The primary purpose of this website is to critique the work of the philosopher Richard Moran. My name is August Baker. I am the host of philosophypodcasts.org. When I left consulting, I was trying to find something to interest me. One of the things I tried was to read scholarly work. Many of the books I tried were not fulfilling, but I found three that I found fascinating.

Charles Taylor, Sources of the self

Jonathan Lear, Love and its place in nature

Richard Moran, Authority and estrangement.

Thus, Moran was one of my initial heroes. After I started PhilosophyPodcasts.org, I contacted Charles Taylor through his publisher, but he was not inclined to be interviewed. Which is fine. I also contacted Jonathan Lear. I wrote an article critiquing his work, but he was gracious and kind and supportive of my work. We exchanged emails occasionally until his untimely death.

I contacted Richard Moran, and at first he seemed interested in talking to me for my podcast. This was thrilling to me.

But the day before we were supposed to talk, he backed out.

Why did Richard Moran back out?

“Why” is a difficult question since he may not know himself. Essentially he canceled me. And his stated reason for cancelling me was that I had shown emotion. Part of the zeitgeist is that emotions are verboten. If you show emotion about a topic, any topic, that is viewed as “unprofessional.” And you get canceled.

That was his stated reason. But another reason could be that I pointed out problems in his paper. His response to this was equivocal and catty. Rather than countenancing my criticisms, he tried to use that reductive “professional” humor so common these days He said something like, “Little did I know that I would make you so mad about something so minor as Freud’s theory of something.”

It was hurtful, dismissive, arrogant.

I asked him to reconsider, but I have not heard back from him and, based on prior experience with people who have canceled me, I expect he probably won’t even read my email much less respond to me.

Of course this does get an emotional response out of me. I feel hurt, ashamed, and treated unfairly. Like most cancelers, he will simply give me the silent treatment, and expect me to just stifle myself somehow.

This is the technique of “You are too emotional, so I won’t talk to you, or listen to what you say.” It is diabolical since naturally the recipient is infuriated hence fulfills the cancelers diagnosis. The canceler causes the very emotionality they diagnosed in the first place.

I don’t really feel like just taking this without any response.

Thus this website.

My first three pages will be: (1) the story of what happened (a sort of play by play for the emails) (2) all the emails between us. And (3) a brief-as-possible summary of the problems with Moran’s article “Swann’s medical philosophy.” That third page will be essentially a distillation of the emails.

Is it emotionality that caused him to cancel? I think when people claim that you are being canceled because of emotions, they are really objecting not to the emotionality per se but the valence of it. That is, if my comments had been positive, if my emotionality had been an admiring emotionality, he wouldn’t have canceled.

To the extent that it really is emotionality that causes people to cancel someone, it is the negative emotionality. My comments were critical of his work. We might suspect he was also afraid that I was manic, that I was showing too much interest in his work. This seemed in some way unsafe to him.

I have been canceled for emotionality many times. Probably a dozen times over the past 10 years. But this is the first time, it was a philosopher, a podcast guest who did so. Yes I am passionate about philosophy and all the articles I read. Until Moran, everyone says they value and appreciate the energy I bring to their work. Ask Owen Flanagan to take one example. Or Alex Byrne. I was more critical and more manic with both of them than with Moran.

How disappointing it can be to meet one’s heroes.