Josef Lubenow
I came to the University of Chicago as a young philosophy graduate student in 1964. The path was anything but smooth, with ups and downs that included expulsion in 1969 and reinstatement in 1974. Along the way, I was taught by several generations of distinguished professors whose works are represented here. To help support a growing family, I worked both as an adviser to the USPS domestically and the UPU internationally, with the goal of standardizing addressing.
For a long time I was in Advanced Residence at UC, had library access, and audited courses. After forty-nine years, I completed my dissertation in 2013, On the Foundations of Human Rights. I learned much from my early advisers, Herbert Spiegelberg, Alan Gewirth, Jon Elster, Ian Mueller, and Michael Green, my doctoral committee , with Martha Nussbaum as director, Robert Gooding-Williams, and Ben Laurence, and from Brian Leiter, through sitting in on open workshop sessions of Law and Philosophy.
I served briefly as an adjunct professor but was never on the tenure track. Instead, I decided to investigate secular and religious belief systems as an independent scholar, with the goal of understanding how these systems help and hinder human rights in distinct ways. Over time, I annotated hundreds of key texts across fifteen categories, always from the perspective of arguing for equal human rights. These annotations only summarize ideas of others, as accurately as I can, in a limited space. I am making them downloadable without cost to registered users. Feedback is welcome, but this is not a blog. One purpose of this site is to introduce readers to important, challenging, and in some cases neglected works. The projected audience includes undergraduates, graduate students, and active and retired professionals. As a newly minted octogenarian public philosopher, I hope to set a small precedent in challenging times.
