Brian Leiter https://universeodon.com/@BrianLeiter
@BrianLeiter
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I teach & write about moral, political and legal philosophy in the Anglophone and Continental traditions, at the University of Chicago. Views expressed are mine
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Joined May 2013
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Correlation is *not* causation
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Natural language pragmatics can be challenging:
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"The Wizard of Oz," from the prespective of the witches:
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How to write a Zizek essay:
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A well-known philosopher of physics writes about his experiences with schizophrenia over the last several decades...
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In lieu of veal, they're offering...
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This clarifies things:
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Advice you didn't need:
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Another scholar has to take a new job for having "incorrect" views about gender.
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In Memoriam: Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)
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If philosophical work inspired sensationalistic journalism:
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The Republican approach to water safety when sharks are around:
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On Habernas’s birthday, worth reposting this. An honorable man who played an important role in German public life, he also destroyed Critical Theory, turning it into the B version of bourgeois analytic political philosophy
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This is a funny meme, for anyone who has encountered Rawlsian "political liberalism" of the 1990s and after.
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This just isn't true. I find these kinds of tweets mystifying.
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God's selective protection...
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A public university cannot hire a faculty candidate because of their views on political or policy questions. This is straight up unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination if it really factored into the decision not to hire the candidate.
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Sesame Street has changed since I was a kid. Of course, so has America!
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First Routledge, now Oxford!
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Dostoevsky's manuscript for The Brothers Karamazov. Someone didn't pay enough attention to handwriting in lower school!
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Karl Marx was born on this day 206 years ago. He is the subject of much myth-making and distortion, by those who have supposedly read him and those who haven't. Coming this fall, an accessible philosophical introduction:
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On the value of learning philosophy:
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A genealogy of Foucault:
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@SandisBertaitis
It requires that you not lose your job because of your views on scholarly questions.
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Schopenhauer's pessimism made (way too) simple:
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If "nihilism" means denial of all objective values, then N. is a nihilist.
If "nihilism" means being unable to value in the absence of a metaphysical sanction for value, then N. is not a nihilist.
If "nihilism" means judging life not worth living, then N. is not a nihilist.
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In Memoriam: Joseph Raz (1939-2022)
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Clever lecture title, via Huw Price:
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This pretty much sums up the Benighted States of America in the age of COVID:
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Open letter from UK philosophers in support of academic freedom for Prof. Kathleen Stock and at the University of Sussex...
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On the mind of many professors right now:
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National literatures made simple:
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Oy veh, just heard from another well-known senior philosopher (who has published a lot with Oxford U Press), who also had a manuscript (not related to transgender issues) rejected on grounds of "sensitivity." I hope to have permission to share more soon. But this is alarming!
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Joseph Raz's final wishes
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The lesser-known sequel:
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@ProfWootton
That's ridiculous, he is openly asserting that he will commit scholarly malpractice!
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Problem of Evil, driving edition:
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How to write a dissertation and get your PhD:
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Translation failure for "jerk chicken"?
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My review of a recent book
Law is a Moral Practice
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Dangerous Halloween candy, philosophy edition:
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No 13 year old can understand Nietzsche. For those not in the know, Florence is the Twitter Kantian (think village atheist). That explains all
Nietzsche is proof that you can become a canonical philosopher by marketing yourself to 13 year olds
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Happy American Thanksgiving!
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Typical day at the tautology store!
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Peak Princeton philosophy, 1979: Back: G Harman, JW Smith, M Frede, G Pitcher, R Jeffrey, R Rorty; Middle: M. Wilson, W Kaufmann, Steph. Lewis, DK Lewis, J Burgess, T Nagel; Front: R Geuss, S Kripke, P Benacerraf, N. Salmon, A. Szathmary, T Scanlon, C Normore.
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"Forgive and forget" is not their approach; Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins), a distinguished Spinoza scholar gave permission to share this:
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Signs of the impending cat revolution:
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Rare photo of Dumbo the Elephant in the wild, with his parents:
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Dorothy Parker's review of "Atlas Shrugged":
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There is no positivist case for originalism, it’s unfortunate any time is being wasted on this confusion.
