me to have the fall off, and just a seminar on German philosophy with my colleague Michael Forster in winter).  I have two courses, and over 130 students, so I will be a less satisfactory email correspondent for the next eight weeks, although I will continue to welcome news and links.  Thanks!

Mytaxe.uk: run for the hills!

Last week, I was in the UK, with legal philosophy talks at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, and a Nietzsche workshop at King's College, London.  Because it was a compressed visit (I arrived Tuesday, and had talks Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday), I booked a taxi service from Cambridge to Oxford (the trains are almost as expensive and take a very long time between the two towns).  A colleague had recommended this service, mytaxe.uk, https://www.mytaxe.uk/, which I cannot recommend, alas, based on my experience.  They may be better for local bookings, but they were terrible for my trip, and I would never use them again. 

An interview in Portuguese about legal realism, the American constitutional crisis, naturalism, and other topics...

...in a leading Brazilian newspaper, Estadão.  I was in Brazil last week for some lectures and seminars on legal philosophy, at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo and the University of Sao Paulo.  I learned many very interesting things, which I'll write more about in the near future.  Below the fold, a photo of me and Professor Ronaldo Macedo on the grand staircase of the "old" law school building at USP (American law schools don't look like this!):

A note about memorial notices

I have never tried to post memorial notices for all the many teachers of philosophy who die in a given year (I just do not have the time for that).  I have tried to limit memorial notices to those who are widely known in the profession.  Prior to 2020 that meant posting about 20-25 memorial notices per year.  In 2024, there were well over forty (scroll through the "Year in Review" category to see the annual lists on December 31 of every year).  I don't think it's that more well-known philosophers were dying, but rather that it's hard to say "no" to folks who ask for a memorial notice to be posted about someone they knew.  I'm going to start saying "no" a bit more, with apologies in advance.  But it's becoming clear that as I've grown more relaxed about the criteria for blog memorial notices, the demand for them has increased, and I will have to start saying 'no' a lot more.  Please feel free to share news with me of the death of philosophers, but please understand that I may not always post about them.  The main criteria are that the philosopher was widely known at least nationally, and preferably internationally, and known outside their narrow specialty (if they had a narrow specialty). Thank you.

Blog readership, a periodic update

Since I began taking summer blogging hiatuses, blog traffic has stabilized at a new norm of roughly 3.1 million unique visits per year (3.2 million last year, as it happens).  (Page views are higher, but unique visits are a more accurate measure of readership, since page views can be artificially inflated by blog design.)  That's an average of about 260,000 visits per month, but the monthly total is lower during the summer hiatus months and higher during the academic year in the Northern Hemisphere. Thanks, as always, for reading.

Apologies if I don't reply to your emails...

...too much going on, and I have to prioritize emails from colleagues and students right now.  I appreciate tips and pointers for the blog, and am trying to keep up with those!  Thank you.

Please do not write to me from anonymous "proton" email or similar addresses

I ignore these emails, or I ask the sender to communicate from a real email address if the issue seems important.  I promise to protect, as I have for a quarter-century now, the identities of faculty or students who are writing to me about matters where they worry they are at risk of retaliation.  I may not post on the blog about these issues, but I will not reveal your identity.  I get these emails with some frequency (one or two a month), and they are not productive.  Thank you.

UPDATE:  Just to clarify, most of the anonymous emails I get are from proton addresses, but not all (occasionally they come from gmail).  

Law professors reading Marx

A nice note from a law professor elsewhere:

I wanted to pass on a note thanking you for your marvelous book with Jaime Edwards on Marx. The explanation of ideas is lucid and exactly what this non-expert needed as a clear and comprehensive introduction. Like many, I have read at one time the Manifesto and bits of Capital before. But I've never had a fully satisfying explainer, and this is it. The examples also are extremely helpful in understanding things (and some were genuinely funny, like the proto-Cheetahs!). I'm planning to assign portions to my students for appropriate classes.

