Cora Diamond

Cora Diamond
Born1937 (age 88–89)
New York City, U.S.
Education
Education
Philosophical work
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
InstitutionsUniversity of Virginia
Main interests
Notable ideas
New Wittgenstein

Cora Diamond (born 1937) is an American philosopher who works in the areas of moral philosophy, animal ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy and literature, and the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gottlob Frege, and Elizabeth Anscombe. Diamond is the Kenan Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Virginia.

Education and career

Diamond received her Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from Swarthmore College in 1957, and her Bachelor of Philosophy degree from St Hugh's College, Oxford in 1961. She began a master's in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1957. However, she never finished it, realising, after attending classes at Harvard taught by Paul Grice and Morton White, that she wanted to pursue philosophy. Before she began the BPhil, she spent a year saving money by working at IBM. At Oxford, for the duration of her BPhil, her tutor was Paul Grice. After the BPhil, she taught at the University of Swansea (1961–62), University of Sussex (1962-1963), and University of Aberdeen (1963-1971). In 1969, she spent a year at the University of Virginia on a visiting appointment. In 1971, she moved to Virginia and taught at the University of Virginia until retiring in 2002. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024.

Philosophical work

One of Diamond's most famous articles, "What Nonsense Might Be", criticizes, on Fregean grounds, the way that the logical positivists think about nonsense. Another well-known article, "Eating Meat and Eating People", examines the rhetorical and philosophical nature of contemporary attitudes towards animal rights. Diamond's writings on Wittgenstein have made her a leading influence in the New Wittgensteinian approach advanced by Alice Crary, James F. Conant, and others.

Diamond has published a collection of essays titled The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind. She is the editor of Wittgenstein's Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics: Cambridge 1939, a collection of lectures assembled from the notes of Wittgenstein's students Norman Malcolm, Rush Rhees, Yorick Smythies, and R. G. Bosanquet.

Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Cora Diamond (edited by Alice Crary) features essays by Crary, John McDowell, Martha Nussbaum, Stanley Cavell, and James F. Conant, among others.

Selected works

See also

References

  1. ↑ DNB
  2. 1 2 3 4 Diamond, Cora (November 2019). "Reflections of a Dinosaur". Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. 93: 87–104. Retrieved 9 April 2025.
  3. ↑ "2024 New Member List | American Academy of Arts and Sciences".
  4. ↑ "Cora Diamond". Concoran Department of Philosophy, University of Virginia.
  5. ↑ Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Cora Diamond. Representation and Mind series. A Bradford Book. 25 May 2007. ISBN 9780262033596.