August 4, 2013 at 12:10 P.M. Along with many other customers of Time/Warner in Manhattan, my family members and I were (and may still be) deprived of CBS for several days. I don't know how or whether we have survived the experience. Evidently, negotiations were "successful" and the television station was restored to the air today -- or maybe not. We receive mixed messages every day. (Spacing and size of the text in the following essay was altered by New Jersey's hackers in violation of the First Amendment and copyright laws.) Otherwise -- if CBS is not back on the air for us -- there will be something else on channel 2, Time/Warner, but for how long this new channel will be on we can not say. What is the world coming to? STARZ?
Jennifer Shuessler, "A Star Philosopher Falls, and A Debate Over Sexism Is Set Off," The New York Times, August 3, 2013, p. A1.
James Bamford, "They Know Much More Than You Think," The New York Review of Books, August 15, 2013, p. 4. ("Big Brother is Watching You!")
Adam Liptak, "In Rulings, Spy vs. Leaker: Transitional View of the First Amendment Is Being Revised as Cases Are Prosecuted," The New York Times, August 3, 2013, p. A1.
Iris Murdoch, Agastos (London & New York: Penguin, 1987).
Colin McGinn, Ethics, Evil, and Fiction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
Colin McGinn, The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth Century Philosophy (New York & London: Harper & Collins, 2002).
Philip Roth, The Human Stain (New York & Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2000).
"Jennifer Shuessler" is one of the names used by a person (or persons) also using the names "Manohla Dargis," "Michiko Kakutani," and "Ruth Davis Konigsberg," among others at the Times.
At least one of the persons writing under these names does not seem to use the English language with ease or even great care. I suspect that one of the "journalists" responsible for articles appearing under the name "Jennifer Shuessler" is Jill Abramson.
Fictional names -- perhaps sheltering authors of articles who happen to be public officials or their assistants -- allow for an absence of accountability or responsibility when lies are published in the paper.
Is David Remnick also "Larissa McFarquhar"? "James Wood"? "Jim Holt"? For whom are these journalists doing favors? Is there an exchange of cash in envelopes for these "services" by American media professionals? Do journalists have a choice about performing these services? ("Incoherence in 'The New Yorker'" and "Incoherence in 'The New York Times.'")
It is difficult to know how to respond to this person's (Ms. Shuessler's) bizarre and increasingly (at least to me) irrational attacks on the writings and persons of distinguished philosophers, who are guilty of being men, like Thomas Nagel and Colin McGinn. ("N.J. Female Professor Rapes Disabled Man" and "Thomas Nagel's Guilt by Association.")
Based on the facts of what is rapidly being called "The McGinn Controversy" -- sounds like a novel by Robert Ludlum! -- there is nothing to defend or criticize from what I can see. Exchanges of flirtatious e-mails (or letters) is a time-honored tradition among philosophers and apprentices. ("David Hume's Philosophical Romance" and "William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.")
These exchanges -- often laced with profound philosophical aphorisms or cutting and dismissive arguments, not personal attacks, forming a sub-genre within the profession -- are a feature of the history of philosophy (Socrates/Diotima/Plato) illuminating issues pertaining to identity, eros, the philosophical intoxication, and the ambiguities of language. ("Master and Commander" and "Conversation On a Train" then "The Allegory of the Cave" and "What you will ...")
McGinn describes a similar mentoring and profound philosophical conversations with P.F. Strawson, his tutor at Oxford University during the seventies, also his marriages (now ended) to two philosophers who happen to be women:
" ... I had the benefit of P.F. Strawson as my adviser, now elevated to Sir Peter Strawson. He was quietly skeptical of the scientism that we graduate students were imbibing, encouraging me not to lose sight of the traditional philosophical issues. I would meet 'P.F.S.' once a week in his rooms at Magdalen College, where we could talk about whatever philosophical issues were on my mind. His gentle probing, clarity of thought, and powerful mind were an important stimulus to me." Confessions of a Philosopher, pp. 77-78.
The reader may wish to compare my essay on the writings of Philippa Foot with comments on Mary Midgley, then Iris Murdoch and Martha Nussbaum, also my comments on the works of Mary Wollstonecraft and Angela Davis, Mary Warnock and women in philosophy. I am a great admirer of the writings of Mary Whiton Calkins and Judith Butler. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")
Certainly, such a philosophical dialogue by consenting adults (yes, there was clearly legal consent by both participants in the McGinn matter), over a period of months, is hardly a subject of institutional concern. No one is required to respond in kind, for any reason, to a flirtatious e-mail.
Furthermore, it is not even suggested that "words" used by adults are a proper matter for regulation by a university receiving state assistance (state contacts) given the applicable First Amendment protections as well as principles of lecturers' autonomy to be weighed. ("Colin McGinn On Movies and Minds" and "Colin McGinn's Naughty Book.")
Professor McGinn's correspondent -- like someone calling herself "Jill Ketchum" in my life -- was trying to "set up" the good professor from Manchester using techniques that have been far more successful with others. Is "Jill Ketchum" also "Cecilia Luce"? "Sheldon"? "Michelle Castro"? ("Oh, To Be In India!")
