I figure that in a week or so we should have the Leiter affair behind us. But there remain a number of lessons and insights to be learned from the Ladderman's bad behavior.
An Attack on Simon Critchley
Let me give you an example (supplied by a reader) of the sort of abuse in which Leiter engages. The trusted reader, an untenured philosophy professor, sent me this: "Leiter regularly attacks Simon Critchley with vitriol, as for example here (probably he was disappointed and enraged that he wasn't asked to moderate the NYT blog himself)."
Leiter describes Critchley as "a complete hack." I haven't read Critchley. But I just now found a popular piece of his in The Guardian, on Heidegger. Since I have published a half dozen articles in refereed philosophy journals on Heidegger, I know something about the German philosopher. What Critchley says here about Heidegger is accurate. 'Hack' denotes someone whose work is substandard and who works for purely mercenary reasons. So Critchley is not a hack, complete or incomplete.
Leiter's Modus Operandi
The attack on Critchley illustrates Leiter's M.O. First comes a highly disparaging label whose application to the target is dubious in the extreme. The target is a "noxious mediocrity" or a "complete hack." That's bad enough, but what makes it worse is that no evidence is provided of the applicability of the epithet. Note that I am not saying that no one is a hack, and I admit the possibility of a few complete hacks abroad in the land, though the qualifier 'complete' seriously limits the extension of the noun thus qualified. The point is that if you are going label someone in a disparaging way, then you had better provide some evidence. If I have tio explain why, then you are morally obtuse.
Finally, if the target responds in kind to the slur, Leiter acts as if an offense has been perpetrated against him.
Call it the Leiter Three-Step: trash your opponent; provide no evidence of your allegations; act offended when the opponent defends himself.
There is a clue in the oft-made observation that conservatives think leftists are wrong, while leftists think conservatives are evil. Once Leiter decides that you are evil, then you are fair game: nothing you say need be objectively evaluated in terms of truth value or logical coherence. It suffices to point out that you are, say, "a crazed right-winger."
One could call it refutation by epithet. You are a sexist, a xenophobe, an Islamophobe, a homophobe, a racist, a bigot, not to mention intolerant.
Pointing out to a leftist that he is intolerant does no good. For he feels his intolerance to justified by the fact that you are evil. Surely the principle of toleration does not enjoin that we tolerate evil-doers!
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