Sidney Morgenbesser

Sidney Morgenbesser (September 22, 1921 – August 1, 2004) was a Jewish American philosopher and professor at Columbia University. He wrote little but is remembered by many for . One of the best known anecdotes has J. L. Austin claiming that, although a double negative often implies a positive meaning (as is the case with "he is not unlike his sister"), there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which Morgenbesser retorts: "Yeah, yeah." Another concerns Heidegger's "Why is there something rather than nothing?" To this Morgenbesser's response was: "And if there were nothing? You'd still be complaining!" 
Life and career.
Sidney Morgenbesser was born on September 22, 1921 in New York City and raised in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Morgenbesser undertook philosophical study at the City College of New York and rabbinical study at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He then pursued graduate study in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. There he obtained his M.A. in 1950 and, with a thesis titled "Theories And Schemata In The Social Sciences," his PhD in 1956. It was also at Pennsylvania, Morgenbesser records, that he would have his first job teaching philosophy. 
Morgenbesser taught at Swarthmore College and then The New School for Social Research. He then took a position at Columbia University in 1954. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1963. And by 1966 he was made a full professor at Columbia. He was visiting professor at the Rockefeller University in 1967—1968 and in 1975 was named the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia. This position he held until retirement.
Morgenbesser was known particularly for which often penetrated to the heart of the philosophical issue at hand, on which account "The New York Times Magazine" dubbed him the "Sidewalk Socrates." 
He published little (about which he commented: "Moses wrote one book. Then what did he do?") and established no school, but was revered for his extraordinary intelligence and moral seriousness. He was a famously influential teacher; his former students included Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor, Raymond Geuss, Alvin Goldman, Daniel M. Hausman, Robert Nozick, Gideon Rosen, and Michael Stocker. In 1967, Morgenbesser signed a letter declaring his intention to refuse to pay taxes in protest against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and urging other people to also take this stand. 
Morgenbesser's areas of expertise included the philosophy of social science, political philosophy, epistemology, and the history of American Pragmatism. He founded the Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs along with G.A. Cohen, Thomas Nagel and others.
He died on 1 August 2004 at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan at the age of 82.
As Rebecca Goldstein records, "he kept up his instructive shtick until the end". Near the end of his long final illness he remarked:"Why is God making me suffer so much? Just because I don't believe in him?"
Works.
Books, (co-)edited
Select articles, book chapters (co-)authored
For a more complete record of publications see in the below.
Festschrift