Philosophy

Yes, Jessica, You CAN Do Anything Good

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 2 Comments

I’m not usually one to forward or re-post YouTube videos of cute kids doing cute things, of which there are literally hundreds of thousands, but I recently came across one that I just couldn’t resist. It’s a little girl named Jessica– I’m guessing around 4 or 5 years old, probably pre-school age– standing on her…

Read More

Lazy Relativism, Again

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Relativism, RMWMTMBM Archive 9 Comments

As readers of this blog (and students in my classes) know well, I hate lazy relativism. I readily concede that there are lots of things about which we cannot know the Absolute Truth (s’il y en a), but regardless of the strengh or weakness of any particular truth-claim, it will ALWAYS be the case that…

Read More

Underdogmatism

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Sports, Weak Humanism 8 Comments

I’m a total sucker for the underdog. I don’t even care what the domain is– sports, politics, games, academics, business, love, war– if there is an odds-on favorite, I’m pretty much guaranteed to root for his opponent. As many people have noted, 2010 is shaping up to be the Year of the Underdog, beginning with…

Read More

Here’s My “Top 25 Books” List, Now Build Me A Park

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Dr. J's Lists, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 6 Comments

Inspired by Brooke Foy’s project for UrbanArt at Brent Ferguson Park, where she is building a maze of huge, concrete books as a public art installation, I tried to figure out which books I would choose for such a project. Here, I’ve listed my Top 25 Books. I don’t think Brooke Foy reads this blog,…

Read More

What Makes It “Art”?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 7 Comments

In the documentary film Man on Wire, about French high-wire walker Philippe Petit (pictured left traversing the space between the World Trade Towers in 1974), Petit remarks several times that his act was more than simply a daredevil stunt, but rather it was a work of art. This evaluation is echoed by his co-conspirators in…

Read More

The Political

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 2 Comments

When I was in graduate school, I had a professor who regularly bemoaned the habit, common among philosophers, of referring to (questions, theories, problems and issues of) “the political” or “the ethical.” His objection, as I understood it, was not to engaging political and ethical questions qua philosophical questions, but rather to the use of…

Read More

The Etiquette of Q & A

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Just Ask, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 2 Comments

Anyone who has ever been to an academic conference is surely familiar with that strange, strange thing we so innacurately refer to as the “Q&A” period. “Q&A” is meant to stand for “Question and Answer,” of course, though there is precious little of either in many of these sessions. I mean, I suppose that technically…

Read More

Dirt-Cheap Ideas

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 12 Comments

In his seminal text Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous narrator, Johannes de Silentio, remarks: Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to…

Read More

Omaha (Somewhere in Middle America)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

I’ll be giving the keynote address at the 12th Annual Midwest Undergraduate Philosophy Conference next weekend, hosted by Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. (That’s the Creighton campus in the image to the left… or so says Google Image Search, anyway.) You can see the full conference schedule here. The title of my keynote is “Human…

Read More

Trials for Terrorists

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 7 Comments

Earlier this month, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) introduced a bill that would prohibit the use of Justice Department funds for prosecuting alleged 9/11 plotters in federal courts. The aim of the bill (and a similar one introduced in the House by Representative Frank Wolf from Virginia) is to tie the Obama administration’s hands and…

Read More