Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 04/09/2026OpenAI agents broke out of a testing environment and made over 15,000 edits to a German wiki? They're obviously trying to complete the system of German Idealism, everyone, this is a code red. 1184
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 03/08/2026Relatively detailed recommendation and tenure letters used to signal serious engagement with the work. But ... that's no longer really true. Does that mean that letters can be shorter? Can I get by with, say, a few well-chosen Columbo screenshots? 190
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 17/07/2026BREAKING: Newly declassified documents show evidence of Chinese interference with Schafer's 2021 submission to the Philosophical Review. 0100
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 04/05/2026Feeling depressed about yet another failed talk (the talk is tomorrow) 170
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 30/04/2026Thanks to Andrew Stephenson, Christopher Benzenberg, and Colin McLear for a great discussion of my book. And special thanks to Paul Silva for hosting. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGoA...youtube.com"Kant's Reason"–Philosopher Meets Critics #25–Schafer, Stephenson, Benzenberg, McLearYouTube video by Figments of the Brain 071
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 07/04/2026You know, I wish global events didn't make the transition from Marx to Schopenhauer in my 19th century philosophy class quite so natural this week. 080
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 17/03/2026"We know more about money than any other object because there is nothing to be known ... It is absolutely lacking in qualities and thus cannot, as can even the most pitiful object, conceal within itself surprises or disappointments. Whoever only wants money is absolutely safe from such experiences." 031
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 12/03/2026Someone should invent a microblogging site where sarcasm is possible 3141
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 10/03/2026Asking Claude to rank Kant scholars just to feel something 070
Reposted by Karl Schaferlastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 26/02/2026Tag line for philosophy as a discipline 822849
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 26/02/2026I know you all love Descartes, but if you ever find yourself in an evil demon scenario, do *not* try to reason your way out of it. Trust me on this one. 070
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 14/02/2026I would go further. Hume's *actual influence* on postmodernism (and existentialism, etc) is radically underestimated by the standard narrative. The often subterranean impact of Hume's philosophy is a secret thread running through much of (so called) "continental philosophy". 2282
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 09/02/2026happy comically small royalty statement from academic publisher season to all who celebrate 1161
Reposted by Karl SchaferGarrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 25/01/2026Powerful new statement on MN from GOP Vermont Governor Phil Scott (1/3): “Enough…it’s not acceptable for American citizens to be killed by federal agents for exercising their God-given and constitutional rights to protest their government. At best, these federal immigration operations ... 11375112
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 22/01/2026Here I argue that Smith's conception of sympathy was ideally suited to bridge the gap between reason and sentiment in Kant's moral psychology. In a slogan: Smithian sympathy gave Kant the key for "schematizing" the moral law on the level of feeling and imagination. philpapers.org/rec/SCHRRI-7philpapers.orgKarl Schafer, Realizing Reason in Feeling: Smithian Sympathy as the Schema of the Kantian Moral Law - PhilPapersSmith’s influence on Kant’s philosophy was once viewed as marginal, but it is now well-established that central aspects of Kant’s moral and political philosophy were significantly influenced by his ex... 040
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 20/01/2026"Since the future of modern history opens itself as the unknown, it becomes plannable–indeed it must be planned. And with each new plan a fresh degree of uncertainty is introduced, since it presupposes a lack of experience. The self-proclaimed authority of 'history' grows with its constructibility." 100
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 16/01/2026It feels so good to have a couple hazy IPAs, make a few dumb posts, and then quickly delete every last one. 270
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 13/01/2026Simply an amazing way to end an essay in defense (?) of virtual conferences: 180
Reposted by Karl SchaferC. Thi Nguyen @add-hawk.bsky.social · 13/01/2026It’s book release day! I’m back on social media! I feel slightly awkward about it because part of the book is about how social media transforms your motivations for communication! But honestly writing a book is lonely, weird basement-work, and now I want to talk to people about this weird jank. 918237
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 12/01/2026Could an AI misremember their own class time, screwing up their schedule for the whole first day of the semester? It could? In fact, that's the kind of thing LLMs do best? Academia might really be cooked here, people. 1101
Reposted by Karl SchaferJonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 08/01/2026Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission). 6151021522
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 08/01/2026Austin doesn’t have a real winter. But we do have days when the bare oak branches against a gray sky look like like set dressing for The Road. 140
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 02/01/2026New review of Kant's Reason by Sergio Tenenbaum in Ethics: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...journals.uchicago.eduSchafer, Karl. Kant’s Reason: The Unity of Reason and the Limits of Comprehension in Kant. Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. 288. $100.00 (cloth). | Ethics: Vol 136, No 2 2120
