I welcome private and public nominations for my weekly, most-underrated philosopher of the week post! Here are the rules: 1. no dead people; 2. no people currently or about to be employed in a Leiter top 50 (or equivalent) department (even thought these are also filled with underrated folk); 3. no former dissertation advisors, or other teachers from graduate school; 4. no former students; 5. No untenured folk. 6a: Excellence in more than one AOS, or 6b: noticeable public impact. (That is I want to recognize interesting philosophers, not just hyperspecialized ones!)
This week's most underrated, Richard Arthur, possesses that rare combination of historical breadth with philosophic and mathematical acuity. He also works on a dizzying number of topics and figures: philosophy of time, history of mathematics, thought experiments, philosophy of physics, and early modern (some of this overlaps, of course). Rare among major Leibniz scholars, he knows his Newton (see a lovely comparison). Rare among serious Descartes specialists, he knows his Beeckman. I admit I have a soft spot for anybody that can swtch between work on Minkowski space-time and Daniel Sennert! In my view, Arthur's key virtue is that he is constantly critically engaging with a wide range of others (from Deleuze to Howard Stein)--I am always dazzled by the scholarship and secondary literature he has assimilitated in his work. Among my favorites of his work, is the very important old piece (destroying lots of myths) on space-time in Newton and Leibniz. More folk should know his work!
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