Justin E. H. Smith: A Comment on Akeel Bilgrami’s “Occidentalism, The Very Idea”

Justin E. H. Smith is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University. Akeel Bilgrami has so decisively exposed the weaknesses of the recent attempt to invert the argument of Said’s Orientalism that I do not see much point here in weighing the virtues of his essay against those of Buruma and Margalit’s book.  I would…

Philosophy in the Barnyard

What’s Really Wrong With Bestiality Justin E. H. Smith — Books and articles discussed in this essay: John Corvino, “Homosexuality and the PIB Argument,” Ethics 115 (2005): 501-34 Cora Diamond, “Eating Animals and Eating People,” Philosophy 53 (1978): 465-79. Lawrence Krader, Social Organization of the Mongol-Turkic Pastoral Nomads (The Hague: Mouton, 1963). Ruwen Ogien, L’éthique…

The Invention of Race

Justin E. H. Smith * Works consulted for this essay: Robert Bernasconi (Ed.), Race (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2001). Emmanuel Eze, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1997). Eldridge Huddleston, Origins of the American Indians: European Concepts, 1492-1729 (Austin, Texas, 1967). Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: the American Indian and the…

Even Tierra del Fuegans Do It

The Uncashed Metaphor of Natural Selection Justin E. H. Smith 1. In their classic 1979 article, “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm,” Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin fault the adaptationist program for its failure to distinguish current utility from reasons for origin; its unwillingness to consider alternatives to adaptive stories; its…

Super Tuesday Surprise: Leading Minsk Newspaper Endorses Candidates in US Presidential Race

Justin E. H. Smith In what spokespeople for both parties are calling an act of “unprecedented interference,” a strongly pro-government newspaper in the authoritarian republic of Belarus has offered its own endorsements in the US presidential primaries.  Analysts contend that this operation was likely directed by president Aleksandr Lukashenko himself, and was meant to serve…

Selected Minor Works: Are Twins Birds?

What Philosophy Can Learn from Anthropology Justin E. H. Smith * Books Consulted or Discussed in this Essay Scott Atran, The Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Barbara Duden, Der Frauenleib als öffentlicher Ort. Vom Missbrauch des Begriffs Leben (Munich, 1994). Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of…

Selected Minor Works: Don’t Check My Chromosome

Race and Music in America Justin E. H. Smith * Books consulted or discussed in this essay: William L. Benzon, Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture (Basic Books, 2002) Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves (Belknap Press, 2004) Cecil Brown, Stagolee Shot Billy (Harvard University Press, 2003) David Brion…