.
@StephenESachs
and
@sherifgirgis
debate “for and against the positivist case for originalism” at the
@GUConstitution
Center’s Originalism Summer Seminar.
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Aristotle made simple
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Duck's best friend too it turns out!
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Note to students: do not try this, the odds that you are the next Wittgenstein are infinitesimal.
When Wittgenstein submitted an essay for his BA degree at Cambridge, he did not include a preface and notes indicating the sources that he had used. When asked to supply these, he wrote this letter to G.E. Moore. (Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents 1911-1951, 76.)
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In honor of Nietzsche-hating
@morallawwithin
please post your favorite Nietzsche insults about Kant, "that catasrophic spider" (to get us going).
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Political and economic positions explained with "Amazon"
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"France is bacon": the mystery solved!
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"Philosophy & Public Affairs," aka, "The Journal of Rawls Worship":
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I’ve read a lot of things by the charlatan Derrida over the years, but I haven’t read that essay! What a disgrace to the Humanities that he was ever taken seriously anywhere.
I read Derrida’s essay on nuclear war, the stupidest fucking essay ever written, in which he describes nuclear holocaust as “fabulously textual.”
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The safety of literally no one depends on the university answering this question. What an embarrassment this guy is.
To the President of
@Columbia
University:
To accurately assess our safety on campus, your Jewish and Israeli faculty deserve to know:
Does Columbia University acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization responsible for the October 7 massacre?
Sincerely,
Shai Davidai
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In Memoriam: Harry G. Frankfurt (1929-2023)
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Dunning-Kruger tweet of the day. (As an aside, the most important language for philosophy in each era tends to be the language of the dominant imperial power.)
Philosophy has never spoken English. For a thousand years it spoke Greek. Then Latin for a thousand more. Then German briefly. But never English. (Locke and Hume hardly count as philosophers.) Philosophy has yet to learn English.
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This made me laugh pretty hard
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I guess this counts as an endorsement of the book:
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These kids win Halloween:
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I will share an anecdote: I was recently asked to referee a paper by a top law review (not Chicago); I explained why the paper was "sophomoric" and "not publishable"; the journal accepted it nonetheless. The author is a professor at that school. Welcome to American law reviews!
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Nearly 200 years ago David Strauss exposed the entire New Testament as a fraud. The non-existence of God has been clear for almost as long. Educated people know these things. Reactionary hacks on the other hand…
The Bible doesn’t appear in most high school and college curricula because it’s prestige has been utterly destroyed and most educated people are embarrassed to be associated with it.
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But they've still got work to do...
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Dominic Berry (LSE) once again threatening gender critical feminists...
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The birth of philosophy:
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Typical audience at a philosophy talk:
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Practical solutions to parenting problems:
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You couldn’t make this one up.
Former President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.”
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I'm not sure this is accurate, but...
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Chuck Berry died six years ago yesterday. I'd never seen this before, which is kind of neat:
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In Memoriam: Charles D. Parsons (1933-2024)
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Once upon a time a guy like this could be a major newspaper columnist even in America:
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Dunning-Kruger Effect, Covid edition:
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Socrates meets his match!
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When highway signs editorialize:
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@MeganTStevenson
The University can proclaim any belief it wants, but that doesn't change the law. The University can proclaim that "anti-communism" is essential to "merit," as it once effectively did. It's still unconstitutional to not hire faculty for not being sufficiently anti-communist.
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In Memoriam: Saul Kripke (1940-2022)
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Natural language pragmatics are tricky, part 2
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The English never disappoint..
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God Bless the Chinese!
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The French and Italian legal realists diagnosed this along ago: in the unreviewable court “anything goes” and the only recourse comes from the other branches of government or the streets.
It’s not a court. Courts take prior law at least minimally seriously. SCOTUS doesn’t and hasn’t since 1857. It’s an institutional problem.
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This should be a best-seller:
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Must have been a disciple of Schopenhauer!
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