 

I'm on Bluesky now

Just a reminder, that I'm here, and you can follow me there to follow updates on the blog and occasionally other items that don't make it to the blog.

"Five Books" list of the Five Best Philosophy Books of 2024

Here, and it very generously includes my co-authored book with Jaime Edwards on Marx; I'll quote just a bit of Nigel Warburton's write-up:

[I]t is certainly an extremely useful book that should become a standard book for students and anybody interested in understanding Marx. Other books purport to do that, but not usually with this level of communicative skill. It’s written by philosophers who can write and who are thinking critically about what they are writing about. It’s not an inert summary, but something that brings Marxist ideas alive, and shows their strengths and limitations.

The other books sound interesting too!

 

I've moved from Twitter/X to BlueSky and all new links to blog posts will be there

If you use X or similar social media to follow the blog, please follow me there.  Thank you.

ADDENDUM:  Here's why you should move too:   Musk is manipulating the algorithms on his platform in service of Trump and the Republicans.  (ADDENDUM:  A reader points out the referenced study fails to account for the effect of the attempted Trump assassination, which is a rather serious variable!  On the other hand, anyone who has been on Twitter knows that the amount of right-wing garbage in one's feed has increased since Musk took over.)

ANOTHER:  Join the exodus to Bluesky:

The platform formerly regarded [by ignoramuses-ed.] as a utopian market square for exchanging information has suffered its largest exodus to date.

Bluesky, emerging as X’s newest rival, has amassed 16 million users, including 1 million in the course of 24 hours last week. Hundreds of thousands of people have quit the former Twitter since Donald Trump’s election victory on 6 November.

The catalyst is X’s owner, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who transformed the social media site and used it as a megaphone to blast Trump into the White House.

Conference announcements

As longtime readers know, I do not generally post conference announcements.  I make three exceptions:  (1) for conferences I'm participating in (sometimes); (2) memorial conferences; and (3) retirement conferences, especially when there are opportunities for philosophers to participate remotely.

Summer quasi-hiatus is ending, more regular blogging resumes next week

Thanks, as always, for reading.

"Marx" will be published on September 5

MOVING TO FRONT FROM AUGUST 14

UPDATE:  The book is out in the U.S.; I received my copies today, and I know a professor at Northwestern who also got his copy.  Thanks again to all those wh pre-ordered, I hope you will have your book in hand very soon.

=====August 14 post follows======

But I'm told it may ship even sooner, so order now.  Two of the referees for Routledge kindly identified themselves and agreed to blurb the book.  Allen Buchanan (emeritus Duke; Laureate Professor, U Arizona), author of Marx and Justice:  The Radical Critique of Liberalism (1982), said:

"A tour de force. Not only the best available introduction to Marx’s thought and to post-Marx Marxist theories, but also of interest to specialists. The organization is excellent, and the writing is always clear and jargon-free. It covers all the main topics that a book on Marx should address. It is remarkably fair and balanced, sympathetic to Marx’s ideas, but also appropriately critical of them." 

David Leopold (Oxford), author of The Young Karl Marx (2007), said:

"A philosophical introduction to Marx which manages to be genuinely accessible without avoiding controversy or consigning its subject to history. Edwards and Leiter bring Marx into a productive conversation with current work in the social sciences in order to develop and defend distinctive accounts of his views on history, ideology, and capitalism. A very welcome addition to the literature." 

I want to share a further set of comments from another referee report (whose author we do not know), not only because it is laudatory, but because it gives a really good sense of the book:

The blog started 21 years ago today

What I wrote on the 10th anniversary is perhaps worth reading.  In the first ten years, the blog averaged 2.3 million unique visits per year; the blog still averages 3 million unique visits per year, notwithstanding the summer hiatuses of recent years.  Thanks, as always, for reading.

