At the end of this dizzying year, and on the occasion of my fiftieth birthday, I offer my reflections on the last twelve months in terms of work—reflections that, to quote Rick Blaine, "don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world," where matters of much greater importance are going on. <gestures wildly at everything> Nevertheless...
I went into my work frustrations in my update last month, so I won't belabor the point here. Suffice it to say that this is my eleventh and final year as department chair, and I'm very much looking forward to returning to full-time teaching and writing as of next July 1. This year I designed a new introductory/survey course in legal philosophy, and I hope that it, together with the upper-level legal philosophy course I regularly teach—retitled "Jurisprudence" to reflect how I've been teaching it for years—will become part of my regular teaching rotation, along with other courses in philosophy and economics. (I taught law-and-economics this semester for the first time in years and enjoyed it, despite the Zoom setting, and I'm hoping to continue teaching that, and resume the economics-and-philosophy course I introduced 20+ years ago, more regularly going forward.)
Although everything that happened in 2021 made it very difficult to write, I did manage to get more done than last year; what's more, I became more productive as the year progressed, which leaves me cautiously optimistic heading into 2022.
1. I wrote two chapters for edited volumes coming out next year and welcomed the publication of one written last year, for which I thank all the editors who invited me to contribute.
- I wrote "Panther Virtue: The Many Roles of T’Challa” for Black Panther and Philosophy, edited by Edwardo Pérez and Timothy E. Brown, coming out in February 2022 from Wiley-Blackwell.
- I also wrote "A Kantian Perspective on Teaching Ethics to Economists" for Handbook of Teaching Ethics to Economists: A Plurality of Perspectives, edited by Craig Duckworth, Ioana Negru, and Imko Meyenburg, coming out from Edward Elgar later in 2022 (I believe).
- My chapter "Reflections on the State of Economics and Ethics" was published last month in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Economics, edited by Conrad Heinmann and Julian Reiss.
2. I was much more active in what we olds used to call "the blogosphere," especially in the second half of the year:
- In August, I resumed blogging for Psychology Today, including a very widely read post earlier this month on Cecily Whiteley's provocative work on depression as a unique state of consciousness.
- In September, Jonathan Wight and I revived the Economics and Ethics blog, which has since highlighted new developments in the area, usually at least once a week.
- Earlier this month I started blogging at The Comics Professor again on interesting ethics-related content in current superhero comics (and I hope to blog there weekly going forward).
- And all year long I maintained twice-weekly posts at The Virtues of Captain America Blog, which is now halfway through Cap's 1990 appearances after 3½ years of blogging, resulting in 364 posts so far.
3. My signal achievement this year was finishing A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Thor: If They Be Worthy, which will be released in 2022 ahead of next summer's Thor: Love and Thunder film. (UPDATE: It's now available.) It's an exploration of the seven years of Thor comics written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Esad Ribić, Russell Dauterman, and others, in which the original Thor suddenly finds himself unworthy of wielding his mighty hammer Mjolnir, only to see a new Thor emerge, eventually revealed to be Jane Foster, who must struggle with her own unique issues while saving the universe (and dealing with Odin). In this short volume, I use this fascinating tale to discuss the various meanings of worthiness, how it feels to lose it, and how one can reclaim it—which requires a more nuanced and somewhat paradoxical understanding of worthiness, suggested by the comics themselves. (See more about this book here.)
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Thinking ahead to 2022: I look forward to finishing my current book project—an introductory ethics textbook using superhero examples—as well as a handbook chapter on the philosophy of punishment. Then I will pick up work on two other book projects: a long-delayed discussion of antitrust, which is even more relevant these days than when I started it, and a deep dive into the Fant... well, perhaps I should hold off on talking about that for a while.
(Sorry, Ben—got carried away.)
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