Jonathan Ichikawa, who has a shiny new blog, asked me an interesting question the other day. Why are there so few ethics blogs? One simple answer would be that there are lots of ethics blogs, they are just spread around between political theory and legal theory and other areas of normative philosophy. Sad to say, these bloggers seem to be just as interested in day-to-day affairs as in high points of theory. Where’s the fun in that? (Not that they don’t write excellent posts when they do turn their attention to more theoretical matters. If only the world was less pressing.) So if any aspiring (or established) ethicist wants to start up a blog on the finer points of Korsgaard’s or Blackburn’s or Smith’s views, there’s probably a market niche waiting to be filled.
By the way, it’s a sad day when the graduate students start seeming to be appallingly young. Sad day indeed.
{ 5 comments }
Kai von Fintel 09.29.03 at 7:47 pm
I have been resigned to this phenomenon for a while. When I started at MIT, Morris Halle took me aside and warned me “Kai, one thing you will notice is that the students get younger every year”.
Ross 09.29.03 at 8:30 pm
What are the restrictions on previous publication in the philosophy journals? In medicine, there is usually a pretty strict embargo against previous publication, and that embargo occasionally includes Internet publication.
Perhaps they’re saving the more novel issues and theoretical applications for their professional articles.
Jonathan Ichikawa 09.29.03 at 9:26 pm
Appallingly young? Now that’s not fair… I’m even old enough to *drink* now!
Mark 09.29.03 at 9:48 pm
Perhaps its just that single subject blogs, and especially those dedicated to the more esoteric of subjects, cause the MEGO [my eyes glaze over] syndrome. Those of us who are blog readers, not writers, need bite-size chunks of information. If I want to fall asleep reading someones research paper, I’ll go my local library, and doze there.
Peter MacLeod 09.30.03 at 12:29 am
“…it’s a sad day when the graduate students start seeming to be appallingly young. Sad day indeed.”
A friend of mine tells the story of a dean at Harvard telling him “you know you’re getting old when the new undergraduates are moving in and you find yourself checking out their mothers.”
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