ADDENDUM:  A follower on Twitter posted the following:  "i started reading in maybe 2008 as an undergrad at a small commuter school with 1-2 phil faculty. the blog and PGR is how i learned about the professional aspects of philosophy, where to apply for phd etc. - i think it may have been how i found out PhDs were funded and i could go."  

Summer quasi-hiatus and advertising

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MAY 29

As I've done in recent years, I will reduce blogging substantially during June and July and to a lesser extent in August as well.  I'll still post periodically, especially about things that are time-sensitive (like the expected draft faculty lists for the fall 2024 PGR), but please do not expect more than a few posts per week starting next week (the pace will pick up a bit in August).   Advertising rates will be reduced accordingly ($500 for top spots, $400 for 2nd from the top, $350 for third spots).   Thanks, as always, for reading.

Marx book, redux

We returned the corrected proofs of the Marx book to Routledge today, so we are on track for publication in early September.   For those curious, here is the index for the volume, very ablely prepared by Kate Petroff, a PhD student here:  Download MARX Index final   It gives a good sense of the range of topics covered, and the range of literature we drew upon or discuss.

 

I'd settle for this as an epitaph

I've been fortunate over the last few years to have a steady ally on issues pertaining to academic freedom, and UChicago's Kalven Report, in the eminent biologist Jerry Coyne, now emeritus here.  A propos a recent misrepresentation of the Kalven Report and my rejoinder to it, Jerry offered these kind words:   "I’ve worked with Brian on Kalven, and although he can be brusque, he’s also efficient, eloquent, and, by [God], gets things done!"  

(At Jerry's blog, he says not "by God" but "by Ceiling Cat," a standing joke for all the atheists there who try to avoid reference to the non-existent deity.)  

 

The "Marx" book has been delivered to Routledge, and will appear (in paperback) in September

It's even got a cover:

We delivered the final manuscript to the press today.   We've also received from the press some of the endorsements for the volume from some of those who acted as referees for the press:

“A tour de force. Not only the best available introduction to Marx’s thought and to post-Marx Marxist theories, but also of interest to specialists. The organization is excellent, and the writing is always clear and jargon-free. It covers all the main topics that a book on Marx should address. It is remarkably fair and balanced, sympathetic to Marx’s ideas, but also appropriately critical of them.” - Allen Buchanan, Duke University/University of Arizona, USA

“A philosophical introduction to Marx which manages to be genuinely accessible without avoiding controversy or consigning its subject to history. Edwards and Leiter bring Marx into a productive conversation with current work in the social sciences in order to develop and defend distinctive accounts of his views on history, ideology, and capitalism. A very welcome addition to the literature.” - David Leopold, University of Oxford, UK

Advertising update

All the top spots are now booked through April, so the next open top spot is in May.  There are still some 2nd and 3rd spots open in the January through April period, as well as thereafter.  Please note the new rate structure announced last August.

Reader email

Many readers have kindly written recently to express appreciation for the Israel/Gaza link roundups, which I'm glad have been of value to others.  I'll try to keep them up at least once or twice per week going forward.   I got a particular kick out of this email from a reader:

I just wanted to thank you for posting on the blog the variety of points of view on the very horrible situation Israel and the world faces....I’m not as disparaging of [Thomas] Friedman as you are (but I get it) but you tipped the hat.  This —your task--can’t be fun. I think it’s a service to what’s left of the American intellectual community.

My home page

After a two-year hiatus, it is finally updated with a new book, recent and upcoming talks (one or two more may be scheduled for spring), and updated links for the former students I had the privilege of working with.

