Sidney Morgenbesser (September 22, 1921 – August 1, 2004) was an American philosopher and professor at Columbia University. He wrote little but is remembered by many for his philosophical witticisms.
Morgenbesser undertook philosophical study at the City College of New York (B.S.S., 1942) and rabbinical study at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (B.J.P., 1941). Following World War II, he 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,[3] his Ph.D. in 1956.[4] It was also at Pennsylvania that, Morgenbesser reports, he held his first teaching job in philosophy and met Hilary Putnam as a student.[5]
Morgenbesser was known particularly for his sharp witticisms and humor 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."[13] According to one anecdote, when J. L. Austin claimed that, although a double negative often implies a positive meaning (e.g., "he is not unlike his sister"), there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative, Morgenbesser retorted: "Yeah, yeah."[14][2][15] In another commonly reported story, Morgenbesser was asked by a student whether he agreed with Chairman Mao's view that a statement can be both true and false at the same time, to which Morgenbesser replied "Well, I do and I don't."[2][1]
Another anecdote is given as follows by the Independent:[2]
[An] unfortunate encounter with the police occurred when he lit up his pipe on the way out of a subway station. Morgenbesser protested to the officer who tried to stop him that the rules covered smoking in the station, not outside. The cop conceded he had a point, but said: "If I let you get away with it, I'd have to let everyone get away with it." To which Morgenbesser, in a famously misunderstood line, retorted: "Who do you think you are, Kant?" Hauled off to the precinct lock-up, Morgenbesser only won his freedom after a colleague showed up and explained the Categorical Imperative to the nonplussed boys in blue.
^David Albert, Arthur C. Danto, Mark Steiner. "Remembering Sidney Morgenbesser". Columbia College Today. Retrieved September 27, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Morgenbesser would be succeeded as John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University in 1992 by Isaac Levi who had previously co-authored with Morgenbesser "Belief and Disposition" (1964) and, with Leigh Cauman and Robert Schwartz, co-edited How Many Questions? Essays in Honor of Sidney Morgenbesser (1983). see: "LEVI, Isaac (1930– )" in The Dictionary Of Modern American Philosophers pps. 1453–1455