Karl Schafer
@karlschafer
Philosophy professor (UT Austin) and occasional philosopher | Kant's Reason (OUP):
Relatively detailed recommendation and tenure letters used to signal serious engagement with the work. But ... that's no longer really true. Does that mean that letters can be shorter? Can I get by with, say, a few well-chosen Columbo screenshots?
Simply an amazing way to end an essay in defense (?) of virtual conferences:
Lol what is Gopnik talking about? The Vitruvian Man is an image of precisely the opposite of individualism?
Really happy to see that this tribute to the work of Béatrice Longuenesse is finally out in the world.
I *love* the kids room at the Austin public library, but this time I made the mistake of checking out the philosophy section. And it is bleak. Any one know how to organize donations for this sort of thing?
MacIntyre's critique of Hume and Smith here fails to convince for one simple reason: Neither asks sympathy to do the work he claims. Still there is a real problem for them here. But to respond to it, we need to reinterpret Smithian sympathy in light of Kantian reason, not turn our back on both.
Rereading After Virtue and I had forgotten that it opens like this...
You know you're using the very best English words, when you check the OED and get this:
Update: Thanks to Brian for taking a step back from his previous inflammatory language. There's still work to do, but we're making progress.
Looks like "Lying Brian Leiter" is at it again, ignore his editorial commentary here, certified fake news!
I'd forgotten about the article in which French neurologist traces Kant's critical turn to "dementia symptomatic of a frontal tumor"
organizing the history of philosophy around different reasons for hating the word "moist"