Cora Diamond


Cora Diamond is an American philosopher who works on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gottlob Frege, moral philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of language, and philosophy and literature. She is currently the Kenan Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Virginia.

Work

One of Diamond's most famous articles, "What Nonsense Might Be", criticizes the way that the logical positivists think about nonsense on Fregean grounds. Another well-known article, "Eating Meat and Eating People", examines the rhetorical and philosophical nature of contemporary attitudes towards animal rights. Diamond's writings on both "early" and "late" Wittgenstein have made her a leading influence in the New Wittgensteinian approach advanced by Alice Crary, James F. Conant, and others.
Diamond has published a collection of essays titled The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind. She is the editor of Wittgenstein's Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics: Cambridge 1939, a collection of lectures assembled from the notes of Wittgenstein's students Norman Malcolm, Rush Rhees, Yorick Smythies, and R. G. Bosanquet.
Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Cora Diamond features essays by Crary, John McDowell, Martha Nussbaum, Stanley Cavell, and James F. Conant, among others.
Diamond received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Swarthmore College in 1957 and her Bachelor of Philosophy degree from St Hugh's College, Oxford, in 1961.