"Marx" in the Routledge Philosophers series

Jaime Edwards and I delivered the penultimate draft of our manuscript on "Marx" to the press yesterday.  I'm sure we'll be making revisions after getting referee reports and feedback at a conference on the manuscript in early January, but with luck the book will appear in fall 2024 or at the latest by spring 2025.  Thanks to those who have written over the years inquiring about the book.  Here's the tentative table of contents, for those who might be interested:  Download Toc edwards leiter marx

 

Twitter update

I made my Twitter account private a couple of weeks ago after an infestation of religious zealots, which grew tiresome.  I have to say I'm enjoying Twitter much more this way, without encounters with random stupid Twitterati, some of whom leave me feeling like I need a shower.  I'm happy to approve follower requests from philosophers, academics, and other normal folks with non-anonymous accounts.

"Realist Jurisprudence: Selected Essays" in Spanish

Coming this fall, courtesy of Professor Francisco Mora-Sifuentes (a legal philosopher at the University of Guanajuato in Mexico) and published by Zela Grupo Editorial, the leading South American publisher of legal philosophy.  These are Spanish translations of different English essays of mine on realist jurisprudence from the last dozen years or so:

This blog started 20 years ago today

You can see my remarks on the 14th anniversary (in the wake of the rise of the Wokerati in philosophy [see #6 in particular]) and the 10th.   The biggest change since 2017 (the 14th anniversary) has been the rise of Twitter, which now dominates social media in a way blogs did around the 10th anniversary of the blog.   If Twitter implodes (it's usage has been in decline, but it is still dominant), I doubt there will be a return to blogs as the primary social media outlet, but who really knows?  As I mentioned this past June, I am going to reduce my blogging schedule--a kind of long, phased retirement as it were--starting this September (I will continue, of course, my reduced summer blogging schedules, which I've utilized for a couple of years now).  Starting in September, I'll aim for new blog material at least 3 and maybe 4 days per week, but there will be fewer days with multiple postings, unlike in prior years.  Reader contributions of suggested links will still be very welcome, and I am grateful for the many reader contributions over the last two decades. 

The advertising rates will also be adjusted downwards by $100 per spot to reflect the lower activity:  top spots will be  $600 (instead of $700), 2nd from the top $500, and 3rd from the top $400.  I'll still offer 10% discount for bookings of three months or more.  Email me for information and to book spaces.  (Right now both top spots in September are taken, but there is at least one top spot open every month thereafter, as well as 2nd and 3rd spots.)   Unlike many blogs, my visitor statistic are public; even with my summer hiatuses, the blog is still running more than three million unique visits per year.  (This blog is not formatted to inflate "page view" by turning every visit to the blog into at least two page views, but even without that, page views continue to average more than four million per year.)  My guess is the adjustment to the blogging schedule may reduce blog traffic by 5-10% over the course of the (northern hemisphere) academic year. 

Thanks, as always, dear readers for your continued interest and support.

I seem to be catching on in Asia

Last year, a Japanese translation of Nietzsche on Morality came out, and now I've learned a Chinese translation is in the works, to be published by the Shanghai People's Publishing House.  (There was a Greek translation about a decade ago, and that was the only translation of that book prior to these.)  Earlier this summer, I learned that a Chinese translation of Naturalizing Jurisprudence (2007) will be published by The Commercial Press in Beijing.  (A Spanish translation appeared from Marcial Pons about a decade ago.)   I've also seen an uptick in requests to translate my articles (some on jurisprudence, some on Marx) into Chinese in the last couple of years for journals.  I don't know what explains this, but I'm certainly pleased to have the work available to students and scholars working in Chinese or Japanese.

Summer blogging plans, and thereafter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JUNE 1--UPDATED

As usual, I'll be posting somewhat less in June (a few times per week), and even less in July and August (maybe once or twice per week, depending on what's happening).  August 3, 2023 will mark the 20th anniversary of the blog, and I am thinking that I will scale back my blogging going forward, although I won't stop altogether.   I'm still debating how much I will cut back (and how I will adjust the advertising rates for next year in light of that).  I'll make an announcement in August, perhaps on or around the 20th blog anniversary.   I sincerely appreciate all the intelligent readers I've been fortunate to attract over the years, and I've enjoyed the opportunity to correspond with many of you and to meet others in person.  While Twitter has taken a toll on blogs generally, this one is still going remarkably strong, averaging well over three million unique visitors per year, so it seems a good time to begin phasing into blog retirement while it's still widely read and influential (much to the chagrin of the Wokerati, of course).  But it will be a multi-year phasing, and come September I am sure I will still be posting a few times each week, but nothing like the volume in the past.  

