Biography:Cora Diamond

Short description: American philosopher

Cora Diamond
Born	1937 (age 86–87) New York City , New York, US
Academic background
Alma mater	Swarthmore College St Hugh's College, Oxford
Influences	Stanley Cavell Iris Murdoch Elizabeth Anscombe Ludwig Wittgenstein
Academic work
Discipline	Philosophy
Sub-discipline	Moral philosophy animal ethics philosophy of language political philosophy
School or tradition	Analytic philosophy Postanalytic philosophy The New Wittgenstein
Institutions	University of Virginia
Main interests	Animal rights Gottlob Frege philosophy and literature Ludwig Wittgenstein
Notable ideas	New Wittgenstein
Influenced	James F. Conant Alice Crary Juliet Floyd Aldo Gargani Ashton Nichols Rupert Read

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 degree from Swarthmore College in 1957 and her Bachelor of Philosophy degree from St Hugh's College, Oxford (where her tutor was Paul Grice), in 1961.

Philosophical work

One of Diamond's most famous articles, "What Nonsense Might Be", criticizes the way that the logical positivists think about nonsense on Fregean grounds (see category mistake). 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 both "early" (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus era) and "late" (Philosophical Investigations era) 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.

See also

• American philosophy

External links

• Diamond's home page at UVa
• An interview with Diamond from 2000 (pdf)
• Eating Meat and Eating People (pdf)