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?

BREAKING: Newly declassified documents show evidence of Chinese interference with Schafer's 2021 submission to the Philosophical Review.

it may be too hot to think about Kant

Feeling depressed about yet another failed talk (the talk is tomorrow)

Some personal news...

Thanks to Andrew Stephenson, Christopher Benzenberg, and Colin McLear for a great discussion of my book. And special thanks to Paul Silva for hosting. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGoA...

"Kant's Reason"–Philosopher Meets Critics #25–Schafer, Stephenson, Benzenberg, McLear

YouTube video by Figments of the Brain

youtube.com

You know, I wish global events didn't make the transition from Marx to Schopenhauer in my 19th century philosophy class quite so natural this week.

The eternal recurrence of the airport bar IPA

"We know more about money than any other object because there is nothing to be known ... It is absolutely lacking in qualities and thus cannot, as can even the most pitiful object, conceal within itself surprises or disappointments. Whoever only wants money is absolutely safe from such experiences."

Someone should invent a microblogging site where sarcasm is possible

Asking Claude to rank Kant scholars just to feel something

Tag line for philosophy as a discipline

I know you all love Descartes, but if you ever find yourself in an evil demon scenario, do *not* try to reason your way out of it. Trust me on this one.

I would go further. Hume's *actual influence* on postmodernism (and existentialism, etc) is radically underestimated by the standard narrative. The often subterranean impact of Hume's philosophy is a secret thread running through much of (so called) "continental philosophy".

Fopling@fopling.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Possibly a hot take: had the social conditions been different in 1770, Hume could easily have been the fountainhead of postmodernism instead of Nietszche. They are extremely similar thinkers in exactly the way necessary to produce anti-foundational undermining of everything from the self outward.

happy comically small royalty statement from academic publisher season to all who celebrate

Powerful new statement on MN from GOP Vermont Governor Phil Scott (1/3): “Enough…it’s not acceptable for American citizens to be killed by federal agents for exercising their God-given and constitutional rights to protest their government. At best, these federal immigration operations ...

Here I argue that Smith's conception of sympathy was ideally suited to bridge the gap between reason and sentiment in Kant's moral psychology. In a slogan: Smithian sympathy gave Kant the key for "schematizing" the moral law on the level of feeling and imagination. philpapers.org/rec/SCHRRI-7

Karl Schafer, Realizing Reason in Feeling: Smithian Sympathy as the Schema of the Kantian Moral Law - PhilPapers

Smith’s influence on Kant’s philosophy was once viewed as marginal, but it is now well-established that central aspects of Kant’s moral and political philosophy were significantly influenced by his ex...

philpapers.org

"Since the future of modern history opens itself as the unknown, it becomes plannable–indeed it must be planned. And with each new plan a fresh degree of uncertainty is introduced, since it presupposes a lack of experience. The self-proclaimed authority of 'history' grows with its constructibility."

It feels so good to have a couple hazy IPAs, make a few dumb posts, and then quickly delete every last one.

Simply an amazing way to end an essay in defense (?) of virtual conferences:

It’s book release day! I’m back on social media! I feel slightly awkward about it because part of the book is about how social media transforms your motivations for communication! But honestly writing a book is lonely, weird basement-work, and now I want to talk to people about this weird jank.

Could an AI misremember their own class time, screwing up their schedule for the whole first day of the semester? It could? In fact, that's the kind of thing LLMs do best? Academia might really be cooked here, people.

Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).

Austin doesn’t have a real winter. But we do have days when the bare oak branches against a gray sky look like like set dressing for The Road.

New review of Kant's Reason by Sergio Tenenbaum in Ethics: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Schafer, Karl. Kant’s Reason: The Unity of Reason and the Limits of Comprehension in Kant. Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. 288. $100.00 (cloth). | Ethics: Vol 136, No 2

journals.uchicago.edu

AMC on Kant's Reason, with comments from Sasha Newton and a reply by me, in the SGIR Review: www.sgirreview.com/publications...

"The object of Anschauung is the need of a content announcing itself in the senses as pure to become perceptible. The perception of this need is called Anschauung." - Scholem, recalling Benjamin's definition of Anschauung (intuition) in The Story of a Friendship

Ok, I didn't see this one coming...

I think this is good and support it. dailynous.com/2025/12/10/e...

Editors at Springer’s Journal of Philosophical Logic Resign, Launch New Open Access Journal - Daily Nous

All of the editors-in-chief and associate editors of Springer Nature's Journal of Philosophical Logic have announced their immediate or pending resignation and the launch, as of today, of a new "diamo...

dailynous.com