Jack Russell Weinstein (born October 1, 1969) is an American philosopher specializing in the
history of philosophy,
political philosophy
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, ...
,
Adam Smith, and contemporary
liberal theory
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for c ...
. He is currently a Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the
University of North Dakota
The University of North Dakota (also known as UND or North Dakota) is a public research university in Grand Forks, North Dakota. It was established by the Dakota Territorial Assembly in 1883, six years before the establishment of the state of N ...
. He is the director of The Institute for Philosophy in Public Life and the host of the public radio show ''Why? Philosophical discussions about everyday life''. He was an influential student activist in the 1980s.
Life and education
Jack Russell Weinstein was born on October 1, 1969, in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
to painter Joyce Ellen, and American Jazz musician Mark Weinstein. He attended college at the
State University of New York at Plattsburgh
The State University of New York College at Plattsburgh (SUNY Plattsburgh) is a public college in Plattsburgh, New York. The college was founded in 1889 and officially opened in 1890. The college is part of the State University of New York (SUN ...
. It was there that his academic interest flourished, where he was able to pursue his long-held interests in reading, writing, and learning in the free university environment. He began his studies in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
but quickly changed to
Philosophy with a minor in
Political Science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
. While in school, Weinstein participated actively in politics and became a political organizer for student issues around New York state. Receiving his undergraduate diploma in 1991, he went on to graduate school at
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...
, where he received his
M.A.
A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...
in 1996 and
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in 1998, both in Philosophy.
Weinstein was named plaintiff in a class action suit (Cianfrocco & Weinstein v. Clinton County Board of Elections, 1989—the name is not exact) intended to give college students in New York the right to vote in their college towns, and leading a contingent of over a hundred students who marched on the State House in Albany, New York. That same day, his image appeared in the front page of more than fifty newspapers across the state. He and others were protesting tuition hikes in the State University System by hosting a mock funeral to portray "the death of public education." The image showed Weinstein lying blindfolded by a baby's coffin.
He married Kim Donehower, and later had a daughter (Adina Weinstein in October 2005.) Adina Weinstein is currently a Black Lives Matter and Queer Rights advocate in North Dakota.
Work
Weinstein currently teaches at the University of North Dakota. In 2007, he received the Individual Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award at UND.
Weinstein is the author of two books in the Wadsworth Philosophers Series, ''On Adam Smith'' (2001) and ''On MacIntyre'' (2003), and ''Adam Smith's Pluralism: Rationality, Education, and the Moral Sentiments'' (Yale U.P.). He has edited several collections and journals, as well as numerous articles, essays and reviews on topics such as philosophy of education and moral theory, as well as a number of presentations on the philosophy of Adam Smith. He is committed to the project of advancing
public philosophy
Public philosophy is a subfield of philosophy that involves engagement with the public. Jack Russell Weinstein defines public philosophy as "doing philosophy with general audiences in a non-academic setting".. It must be undertaken in a public ve ...
, working with the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life to bring philosophy to the general public while simultaneously making a place for public philosophy work in the academy.
Weinstein's current academic project is a restructuring of contemporary liberal political theory, building off of the
moral psychology and political economy of Adam Smith. In multiple volumes, Weinstein plans to offer an interpretation of Adam Smith that views his ''
Theory of Moral Sentiments
''The Theory of Moral Sentiments'' is a 1759 book by Adam Smith. It provided the ethical, philosophical, economic, and methodological underpinnings to Smith's later works, including ''The Wealth of Nations'' (1776), '' Essays on Philosophical S ...
'' as primary and offer its connection to contemporary liberal theory. According to Weinstein, the book will ultimately elaborate on the idea that "Adam Smith's moral psychology offers us the framework by which we can rescue the notion of neutrality from its indefensible understanding as an Archimedean point of view."
Weinstein's blog PQED: Philosophical Questions About Everyday Life has inspired controversy. His post "How should people respond to open-carry gun-rights activists?" went viral, and was cited both positively and negatively throughout the
blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can pu ...
and traditional media, such as Fox News Radio, which interviewed him. It landed him on the
Professor Watchlist
Professor Watchlist is a website, run by conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA, that lists academic staff which Turning Point believes "discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist ...
, a slight that led to an impassioned defense of his voice by his local newspaper The
Grand Forks Herald
The ''Grand Forks Herald'' is a daily broadsheet newspaper, established in 1879, published in Grand Forks, North Dakota, United States. It is the primary daily paper for northeast North Dakota and northwest Minnesota. Its average daily circulat ...
.
He wrote the official biography of Nobel Prize winner
Amartya Sen
Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, econom ...
, that was read at The White House when Sen won the
National Humanities Medal
The National Humanities Medal is an American award that annually recognizes several individuals, groups, or institutions for work that has "deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened our citizens' engagement with the human ...