Thanks, as always, for your interest and indulgence over many years!

UPDATE (6/6/23): Thanks to the many readers who wrote me after last week's post.  I should clarify that my phased blogging retirement may last a long time--I won't wholly abandon the philosophy blogosphere to the Wokerati and those hell-bent on destroying the field!  And as the enemies of academic freedom become more aggressive, I will continue to shine a light on those issues.   It's even possible that when I do retire from my actual job in 15 years or so, I may resume a more active blogging schedule.  I still haven't decided what the new schedule for September will look like, but it will be reduced from that of past years.

If you follow me on Twitter, please also follow me on Mastodon

That account is here.   Currently all Twitter content appears there as well, but given the way Twitter is going, I may soon post only at Mastodon (including, of course, links to the blog).

Amusingly, Twitter is now blocking any attempt to link to Mastodon accounts, a pretty clear sign that they're worried about the exodus.

 

"Feedburner" is defunct

For those who enjoy receiving blog posts delivered to your email account each day, I'm sorry to report that the service known as Feedburner has been discontinued by Google.  As an alternative, you can use an RSS reader, and still subscribe to this blog via Feedly, NewsBlur, or Inoreader.

New York City these days

MOVING TO FRONT FROM THIS MORNING:  UPDATED (AND COMMENTS OPEN FOR THOSE ALSO FAMILIAR WITH NYC OVER TIME TO SHARE THEIR VIEWS)

Last week I was at the NYU Colloquium in Legal, Social & Political Philosophy presenting work on Marx (that was great, the best intellectual experience I've had in a long time [special thanks to Sam Scheffler and Jeremy Waldron for making it so!]), and as part of the invitation NYU kindly gave us an apartment for the week, which was the first time my wife and I had been in NYC together in quite a number of years (it was also the first time I was there since the pandemic).   Now I was born in Manhattan, and still have distinct traces of the Brooklyn/Manhattan accent I acquired from my father and listening to a lot of Lenny Bruce as a kid, and I later practiced law in NYC and lived there again between 1991-1993 with my wife while finishing my PhD.  So I have warm feelings towards my hometown, although it has changed a lot since the 1960s/early 1970s of my youth.  (Films that give you a feel for the "look" of Manhattan then include Serpico, The 7-Ups, and, most notoriously, Death Wish.)   

Travels abroad, and some observations about philosophy

In June, I traveled overseas for the first time since 2019 (and I managed not to get Covid!).  London, Dublin, Amsterdam, and Bucharest were my airport destinations; Oxford University, University College Dublin, University of Amsterdam, and Dimitri Cantemir Christian University my academic hosts.  The events were ISNS in Oxford; a mini-conference on Nietzsche at UCD (papers by me, Tsarina Doyle [NUI-Galway] and Brian O'Connor [UCD]), and then an afternoon workshop on draft chapters of my co-authored Marx book; an anti-moralist conference on capitalism in the 21st-century in Amsterdam; and the IVR (international legal philosophy event) in Bucharest.

I'll start with travel stuff, which may be of some practical value to readers, and then move to intellectual substance.

May blogging

As I mentioned awhile back, this is a very busy month--with the end of our Spring quarter looming, grading, and various other deadlines.  As a result, I will be doing less blogging this month, although I will still put things up.

Email apologies

I do try to reply to emails, but this quarter I''m not doing so well.  One of my two courses involves a new preparation this quarter, in addition to other obligations.  My apologies if your email is greeted with silence.

