Surely in Need of Much More Argument

Brian Leiter has responded with a post called "How Can Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Publish Nonsense Like This?" He points out that, for one thing, there is no such thing as analytic philosophy, which I did not know. Some discussion ensues over whether the phrase "intriguing, and possibly even largely justified" might be an oblique put-down (what is called, I believe, a "piss take," though I only learned that expression yesterday and cannot be quite sure of using it correctly).

But the best thing in the comments section is a report by Tad Brennan, a former student of George Bealer, who would probably be called an analytic philosopher if analytic philosophy actually existed. Which it doesn't, so none of that. Anyway, here is Brennan's testimony:

I'm afraid I have to rat him out on this. The fact is, he was *constantly* legitimating the U.S. government. "The US government is totally legitimate!" he'd say. "Never question the legitimacy of the US government!"

Every now and then he'd say something about the bankruptcy of set theory or the ineliminability of propositions in the ontology. But if you questioned him about whether that was really the best set of primitives to work with, he'd get all, like, "You're questioning the legitimacy of the US government! Don't question the legitimacy of the US government!" And then he'd make us say the Pledge of Allegiance again.

As for the telos of his views being a static, totalitarian civilization, I mean, yeah, probably, but I never took his advanced course. I got scared off by people saying it was really hard-core and techie--a lot of manifest destiny and exceptionalism, shining-city-on-a-hill stuff and all.

It sounds like ACTA should give out a George Bealer Prize.

(crossposted from Crooked Timber)