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Douglas P. Lackey

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Douglas P. Lackey (born August 22, 1945) is an American philosopher and playwright who is also a professor at Baruch College of the City University of New York.[1] Lackey was born in Staten Island, New York.[2]

As a graduate student, he studied under J. N. Findlay at Yale University. His post-graduate work on the ethics of nuclear warfare was influenced by his attention to earlier works by Bertrand Russell.[1] His drama Kaddish in East Jerusalem was produced in 2003.[1] The play was later expanded and revised as The Gandhi Nonviolent Soccer Club.[1] He has also had plays produced about Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, and Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand, Earl Russell.[3]

Lackey divides pacifism into four categories: a universal, Christian view in which all killing is wrong; a universal, Gandhi-based system in which all violence is wrong; private pacificism, following Saint Augustine in seeing personal violence as universally wrong but political violence as sometimes acceptable; and anti-war pacifism, in which personal violence is at times justifiable, but war is never so.[4]

In 1999 Lackey published the results of a survey, undertaken with American university and college philosophy teachers, to decide which were the most popular "modern classics of philosophy". The top ten were, with citations shown (in parentheses) and survey ballots shown [in square brackets]:

  1. (179) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations [68]
  2. (134) Martin Heidegger, Being and Time [51]
  3. (131) John Rawls, A Theory of Justice [21]
  4. (77) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [24]
  5. (64) Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica [27]
  6. (63) W. V. O. Quine, Word and Object [7]
  7. (56) Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity [5]
  8. (51) Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [3]
  9. (38) Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness [4]
  10. (34) A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality [16][5][6][7]

Works

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d "The Department of Philosophy". Baruch College. Archived from the original on 2019-03-10. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  2. ^ "Arts Mixtape".
  3. ^ "Ludwig and Bertie:A Comedy of Ideas". Theater for the New City. Retrieved 2019-10-15.
  4. ^ Shin Chiba, Thomas J. Schoenbaum (2008). Peace movements and pacifism after September 11. Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 78. ISBN 978-1-84720-667-1.
  5. ^ Lackey, Douglas (December 1999). "What are the modern classics? The Baruch Poll of Great Philosophy in the Twentieth Century". Philosophical Forum. 30 (4): 329–346. doi:10.1111/0031-806X.00022.
  6. ^ "What are the Modern Classics?". lindenbranch.weblogs.us. Archived from the original on 20 August 2011. Retrieved 3 September 2010.
  7. ^ Lackey, Douglas P. (December 1999) What Are The Modern Classics? The Baruch Poll of Great Philosophy in the Twentieth Century The Philosophical Forum v.30; n.4; pp.329-346