1996 in philosophy

Events

• May - Sokal affair: American mathematical physicist Alan Sokal hoaxes the editors into publishing a deliberately nonsensical paper, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", in a "science wars" issue of the journal Social Text as a critique of the intellectual rigor of postmodernism in academic cultural studies.
• Willard Van Orman Quine is awarded the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for his "outstanding contributions to the progress of philosophy in the 20th century by proposing numerous theories based on keen insights in logic, epistemology, philosophy of science and philosophy of language."

Publications

• Robert Zubrin's The Case for Mars
• David Chalmers's The Conscious MindThe Global Trap
• Terry Eagleton's The Illusions of PostmodernismThe Origins of VirtueThe Vision of the AnointedVita Brevis
• Jürgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other
• Richard Clyde Taylor's, ''Restoring Pride: The Lost Virtue of Our Age''

Deaths

• January 9 - Félix González-Torres
• January 17 - Juan Luis Segundo
• January 22 - Israel Eldad
• February 18 - Frank Sibley
• February 28 - Maximilien Rubel
• March 3 - Marguerite Duras
• March 12 - Archie J. Bahm
• March 28 - Hans Blumenberg
• April 2 - Jean Elizabeth Hampton
• April 18 - Kalim Siddiqui
• May 5 - Donald T. Campbell
• May 6 - Richard Robinson
• May 21 - Frederick Wilhelmsen
• May 22 - Timothy Leary
• May 27 - George Boolos
• June 6 - José María Valverde
• June 16 - Richard Sylvan
• June 17 - Thomas Kuhn
• June 18 - Branko Bošnjak
• July 21 - Macha Rosenthal
• August 4 - Intisar-ul-Haque
• August 6 - Gabriel Nuchelmans
• August 16 - Maurice Natanson
• September 21 - Henri Nouwen
• October 11 - Edith Penrose
• October 21 - Léon Ashkenazi
• October 27 - David H. M. Brooks
• December 9 - Raphael Samuel
• December 13 - Waheed Akhtar
• December 20 - Osvaldo Lira
• December 20 - Carl Sagan
• Abdoldjavad Falaturi
• Simon Soloveychik
• Ajahn Thate
• Thomas Tymoczko
• Robert Weingard