Jack Russell Weinstein - Work

Work

Weinstein has held full-time positions in departments of philosophy and religion at Montclair State University, Berea College, California State University, Fresno, and currently teaches at the University of North Dakota. In 2007, he received the Individual Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award at UND.

Weinstein is the author of two books in the Wadsworth Philosophers Series, On Adam Smith (2001) and On MacIntyre (2003), and the forthcoming book Adam Smith's Pluralism: Rationality, Education, and the Moral Sentiments (Yale U.P.). He has edited several collections and journals, as well as numerous articles, essays and reviews on topics such as philosophy of education and moral theory, as well as a number of presentations on the philosophy of Adam Smith. He is committed to the project of advancing public philosophy, working with the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life to bring philosophy to the general public while simultaneously making a place for public philosophy work in the academy. He wants faculty to be able to get "research credit" for their public philosophy work just as they do for more specializes writing.

Weinstein’s current project is a restructuring of contemporary liberal political theory, building off of the moral psychology and political economy of Adam Smith. In multiple volumes, Weinstein plans to offer an interpretation of Adam Smith that views his Theory of Moral Sentiments as primary and offer its connection to contemporary liberal theory. According to Weinstein, the book will ultimately elaborate on the idea that “Adam Smith’s moral psychology offers us the framework by which we can rescue the notion of neutrality from its indefensible understanding as an Archimedean point of view.”