A friend and colleague of mine invited me to come speak to his class about torture last week. The class was a writing seminar, organized around the theme of “citizenship,” and my colleague was feeling (understandably) frustrated because– in his words– he “just didn’t feel like [he] had the tools or the knowledge to counter…
Read MoreLest you think that the “author” is really “dead,” here’s a term I stumbled across recently that you might find interesting: redactional fatigue. Our friends at Wikipedia define it thus: When making changes to a large text, a redactor may occasionally overlook a piece of text that conflicts with the redactional goals. Since many important…
Read MoreDid I mention that I don’t care about cheating? Check. Did that already. Of course, if you read the earlier post, you know it’s not so much that I don’t care about cheating as it is that I don’t care about policing cheaters. (Read linked blog-post for my amazing argument in support of said apathy.)…
Read MoreThere’s a debate ensuing over on The Leiter Report (which, for all intents and purposes, serves as the internet bulletin board and agora for professional philosophers) over whether or not the pensive-looking woman to your left, Hannah Arendt, is a “philosopher.” The question that started the debate, posed by Jason Stanley, is articulated in his…
Read MoreLast week and this week, I’m participating in the annual seminar that reviews and (occasionally) amends the curriculum of the core humanities course-sequence at my college. Some of the work that we do is tedious and bureaucratic, but a lot of it includes really interesting sessions on pedagogy, core text discussions, interdisciplinarity and more general…
Read MoreThere’s an interesting review of Brithish philosopher Roger Scruton’s new book, Beauty, that looks at the value (or, more accurately, lack thereof) of kitsch. In “Finding Kitsch’s Inner Beauty,” Robert Fulford praises Scruton’s text for holding the “now marginalized view” that philosophers should help the rest of us “think about issues that really matter.” (Marginalized?…
Read MoreJust a couple of quick recommendations for those of you keeping up with the current scandal over the so-called “torture memos.” I’ve been doing a lot of reading on this stuff over the course of the past year as a part of my research, and I plan to include both of these texts in my…
Read MoreIt’s really surprising how long it takes to acclimate oneself to a full-time position in academia. I’m nearing the end of my second year now, and I still find myself constantly tweaking all of my best-laid-plans for “balancing” the Holy Triumvirate of responsibilities: scholarship, teaching and service. As I’ve said many times before, one of…
Read MoreIn an article titled “Philosophy’s Great Experiment,” David Edmunds and Nigel Warburton (hosts of one of my favorite podcasts, Philosophy Bites) consider the recent rise in what has come to be known as “experimental philosophy” or “x-phi.” Experimental philosophy is exactly as it sounds: a form of inquiry that makes at least partial use of…
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