Sherman Clark is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where he teaches courses in ethics, torts, and evidence as well as seminars on law and literature. After graduating from the Harvard Law School, he practiced with the Kirkland & Ellis law firm in Washington DC. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School in 1995. Since then, he has published in a wide range of areas, including legal ethics, evidence law, ancient literature, and technology. His recent work applies an Aristotelian eudaimonist virtue ethics framework to contemporary issues of law, technology, and democracy. He is trying to figure out how we might learn to live well together in an often-unwell world. Email: sjclark [at] umich.edu
by Sherman J. Clark Is your uncle racist? Is the American educational system? Are military beard standards? Is our president? I won’t try to answer those questions here. I don’t even know your uncle. Instead, I want to talk about what we mean when we use that term—and the confusion we experience as a result…
by Sherman J. Clark There is no other way of guarding oneself from flatterers except letting men understand that to tell you the truth does not offend you. —Machiavelli A friend recently described to me his research in quantum physics. Later, curious to understand better, I asked ChatGPT to explain the concepts. Within minutes, I…
by Sherman J. Clark In earlier essays, I argued that beauty can orient our desires and help us thrive in an age of algorithmic manipulation (Beatrice 2.0) and explored how our habits of mind help or hinder us in the effort to seek and see beauty (Aesthetic Phronesis). But even those most capable of wonder…
by Sherman J. Clark In a previous essay, Beatrice 2.0, I argued that a love of beauty can guide our desires and help us flourish amid distraction and commodification. But what hinders us from letting beauty lead us in those ways? Beauty abounds—if we can see it. Not only in art, but in sports and…
by Sherman J. Clark Dante begins The Divine Comedy in a dark wood, lost. He cannot see the way forward. His journey out of confusion and despair depends on a guide—not just Virgil, who leads him through Hell and Purgatory, but ultimately Beatrice, whose beauty awakens in him a love that points beyond itself. Beatrice…
by Sherman J. Clark In a recent essay, Don’t Be Cruel, I argued that looking away from cruelty—mass incarceration was my example—comes at a cost. The blindness and mental blurriness we cultivate to avoid discomfort also stunts us. Avoidance may feel like self-protection, but it leaves us less able to flourish. It is hard to…
by Sherman J. Clark There are many reasons, moral and prudential, not to be cruel. I would like to add another. Cruelty is bad for us—not just bad for those to whom we are cruel but also bad for those of us in whose name and for whose seeming benefit cruelty is committed. Consider our…
by Sherman J. Clark The best thing that we’re put here for’s to see. — Robert Frost, The Star Splitter I’ve always loved that line. My great-great-grandmother Emmaline might have loved it too. Born enslaved, she started anew after the Civil War, in what had become West Virginia. There she had a daughter she named Belle.…
by Sherman J. Clark At a recent conference in Las Vegas, Geoffrey Hinton—sometimes called the “Godfather of AI”—offered a stark choice. If artificial intelligence surpasses us, he said, it must have something like a maternal instinct toward humanity. Otherwise, “If it’s not going to parent me, it’s going to replace me.” The image is vivid:…