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Sidney Morgenbesser

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Sidney Morgenbesser (September 22, 1921 – August 1, 2004) was an American philosopher and professor at Columbia University. He wrote little but is remembered by many for his philosophical witticisms.

Life and careerEdit

Sidney Morgenbesser was born on September 22, 1921, in New York City and raised in Manhattan's Lower East Side.<ref name="nytimes">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="independent">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Morgenbesser undertook philosophical studies at the City College of New York, graduating in 1941. He then undertook rabbinic studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, receiving his degree there in 1944.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal</ref> His Times obituarist notes that "He was ordained, lost his faith, and never tried too hard to find it again", swapping "belief for doubt rather than the certainty of atheism".<ref name="timesonline">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Morgenbesser then pursued graduate study in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. There he obtained his M.A. in 1950 and, with a thesis titled Theories and Schemata in the Social Sciences,<ref>Morgenbesser, Sidney, "Theories and Schemata in the Social Sciences" (1956). Dissertations available from ProQuest. AAI0017254.</ref> his Ph.D. in 1956.<ref name=":1">Schwartz, Robert (2005). "Sidney Morgenbesser (1921—2004)" In Shook, John R. (ed). The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers (2005) Template:ISBN, republished in Shook, John R. (ed). The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers in America: From 1600 to the Present (2016) Template:ISBN.</ref> It was also at Pennsylvania that, Morgenbesser reports, he held his first teaching job in philosophy and met Hilary Putnam as a student.<ref name=":2">Template:Citation</ref> He would also teach at Swarthmore College and the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of The New School for Social Research.<ref name=":0" />

In 1953, he came to work ar the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University, joining the philosophy department in 1955. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1963,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and by 1966 he was made a full professor at Columbia.<ref>Sidney Morgenbesser, Esteemed Philosophy Professor Emeritus, Dies at 82 [Archived] Colin Morris, Columbia News,</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He was visiting professor at the Rockefeller University in 1967—1968 and also held visiting positions at Princeton University and the Hebrew University,. In 1975 was named the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia.<ref name="independent" /><ref name=":1" /> This position he held until his retirement, as emeritus, in 1991.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Morgenbesser would be succeeded as John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University in 1992 by Isaac Levi who had previously co-authored with Morgenbesser "Belief and Disposition" (1964) and, with Leigh Cauman and Robert Schwartz, co-edited How Many Questions? Essays in Honor of Sidney Morgenbesser (1983). see: "LEVI, Isaac (1930– )" in The Dictionary Of Modern American Philosophers pps. 1453–1455</ref> He continued to occasionally teach as a special lecturer there until 1999.<ref name=":1" />

Morgenbesser's areas of expertise included the philosophy of social science, political philosophy, epistemology, and the history of American Pragmatism. He founded the Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs along with G.A. Cohen, Thomas Nagel and others.<ref name="HeldMorgenbesser1974">Template:Cite book</ref>

Morgenbesser appeared on in an interview by Bryan Magee on the topic of American Pragmatism in 1987.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>

He died on 1 August 2004 at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan at the age of 82, from complications due to ALS.<ref name="nytimes" />

InfluenceEdit

Template:See also Morgenbesser was known particularly for his sharp witticisms and humor which often penetrated to the heart of the philosophical issue at hand, on which account The New York Times Magazine dubbed him the "Sidewalk Socrates."<ref name="sidewalk">Template:Cite news</ref> According to one anecdote, when J. L. Austin claimed that, although a double negative often implies a positive meaning (e.g., "he is not unlike his sister"), there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative, Morgenbesser retorted: "Yeah, yeah."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=":5">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="independent" /> In another commonly reported story, Morgenbesser was asked by a student whether he agreed with Chairman Mao's view that a statement can be both true and false at the same time, to which Morgenbesser replied "Well, I do and I don't."<ref name="independent" /><ref name="nytimes" />

Another anecdote is given as follows by the Independent:<ref name="independent" />

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[An] unfortunate encounter with the police occurred when he lit up his pipe on the way out of a subway station. Morgenbesser protested to the officer who tried to stop him that the rules covered smoking in the station, not outside. The cop conceded he had a point, but said: "If I let you get away with it, I'd have to let everyone get away with it." To which Morgenbesser, in a famously misunderstood line, retorted: "Who do you think you are, Kant?" Hauled off to the precinct lock-up, Morgenbesser only won his freedom after a colleague showed up and explained the Categorical Imperative to the nonplussed boys in blue.{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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Morgenbesser published little and established no school, but was revered for his extraordinary intelligence and moral seriousness. He was a famously influential teacher; his former students included Jerry Fodor, Raymond Geuss, Alvin Goldman, Daniel M. Hausman, Robert Nozick, Hilary Putnam,<ref name=":6">GARY SHAPIRO The New York Sun; (October 26, 2004) Columbia Pays Final Respects To Professor Sidney Morgenbesser [Archived by Wayback Machine [March 20, 2004]</ref> Gideon Rosen, Mark Steiner, and Michael Stocker. In 1967, Morgenbesser signed a letter declaring his intention to refuse to pay taxes in protest against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and urging other people to also take this stand.<ref name="collection1.libraries.psu.edu">"An Open Letter" archived at Horowitz Transaction Publishers Archive</ref>

WorksEdit

Books, (co-)editedEdit

Select articles, book chapters (co-)authoredEdit

For a more complete record of publications see "Sidney Morgenbesser: A Bibliography" in the below.

Festschrift

ReferencesEdit

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Further readingEdit

  • Geuss, Raymond. "9 Sidney Morgenbesser: Philosophy as Practical Surrealism". Not Thinking like a Liberal, Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2022, pp. 122–135. {{#invoke:doi|main}}

External linksEdit

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