Leigh M. Johnson

Strong Relativism

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson AnPan and RMWMTMBM, Philosophy, Relativism 3 Comments

After posting my bit on lazy relativism yesterday, my good friend and colleague, economist Prof. Art Carden (who also blogs regularly over at Division of Labour), sent me the following email: I really, really enjoyed your post on “lazy relativism” and have a suggestion for a followup that would help non-experts like myself: what’s “non-lazy…

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Rapture

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy 6 Comments

I was talking to one of my colleagues recently about our shared concern for demonstrating to students that “philosophy” and “religion” (or theology, or religious studies, or whatever) are different disciplines. Although they sometimes address the same subject matter, and although there is much in religion that is philosophical and much in philosophy that is…

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Poor Descartes

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy 2 Comments

I’m working on the chapter of my manuscript that traces the genealogy of human rights discourse through the Enlightenment, and I had the opportunity today to re-read Descartes’ Letter of Dedication that prefaces his Meditations on First Philosophy. What a hoot! (Admittedly, I may be getting a little punchy and it might not be that…

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Cosmobama

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Philosophy, Politics 3 Comments

Carlin Romano (Univ. of Pennsylvania) recently wrote an excellent piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education heralding President Obama as our first “Philosopher-in-Chief,” an honorific given to him largely as a result of the nuanced cosmopolitanism that characterized his Cairo speech entitled “A New Beginning” (full text and video of that address here). I was…

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Frankly, my dear…

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Teaching, The Search for Values 1 Comment

Last year, in my section of our College’s great books program (which is called “The Search for Values”), I taught Michel Foucault’s Fearless Speech for the first time. The book is an edited volume comprised of six lectures that Foucault delivered at the University of California-Berkeley in the fall of 1983, all centered around the…

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The Ever-Elusive “Hook”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Music 8 Comments

Ever since Michael Jackson died last week, I’ve been listening to his music almost non-stop. I had forgotten just how many mega-hits he had in his arsenal, and I’ve been shocked and awed all over again by their timelessness. The music of the 80’s and early-90’s had a very disctint sound that, in my humble…

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Gitmo Soldiers On

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics Comments Off on Gitmo Soldiers On

Just a reminder that the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay is still open and operating. President Obama, as one of his first acts in office, vowed to close the facility within the year… but there are still over 200 detainees waiting there. It’s still unclear what awaits them, though, when they are released. The…

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Gates-gate

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics 8 Comments

As you have probably heard by now, Harvard professor and academic superstar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge today in a completely bizarre story. It’s still not clear what exactly transpired–though you can read the police report here— but Gates got cuffed-n-stuffed for “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior” in the…

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You Are Not Going To Be Famous

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Teaching 3 Comments

Take a look at this short lecture (only about 10 minutes) that Jim Hanas delivered as a part of the “useless lecture series” that he helps curate. According to Hanas, the point of his address was to debunk what he calls “America’s Big Lie,” the one perhaps best epitomized by Andy Warhol’s famous remark about…

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Anonymity

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 4 Comments

Listening to the Digital Dialogue conversation about Identity the other day, coupled with reading way-too-many of the “comments” sections on the Skip Gates’ arrest story, has gotten me thinking a lot about the merits and demerits of online anonymity. Anyone who spends more than a second on the Internet surely knows the drawbacks– “flame” wars,…

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