Mysteries of Twitter

This funny photo that I posted on Twitter went "viral" as they say:  more than 11,000 retweets, 65,000 "likes," more than 350 comments, and, according to the fake Twitter data, nearly 4,000,000 "impressions" and more than 330,000 "engagements."  (The "impressions" data is much inflated, and should really be called "possible impressionns"; "engagements" is a better metric of those who actually saw it.)  What a strange medium!   As I've mentioned before, you can follow me on Twitter for links to blog posts, plus some Twitter-specific comments and gags.

After a two-year hiatus...

...my homepage is updated, for anyone who's interested--that includes talks (many of which were obviously derailed by the pandemic), video and audio interviews, former students, etc.

Best of the summer blog

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--LINK FIXED, BELOW

Here are some popular blog posts from the summer months you may have missed:

June

The Stone blog at the NY Times is dead

"Two Pessimisms in Mill"

The final nail in the coffin for the failed science of "implicit bias"?

July

Michigan Philosophy not accepting PhDs apps this fall, but will resume next year

Adoph Reed on Robin DiAngelo and the political economy of "race" politics (link fixed)

Percent of tenure-stream faculty who are female in PhD programs in philosophy increased about 40% since 2004

In Memoriam: Bob Moses (1935-2021)

August

Ranked philosophy departments that have no faculty specializing in the Continental traditions in philosophy after Kant

In Memoriam: Sarah (Waterlow) Broadie (1941-2021)

"Realism, Disagreement, and Explanation"

"The whole country is the Reichstag"

Philosophers Annual, ten top papers of 2020

The end of Oxford's dominance in jurisprudence:  Leslie Green to leave Oxford

"Moral Psychology with Nietzsche" should be out any day now in paperback...

...and you can preorder it now.

And from a recent review by Paul Loeb in the January 2021 Journal of the History of Philosophy:

Brian Leiter’s second book on Nietzsche brings together ideas and arguments that have already had a significant influence on the field through their earlier formulations in his articles from the past two decades. It is thus indispensable reading for anyone interested in Leiter’s evolving project of showing that Nietzsche has the correct naturalistic approach to issues in moral philosophy and moral psychology. As usual with Leiter’s scholarship, this monograph is extremely clear, densely argued, and philosophically sophisticated.

Somewhat lighter blogging...

...as readers may have noticed. It's the last week of the quarter here, and I've got papers to grade for graduating students, letters of recommendation to write, and lots of student appointments.   Things will start to pick up next week.  Thanks for your patience.

"Derrida made simple" and other Twitter delights

As I've noted before, I do post links to items on the blog on Twitter, so you can follow the blog there (if you participate in that godforsaken medium of the resentful and never-ending condescension from below!).  And I post a few other things that don't make it to the blog, like "Derrida made simple."

Alexa rankings of philosophy blogs, redux

We first noticed these a few months ago, so I took a more recent look to see if there were any changes for the philosophy blogs/sites (there were some in the overall rankings, but not many in the order):

Leiter Reports:                    340,106

Daily Nous:                          556,133

APA Online:                         918,916

Philosopher's Coccoon:      1,047,537

Digressions, Impressions:   1,404,354

PeaSoup (ethics blog)        2,469,935

Talking about Marx tomorrow...

...with Dr. Donna Lyons (Law, Trinity College Dublin) and Prof. Brian O'Connor (Philosophy, University College Dublin).  Details.

January 2021: another record

As I noted last month, 2020 was a banner year for blog readership.   And that continued last month:  January 2021 saw 346,000 visits (and more than 435,000 page views), compared to 300,000 visits (and 371,000 page views) in January 2020.  The blog is currently in its 18th year, so it's gratifying that readership continues to grow.  Thanks, as always, for reading!