. He has also repeatedly called attention to the antisemitism that exists in North Dakota, his city, and his university, most notably in testimony before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (CCR) is a bipartisan, independent commission of the United States federal government, created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 during the Eisenhower administration, that is charged with the responsibility fo ...
.
Weinstein’s additional areas of research is the systematizing of public philosophy as a sub-discipline. In particular, his two essays, ''The Case Against Political Philosophy'' (2022) and ''What Does Public Philosophy Do: Hint: It Does Not Make Better Citizens'' (2014), he argues that public philosophy should be seen as a sub-discipline in itself, and not a form of political editorializing or a dumbing-down of the more academic philosophical inquiry.
Weinstein’s public philosophy advocates for taking podcasts and other general-audience material seriously as philosophical contributions, and cites interviews, podcasts, and blogs alongside academic journals and books. He has intentionally introduced two new philosophical notions in this public medium. First, he coins the
informal fallacy
Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the ''form'' of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their ''content'' and ''context''. Fall ...
, the “I Got Mine Jack, fallacy” defined as “just because a solution worked adequately for particular individuals, it does not follow that the same solution is applicable to all. This may be understood as a sub-fallacy of the appeal to authority, presuming that the person who makes the error regards their experience as normative. It may also be considered a form of generalizing from the particular, in that one instance is fallaciously regarded as representative of all others.”
Weinstein has also argued that the world has experienced a second sexual revolution. “The 1960s put forth the idea that sex for pleasure was worth celebrating, and that women as well as men deserved to experience it. It’s a realization we’re still negotiating. The last decade, however, has seen what I call the digital sexual revolution. It has shown us that sex is something that can and will happen at great distances, that one need not touch another person to be intimate. With dating apps that create a veritable supermarket of potential partners, to toys someone’s lover can operate remotely, to telephones that give each of us the ability to create pornography on a whim, we have collectively acknowledged that while sex may still involve our own body, it does not necessarily involve someone else’s. The digital revolution reaffirms that eroticism is a product of the imagination before it is a byproduct of our physiology.”
Selected bibliography
*"The Case Against Public Philosophy", in A Companion to Public Philosophy, edited by Lee MacIntyre, Nancy McHugh, and Ian Olasov (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons): 26-40.
*"What Does Public Philosophy Do? (Hint: It Does Not Make Better Citizens)'< Essays in Philosophy 13:1 (2014): 33-57.
*''Adam Smith's Pluralism: Rationality, Education, and the Moral Sentiments''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.
*Guest Editor, On Second Thought ("The Philosophy Issue"), North Dakota Humanities Council, (June, 2010).
*"The Two Adams: Ferguson and Smith on Sympathy and Sentiment", in ''Adam Ferguson: A Reassessment, Philosophy, Politics and Society'', edited by Eugene Heath and Vincenze Merolle (London: Rickering & Chatto Publishers, LTD, 2009.): 89-106.
*"Adam Smith", entry for the ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
*Guest Editor, "Symposium on Adam Smith and Education" ''The Adam Smith Review'', No. 3 (2007): 49-158.
*"On the Meaning of the Term 'Progressive': A Philosophical Investigation," The William Mitchell Law Review 33:1 (2006), 1-50.
*''Is Money All There Is? Other Aspects of Life in Adam Smith's Free Market''. North Dakota Humanities Council Larry Remele Fellowship Tabloid (4 pages with essay and interview), 2005.
*''On MacIntyre (Wadsworth Philosophers Series)''. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2003.
*''On Adam Smith (Wadsworth Philosophers Series)''. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2001.
*Guest Editor, ''Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines. Special Issue: Political Philosophy and Critical Thinking''. Montclair: Institute for Critical Thinking, vol. 18, no. 1 (Autumn, 1998).
*Editor, ''Academic Inquiry: in Progress''. Vienna: Institute for Human Sciences (Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen), 1995.
See also
*
American philosophy
*
List of American philosophers
This is a list of American philosophers; of philosophers who are either from, or spent many productive years of their lives in the United States.
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List of Jewish American philosophers
References
External links
University of North Dakota, Philosophy and Religion Faculty Bio Page: Jack Russell WeinsteinSUNY Plattsburgh Alumni Profile: Jack WeinsteinJackRussellWeinstein.com: entry in ''
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' by Jack Weinstein
The Institute for Philosophy In Public LifeWhy? Philosophical Discussions About Everyday Life
{{DEFAULTSORT:Weinstein, Jack Russell
Living people
20th-century American Jews
Jewish philosophers
Boston University alumni
University of North Dakota faculty
Berea College faculty
The Bronx High School of Science alumni
American political philosophers
Date of birth missing (living people)
20th-century American philosophers
21st-century American philosophers
1969 births
21st-century American Jews