Draft:Kelley Ross

• Comment: Friesian.com is not independent if Ross is the proprietor of it. Quillette is not reliable. Kovcszaln6 (talk) 10:09, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

---

Kelley Ross (born October 4, 1949) is an American philosopher in the Friesian tradition and proprietor of the philosophy website Friesian.com.. As such he advocates an epistemological tradition that began in the post-Kantian era with philosopher Jakob Fries (1773-1843) and enjoyed a revival in the early 20th century under Leonard Nelson (1882-1927). While Nelson's acolytes went on to abandon uniquely Friesian principles, notably the theory of non-intuitive immediate knowledge, Ross has hewn closer to the fountainheads of the tradition. Ross casts the Friesian theory as one of the few in the history of philosophy that can be compared to Platonic recollection. He has even gone so far as to explain "Why I Am a Platonist" and to make good on Plato's own unfulfilled promise to deliver "A Lecture on the Good" which he presented to the round table, "Perspectives on Ethical Sentiments," at Oxford University's Hertford College on March 25, 2010

Biography

Ross taught a range of philosophy courses at Los Angeles Valley College starting in 1987 until his retirement in June 2009. He has since moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where he resides with his wife and Princeton professor Jacqueline Stone.

Views

Given that Ross champions a neglected school of thought that arose before the Analytic-Continental break in philosophy, his views are at odds with much of recent and contemporary philosophy. While Ross argues against the incoherence and sterility of purely analytic schools, he takes special exception with the nihilism that he sees in the works of much celebrated icons of Continental philosophy like Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker noted, "The philosopher Kelley Ross documents that 'Nietzsche’s racism is unmistakable,' including a racialized contempt for Jews. Indeed, in Ross’s letter and article defending Enlightenment Now's treatment of Nietzsche, he thought I was too charitable on these points." Writing specifically of Ross' version of the Friesian project, one commentator describes some of the main intellectual linkages, "The Friesian School directly links eighteenth-century philosopher Jakob Fries (1773–1843), on the one hand, to Karl Popper, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman, and, on the other hand, to Rudolf Otto, C.G. Jung, and Camille Paglia."