Did the graduate student in question wear a beret or a blue dress from the GAP?
All of this has the smell of Right-wing politics in South Florida from which territory Mr. McGinn was wise to escape. New Jersey is not much of an improvement.
This account in America's "newspaper of record" reeks of envy of Mr. McGinn's talents as a scholar and writer. I certainly understand such reactions to one's mind from angry and resentful persons.
With all due respect to Professor McGinn -- whose work I generally admire -- there may be no such thing as a "sexy" version of fine logical distinctions within the analytical philosophical tradition.
Perhaps Mr. McGinn will find his approach to the ladies failing, as it were, to yield "meaningful results" outside of symposiums or seminar rooms?
Manhattan women, at any rate, hold their own when it comes to parsing the finer shades of meaning in their utterances, or those of others, even as they investigate the ... eh, logical "rigor" of their men. (Again: "The Allegory of the Cave" then "What you will ...")
Observers are shocked and embarrassed by the shallowness, crudity, stupidity, hypocrisy and immersion in sanctimony and false piety that usually accompanies a bogus incident of "political incorrectness" such as this non-event in Miami. One longs for the adventures of Anthony Wiener and Eliot Spitzer. Why this story is on the front page of The New York Times is beyond me. I am reminded of Professor McGinn's discussion of his experiences after defending the literary merits of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
Perhaps this is a way not to discuss the humiliation of the U.S. in the Snowden matter or the economic stagnation that we cannot escape. This trivial and contrived incident at the University of Miami campus will not support the weight of heavier issues concerning discrimination against -- or theft from -- minority intellectuals and women in academic philosophy. ("Hilary Putnam is Keeping it Real" and "Bernard Williams and Identity" then "What is it like to be plagiarized?")
Political correctness has become so visceral in American academia, politics, and the arts -- as opposed to people's lives -- that imagined offenses against mythical standards of feminist "purity" are sufficient to destroy people's careers.
This professional destruction is unlikely in the case of Professor McGinn, who is well-established and "successful" as a scholar (if not as a Casanova), as well as untouched (so far) by mere allegations based on hearsay-on-hearsay, at least in terms of this article. Indeed, being often "untouched" may be part of Professor McGinn's difficulty at the moment. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
Ms. Shuessler admits: " ... the McGinn case is short on undisputed facts ..." even as she assumes the truth of unsubstantiated allegations in undisclosed and unquoted e-mails based on mere claims by others.
It is likely that someone who does not like Professor McGinn -- possibly after losing a debate against him -- or who is insulted by his decision to leave Miami, tried to "get him" by means of these behind-the-back (as it were) tactics with the cooperation of a young woman who may have seen the opportunity of a lifetime fall into her lap. ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")
Some people experience a crushing philosophical objection as invalidation of a world view or a personal attack. Genuine philosophy -- however severe on faulty thinking -- is always a loving discussion and the sharing of a question or project between teacher and student. ("John Searle and David Chalmers On Consciousness" and "Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")
Dialectics is sharing in friendship or even, as Socrates suggested explicitly to and through Plato, eros. Indeed, philosophy -- like art -- is intended to "turn us inside out, it exhibits what is secret. What goes on inwardly in the soul [that] is the essence of each man, it's what makes us individual people. The relation between that inwardness and public conduct is morality. How can art ignore it?" Agastos, p. 31. ("The Allegory of the Cave" then "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me'" and "Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory.")
The graduate student in question clearly encouraged the dialectic with her mentor. I cannot believe that she was the innocent seduced or offended by such attentions. Hence, if the matter goes to court, she can expect to be eviscerated on the witness stand. This would be quite proper to determining the truth in accordance with due process of law. ("John Rawls and Justice.")
I have never been charged with sexual harassment or anything of the kind. These are offenses for which I feel no sympathy or tolerance. I have experienced, as a victim, some of the worst forms of these crimes. Nothing in the facts reported in this matter indicates that there was such harassment or any other comparable offense, like rape. ("Daniel Dennett's Delusions.")
Professor McGinn was right to resign his visiting professorship in order to return to Rutgers and New York while setting the record straight about the absurdity of these accusations.
Bogus allegations of harassment cheapen the genuine and very real instances of rape or abuse, which I understand very well, even as they mislead people into underestimating the importance of the issue.
It is vital to reserve our indignation at immoral or evil actions for those few truly horrible persons capable of such crimes and inappropriate conduct.
Professor Colin McGinn is not one of those horrible persons.
"Here is where envy makes its unholy alliance with cruelty. The sadist's project can act as a radical antidote to deep existential envy, and even milder forms of cruelty can serve to alleviate the pangs of envy. [Malbus?] This helps explain why the beautiful and virtuous are considered such ripe targets for cruel treatment. Envy of virtue and beauty is certainly part of what motivates Claggart against the handsome sailor [in Herman Melville's Billy Budd] -- he cannot abide the disparity in their natural endowments." Ethics, Evil, and Fiction, pp. 79-80. (Iago in Othello? "Invicta Watch Company" and "The Invicta Watch Company Caper.")
