"No Rankings, Not Now, Not Ever" is the rallying cry for the October Statement, and over a hundred philosophers have signed. They think it would be better not to have rankings of philosophy departments. For all I say here, they might be right. The trouble is that there's no way to sustain an absence of…

by philosopher Saba Fatima, of SIUE, here.   In as much as I am a strong believer in Noam Chomsky's dictum that indigation at the behavior of foreign powers is cheap, I found this commentary to be worth reposting.

Continuing from my last post on 'Style of Living versus Juridification in Foucault', there seems to be me to be something to be gained by thinking about Kierkegaard's ethics here, even if Kierkegaard's Christianity and Foucault's aesthetic self seem rather distinct. The emphasis in Foucault on style or aesthetics of life or existence seems to…

I'm making a brief exploration of one of the most significant oppositions in Foucaut's thought, which has not been discussed that much in my experience, but I may well have overlooked some vast bibliography. In any case, there is a major polarity in Foucault between the style of living in antiquity, related to care of…

By: Eric Winsberg The question is inevitably arising as to whether there is, at present, a phenomenon of internet shaming going on on the various blogs and other social media.   I think we should take seriously the concern that there is.   That's one thing I like a lot about this post by Simon Cabulea May.    He…

The emergence of republicanism as a major stream in political theory and philosophy, as well as history of political ideas, since I suppose the 1980s, but since the late nineties for political philosophy in the normative Rawlsian style, is a highly welcome phenomenon from my point of view. That does not mean I have no…

By: Eric Winsberg   Here's how students in other disciplines apparently choose a PhD program (h/t Bryce Huebner) http://www.andyfugard.info/choose-a-phd-programme   This strikes me as extremely good advice, and in the modern age of the information overload, a perfectly adequate method once a prospective graduate student knows where to start.   That suggests to me that…

By: Eric Winsberg The story about Leiter and the PGR is covered in the CHE here.  I certainly hope that those who have been putting pressure on Leiter to step down from his Editorship of the PGR will find the remedy he proposes in the article insufficient and will keep up the pressure on him…

One of the few productive things that came out of the recent kerfufle about ableism was a useful discussion of where we should draw the line between what seem like acceptable uses of terms like "blind review", on the one hand, and obviously offensive terms like "spaz,"  on the other.   And if we can…

Sept 10th is Internet Slowdown Day, a day devoted to drawing attention to the issue of 'Net neutrality, which is in greater peril than it has been in a long time.    Amy Goodman has all the details  here.