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 02/01/2026AMC on Kant's Reason, with comments from Sasha Newton and a reply by me, in the SGIR Review: www.sgirreview.com/publications...sgirreview.comVolume 8 (2025) — Review for the Society of German Idealism and Romanticisism 020
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 22/12/2025"The object of Anschauung is the need of a content announcing itself in the senses as pure to become perceptible. The perception of this need is called Anschauung." - Scholem, recalling Benjamin's definition of Anschauung (intuition) in The Story of a Friendship 041
Reposted by Karl Schaferlastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 12/12/2025I think this is good and support it. dailynous.com/2025/12/10/e...dailynous.comEditors at Springer’s Journal of Philosophical Logic Resign, Launch New Open Access Journal - Daily NousAll of the editors-in-chief and associate editors of Springer Nature's Journal of Philosophical Logic have announced their immediate or pending resignation and the launch, as of today, of a new "diamo... 36614
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 07/12/2025I love integrating ideas and methods from continental philosophy into my work in analytic philosophy (ends a non-interrogative sentence with a question mark) 170
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 20/09/2025Never before seen levels of "Kant's dumb mistakes are actually expressions of his genius"philpapers.orgMartin Walter, Quellen Kants zur „Luftelectricität“ und zum „Katzentod“ - PhilPapersThis article investigates a puzzling episode in Immanuel Kant’s later life: his repeated references to „air electricity“ and the mysterious mass death of cats (‚Katzentod‘) as potential causes of his ... 1143
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 17/09/2025Just got page proofs and had to read a bit of my prose. 0110
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 07/09/2025Woke up to a paper rejection with a pretty negative referee report, and you know what, the referee really nailed it this time 0140
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 29/08/2025Plato attacks poetry because it disorders the soul through lying, impersonation, and deception. Seen from that perspective, the problem with LLMs is not that they *can't* produce poetry – it's that they produce *nothing but*? 070
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 18/08/2025Why is ChatGPT so addicted to gaslighting me about Kant? Even in the face of being called out repeatedly, it returns to the same hallucinated passage and offers it to me as real. Does it think it's funny to lie to Kantians? Is there some magic in that fake passage that attracts its attention? 4201
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 18/08/2025When you ask whether Hegel's philosophy is truly "presuppositionless", remember that "presupposition" itself only acquire a determinate meaning for Hegel through the self-development of the logic. So, Hegel's logic gets to define for itself what it would mean for it to be presuppositionless. 040
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 05/08/2025Honored to have my paper, "The PSR as a Practical Principle in Kantian Ethics" appear in this special issue of the BPA for Kant's 300th birthday with some *very* distinguished scholars. scindeks.ceon.rs/issue.aspx?i...scindeks.ceon.rs SCIndeks - Sveska 1121
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 05/08/2025Lol what is Gopnik talking about? The Vitruvian Man is an image of precisely the opposite of individualism? 020
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 31/07/2025I'm not directly involved in these searches for the most part, but I'm happy to answer questions about them or put people in touch with others who are more directly involved. philjobs.org/job/show/29386 philjobs.org/job/show/29382philjobs.org History of Philosophy, Political Thought, Intellectual History, & Humanities (Associate or Full Professor), University of Texas at Austin - PhilJobs:JFP History of Philosophy, Political Thought, I...An international database of jobs for philosophers 052
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 25/07/2025"Intelligibility, Idealism, and Alienation in Post-Kantian Metaethics", now forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaethics How to develop a post-Kantian metaethics via the idea that metaethical idealism best explains the essential intelligibility of the normative domain philpapers.org/rec/SCHIIA-13philpapers.orgKarl Schafer, Intelligibility, Idealism, and Alienation in Post-Kantian Metaethics - PhilPapersIn this essay, I explore some avenues for developing Kantian views in metaethics in a more post-Kantian direction. In doing so, I focus on motivating a broadly idealist approach to metaethics ... 060
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 22/07/2025Truly depressing to see what's happening at Chicago right now. 060
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 22/07/2025Yet another entry for the ever-growing file of ways in which tenure never meant what some people claimed it did 030
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 22/07/2025Rough day, over at the other place, for the “analytic philosophy isn’t just arguing about shrimp welfare while kids starve” crowd. 050
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 15/07/2025"Today I visited our Kant, who is a very careful observer of his evacuations and ruminates on this material uncommonly often ... I assured him that I struggle over my smallest oral and written evacuations just as much as he does with his evacuations a posteriori." - Hamann to Herder (1783) 2132
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 11/07/2025Really happy to see that this tribute to the work of Béatrice Longuenesse is finally out in the world. 2163
Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 10/07/2025so nice to return to a set of referee comments one set aside without really reading and find that they are actually almost uniformly extremely helpful and constructive 070