(A note on the terminology:  every visit counts as one page view; but if during a visit, one clicks on a "continue reading" for a post because some of it is "below the fold", that counts as another page view; so too if one follows a link to another page on the blog, that counts as another page view.   One can maximize page views by putting the content of almost every post below the fold [so every visit ends up being at least two page views]; obviously I don't do that so, e.g., one can read multiple posts in a single visit, and that will all count as one page view.)

Joe Walsh meets Xmas

40 years ago, in my misspent youth, I had planned to be a rock star, as it were.  I played a passable rhythm guitar, I sang more in tune than Bob Dylan or Neil Young (not by much), and I wrote lots of songs.   I was also fortunate to know a real rock musician, Tommy Williams. Tommy took my simple songs, arranged them, and added lead guitars, bass, keyboards, drums and lead or backing vocals.   Some weren't bad, and once we get around to digitizing them, I'll put them online.   Unlike me, Tommy has made a real career as a musician, since he is a very good one.  Anyway, all this is a prelude to the main point:  each Xmas, Tommy and his wife and son, record Xmas versions of well-known rock songs, in this case, Joe Walsh's "Rocky Mountain Way."  Tommy is playing all the guitars--do check out his Xmas twist on the famous guitar "talk box" solos.

(You can find this song and more at Tommy's YouTube channel.)

Alexa site rankings

Browsing wikipedia, I discovered an entry for the Daily Nous blog run by philosopher Justin Weinberg (South Carolina), to which we occasionally link.   In that entry, there was a link to the Alexa ranking, which in turn took one to Alexa traffic rankings for other philosophy-related sites.  I don't know how accurate these are, but according to Alexa here's how several philosophy blogs/sites rank worldwide:

Crooked Timber              197,362 (group blog, including some philosophers)

Leiter Reports                224,454

APA website                   405,598

Daily Nous                      529,875 (although 90 days ago, it ranked #362,241)

Philosophers' Cocoon       547,311

Digressions, Impressions  939,895

Pea Soup (ethics blog)   1,573,961

By way of comparison, The New York Times website ranks #76, Pornhub ranks #56 (!!!), The New York Review of Books site ranks #46,383, while the London Review of Books site ranks #94,741.

This blog averages over 10,000 unique visits per day, but I don't know how that translates into differences in ranking, assuming they are actually sensitive to differences in traffic.  (The odd fluctuation for the Daily Nous blog leads me to think either that Alexa isn't reliable or that small differences in traffic have huge effects on a site's rank; on the other hand, this blog was ranked only slightly higher, around 216,000, three months ago according to Alexa).

 

Drudge Report had only 1.4 million unique visitors in August

That detail is buried in this NYT story (the subject of the latter was obviously lifted from this blog!).  According to my public stat counter, this blog had a quarter-million unique visits in August (and that was coming off my July hiatus when I only posted a few times), and 300,000 last month.  In a typical year, there are several months with 360,000 to 400,000 unique visits.  Somehow it seems like I should be a lot richer given these numbers!

Belated blog annivesary post

I started the blog 17 years ago on Monday, August 3--I forgot!   Reflections on the 14th and 10th anniversary are still relevant. I note that at the 10-year mark the blog had averaged 2.3 million visits and 3 million page views per year.  In the last five years, the blog has averaged more than 3.5 million visits and more than 4.5 page views per year. 

Thanks for reading--some of you for a very long time!  

Twitter redux

With some more regular blogging resumed, I will also resume linking posts here on Twitter, for those who prefer to follow the blog that way.  In addition, I also post some things exclusively on Twitter (e.g, making fun of America's current most malevolent jackass, Alex Berenson, or choice quotes, and even bits of philosophy).

Reminder about my July blogging hiatus

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JUNE 28

Just a reminder that I'm taking a break from blogging for July (so starting Wednesday), so as to make progress on a book and deal with some other matters.  I'll resume a reduced blogging schedule in August.   If there's something very time-sensitive I may post something in July, but otherwise please don't send me stuff for the blog until the very end of July.  Thanks as always for reading.