Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Brian Leiter

  • Antagonize Parsimoniously

    Brian Leiter would do well to consider and live by the following prudential analog of Ockham's Razor: Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity. Why not?  Well, it is just foolish, especially for a vain and status-obsessed careerist who craves name and fame, to attack people who, it can be expected, will expose his petty and…

  • Beckwith Contra Leiter

    Francis Beckwith appears naively to believe that Leiter can be reasoned with in gentlemanly fashion.

  • Leiter’s M. O.

    I figure that in a week or so we should have the Leiter affair behind us.  But there remain a number of lessons and insights to be learned from the Ladderman's bad behavior.    An Attack on Simon Critchley Let me give you an example (supplied by a reader) of the sort of abuse in…

  • Philosophy as Hobby, as Career, as Vocation

    An e-mail from a few years back with no name attached: [Brian] Leiter fancies himself a gatekeeper to the realm of academic philosophy. You gotta love the professional gossip that seeps through his blog – Ned Block got an offer from Harvard but turned it down, here's the latest coming out of the Eastern APA,…

  • A Thank-You to Professor Leiter

    2,037 pageviews today according to Typepad.  My per diem average is in the 1.2K-1.3 K range. Leiter has made a foolish mistake in attacking me.  He craves status and standing.  But I don't care about status and in any case it is low:  I am a relatively obscure blogger and an academically unaffiliated philosopher.  I…

  • Brian Leiter’s Initial Attack on Me and Why I Respond Harshly to Him

    My recent anti-Leiter posts may give new readers the impression that I am doing the same sort of thing he does, namely, hurling abuse and name-calling.  Not so.  He attacked me out of the blue in November of 2004, and I ignored him.  But given his recent attack, it is time to supply the context…

  • Leiter Lambasted: A Case of the Left Eating Their Own?

    Brian Leiter is known for his academic gossip site, Leiter Reports.  He is also known for his careerism, thuggishness, and political correctness.  Some call him Ladder Man because of his obsession with rankings and status.  (One of the meanings of the German Leiter is ladder; another is leader as in Gauleiter.)  Others call him Brianus…

  • Keith Burgess-Jackson on Thomas Nagel

    This is worth reproducing; I came to  essentially  the same conclusion (emphasis added): The viciousness with which this book [Mind and Cosmos] was received is, quite frankly, astonishing. I can understand why scientists don't like it; they're wary of philosophers trespassing on their terrain. But philosophers? What is philosophy except (1) the careful analysis of…

  • Ladderman Revisited

    This post dated 17 November 2004 is from Ladderman  and ought to be preserved.  So I reproduce it here. Maverick Philosopher posted a short sharp reply to the now common leftist claim that America is becoming a "theocracy" under President Bush. Excerpt: "Hostility to religion, especially institutionalized religion, is a defining characteristic of the Left. We've known…

  • David Gordon Reviews Thomas Nagel’s New Book and Criticizes Brian Leiter’s Puerile Fulminations

    David Gordon reviews Thomas Nagel's Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002–2008.  The following is a particularly interesting portion of the review in which Gordon comments on a certain status-obsessed careerist's puerile fulminations against a real philosopher:

  • If Obituaries Were Objective . . . II

    I found the following in this morning's mail bag.  From a philosophy professor who enjoyed my  If Obituaries Were Objective . . . : Perhaps a more realistic, and to my mind a more depressing objective obit would read as follows: Philosophy professor x showed great academic promise from early in his career. He published a revised version…

  • If You Are Finding Things a Bit Dry Around Here . . .

    . . . head over to What's Wrong With the World.  Feser on Leiter on Feser.  Feser et al. on Tiller. Some bloggers warn their readers that 'blogging will be light.'  I should warn my readers that 'blogging will be dry and technical for the foreseeable future' as I work  my way through the recent…

  • The Direction of This Weblog

    This from a reader: I have been following your blog for some time, from the move to PowerBlogs to the recent move to TypePad. I have two questions I’d like to ask: First, are you going to post your opinions on the election? I have particularly enjoyed reading the reactions of several conservatives . .…