Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Here.

Thank God for Jeff McMahan and Peter Singer, both of whom are willing to stand up to the totalitarian mob.

Most intellectuals develop ideological sensibilities by the age of twenty-five or thirty, and afterward they rarely revise them substantially. Intellectual delight and existential comfort are taken not in reexamining prior decisions, but in refining and developing ideas along the lines already mastered. Professors are likely to respect scholars who pursue questions similar to their own and who master similar modes of thought. They are not likely to respect scholars who pursue questions predicated on beliefs at odds with their own. Indeed, if a scholar is engaged in a task that might threaten a colleague’s sense of self, he may give rise to personal distress and create acrimony between them. Professor A might lose standing and credibility with students if a colleague, Professor B, who is teaching those same students in a different course, exploded some of the premises of Professor A’s course materials, lectures, and writings.

(Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern, "Groupthink in Academia: Majoritarian Departmental Politics and the Professional Pyramid," The Independent Review 13 [spring 2009]: 585-600, at 589 [parenthetical references omitted])

Head On (1975).

Here is Ann Coulter's latest column.

Today's 47.1-mile ride gives me 7,006 miles for the year. I'm 86 miles ahead of my 20-miles-per-day pace for 2018, with 19 days to go. I hope my bike holds up!

The Globe’s editorial board should be commended for taking what is clearly a very difficult position in urging Senator Elizabeth Warren to think twice before deciding to run for the presidency in 2020. I have the utmost respect for Senator Warren, and many of her political views are entirely aligned with mine. The question, however, is whether she is electable on the national stage. Based on my informal polling of friends and neighbors, the consensus is that we like her as a senator but that she cannot win the presidential election in 2020.

At this point, we cannot take a chance that Donald Trump will be reelected. Warren can serve us better by remaining as one of our senators in Washington and helping us support a candidate who appeals to a broader spectrum of the electorate. She needs to realistically assess her chances and focus on what’s important here, which is denying Trump a second term.

Philip G. Cormier

Lexington

The Democrats and President Obama gave Iran 150 Billion Dollars and got nothing, but they can’t give 5 Billion Dollars for National Security and a Wall?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Kant had written about morality in several of his earlier works, but The Groundwork (or Foundations) of the Metaphysics of Morals, published in 1785, was his first book devoted exclusively to ethical theory. As its title indicates and as Kant also stated in its preface, this book was intended to provide the foundations or groundwork for a future work entitled The Metaphysics of Morals. He had claimed to be writing a book on that topic as early as 1768, but he did not actually publish this volume until 1797. (The Critique of Practical Reason was published in 1788 and the Critique of Judgment in 1790.) Given the time he had to think about its contents and the fact that he waited until near the end of his professional life to issue it, presumably The Metaphysics of Morals reflects his most mature views on the topics discussed in it. Strangely enough, however, most people interested in Kant's moral theory have tended to neglect The Metaphysics of Morals and have devoted themselves instead to analyzing the volume meant only to be its introduction. They have thought that the first half of the later volume, the "Doctrine of Right," does not fit in at all with his moral theory, and they also have rejected everything in the second half, the "Doctrine of Virtue," that does not agree with the ways in which they had already interpreted the Groundwork.

(Roger J. Sullivan, "Introduction," in The Metaphysics of Morals, by Immanuel Kant, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, ed. Karl Ameriks and Desmond M. Clarke [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996], vii-xxvi, at vii)