Sidney Morgenbesser was a Jewish American philosopher and professor at Columbia University. He wrote little but is remembered by many for. One of the best known anecdotes has J. L. Austin claiming that, although a double negative often implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which Morgenbesser retorts: "Yeah, yeah." Another concerns Heidegger's "Why is there something rather than nothing?" To this Morgenbesser's response was: "And if there were nothing? You'd still be complaining!"
Life and career
Sidney Morgenbesser was born on 22 September 1921 in New York City and raised in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Morgenbesser undertook philosophical study at the City College of New York and rabbinical study at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He 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 PhD in 1956. It was also at Pennsylvania, Morgenbesser records, that he would have his first job teaching philosophy. Morgenbesser taught at Swarthmore College and then The New School for Social Research. He then took a position at Columbia University in 1954. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1963. And by 1966 he was made a full professor at Columbia. In 1975 he was named the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy there. This position he held until retirement. Morgenbesser was known particularly for 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." He 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 Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor, Raymond Geuss, Alvin Goldman, Daniel M. Hausman, Robert Nozick, and Gideon Rosen. In 1967, Morgenbesser signed a letter declaring his intention to in protest against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and urging other people to also take this stand. 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. He died on 1 August 2004 at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan at the age of 82. As Rebecca Goldstein records, "he kept up his instructive shtick until the end". Near the end of his long final illness he remarked:
"Why is God making me suffer so much? Just because I don't believe in him?"
Anecdotes
Morgenbesser is leaving a subway station in New York City and lights up his pipe. A policeman tells him that there is no smoking allowed. Morgenbesser points out that the rules cover smoking in the station, not outside. The officer concedes the point but says "If I let you do it, I'd have to let everyone do it." Morgenbesser retorts, with the misunderstood and phonetic double entendre, "Who do you think you are, Kant?" and finds himself hauled off to the police station. There a colleague has to explain the Categorical Imperative to the officers to secure his release.
On the independence of irrelevant alternatives: Morgenbesser, ordering dessert, is told by the waitress that he can choose between apple pie and blueberry pie. He orders the apple pie. Shortly thereafter, the waitress comes back and says that cherry pie is also an option; Morgenbesser says "In that case I'll have the blueberry pie."
Morgenbesser said the following of George Santayana: "There's a guy who asserted both p and not-p, and then drew out all the consequences…"
Interrogated by a student whether he agreed with Chairman Mao's view that a statement can be both true and false at the same time, Morgenbesser replied "Well, I do and I don't."
On being asked, as a potential juror, whether he had ever been treated unjustly or unfairly by the police, Morgenbesser responds "unjustly... but not unfairly." Asked for clarification he recounts that he had been hit, without provocation, by a policeman with his baton during the campus protests of the 1960s and thus hit unjustly. Queried by the prosecutor, he explains it wasn't unfair because "he was doing the same to everyone else."
Morgenbesser described Gentileethics as entailing "ought implies can" while in Jewish ethics "can implies don't."
When asked his opinion of pragmatism, Morgenbesser replied "It's all very well in theory but it doesn't work in practice."
According to Columbia colleague David Albert, Morgenbesser joked, "What is it that you maximize in Jewish decision theory? Regret."
Asked to prove a questioner's existence, Morgenbesser shot back, "Who's asking?"
A student once interrupted him and said, "I just don't understand." "Why should you have the advantage over me?" he responded.
