Sidney Morgenbesser

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 career

Sidney Morgenbesser was born on September 22, 1921, in New York City and raised in Manhattan's Lower East Side. 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. 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".

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'', his Ph.D. in 1956.Schwartz, Robert (2005)
"Sidney Morgenbesser (1921—2004)"
In Shook, John R. (ed).
The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers
' (2005) , republished in Shook, John R. (ed).
The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers in America: From 1600 to the Present
' (2016) . It was also at Pennsylvania that, Morgenbesser reports, he held his first teaching job in philosophy and met Hilary Putnam as a student. He would also teach at Swarthmore College and the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of The New School for Social Research.

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, and by 1966 he was made a full professor at Columbia. 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. This position he held until his retirement, as emeritus, in 1991. He continued to occasionally teach as a special lecturer there until 1999.

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.

Morgenbesser appeared on in an interview by Bryan Magee on the topic of American Pragmatism in 1987.

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.

Influence

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." 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." 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."

Another anecdote is given as follows by the '' Independent'':

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,GARY SHAPIRO ''The New York Sun''; (October 26, 2004)
Columbia Pays Final Respects To Professor Sidney Morgenbesser
' rchived by Wayback Machine [March 20, 2004/ref> Gideon Rosen">arch_20,_2004.html" ;"title="rchived by Wayback Machine [March 20, 2004">rchived by Wayback Machine [March 20, 2004/ref> Gideon Rosen, Mark Steiner, and Michael Stocker. In 1967, Morgenbesser signed a letter declaring his intention to w:tax resistance, refuse to pay taxes in protest against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and urging other people to also take this stand."An Open Letter
archived at Horowitz Transaction Publishers Archive
/ref>

Works

Books, (co-)edited

* (1960) with Arthur Danto reface by Ernest Nagel">Ernest_Nagel.html" ;"title="reface by Ernest Nagel">reface by Philosophy of Science