Talk:Per Bauhn

Per Bauhn

I am Per Bauhn, and I want to correct the Wiki article about me. To my surprise, several pieces of information about me has got the "citation needed" response, including information about my birthdate and birthplace. I can confirm that I was born on 23 July, 1960 in Markaryd, Kronoberg County, Sweden, and that I have been working at Kalmar University College and later at Linnaeus University. I find the questioning of this latter piece of information strange, as the Wiki article also includes a reference to my personal webpage at Linnaeus University. As for my birthdate and birthplace information, it can be verified by the Swedish Tax Authority. (Is it really Wikipedia policy to have birthdate information followed by "citation needed" comments?) In the Wiki article my research interests (ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics) are also thought of as being in need of verification, although the list of published works clearly testifies to their existence. The same goes for the information about what kinds of books I have authored – "Bauhn has authored books on topics as diverse as nationalism, political terrorism, the virtue of courage, the duty to rescue, and the right to beauty" – why should there be a need to verify this, when the books themselves are listed in the article with titles that speak for themselves? And why is a citation needed for the summary of Alan Gewirth's work, when Gewirth himself has a Wiki article? I might be wrong, but I get the impression that my article has been the object of some kind of sabotage, or at least undue scrutiny, in which almost every sentence has been accompanied by the comment "citation needed". Could you please remove all these "citation needed" and hence also the top template "This article has multiple issues"? Nbape (talk) 09:58, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

Not done: Yes, even birthdates should be cited, and we can't change it just because you confirm so; it has to be cited in sources. (what if I say I am Per Bauhn, and my birthday is 4 September?). Regarding "His philosophical work is inspired by the agency-based ethical theory of Alan Gewirth, according to which every agent must claim and recognize human rights to freedom and well-being, these being the generally necessary conditions of successful action."... saying that based on your books is WP:Original research, again, we need relible sources to specifically say that. Let me know if you have questions. GoldRomean (talk) 15:27, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

As for the ethical theory of Alan Gewirth, you have already a Wiki entry on Gewirth which confirms the information that was given in my entry. As for my birth date, July 23, and birthplace, Markaryd, Kronoberg County, these have existed for a long time in Swedish wiki and have never been contested. (I myself would be the first to do so in case wrong dates were given.) In this case you delete it not because you have evidence that is wrong but because you cannot find any other source for it than me. I don't know how to satisfy your criteria of evidence here – if you offer the opportunity, I could upload an official document from the Swedish Tax Authority – but then, maybe you would question this document as well since it is I who am uploading it.

Anyway, now that you have purged my entry of anything that you cannot verify, is there still a point in retaining the template about "This article has multiple issues"? What is missing in the "notability guideline for academics" and what is the "insufficient context" about? Probably there is nothing I can do about it anyway as you find it inappropriate for me to supply documentation about myself.

I must say I find this quest for verification excessively pedantic. I understand the need to prevent falsehoods from entering encyclopedias; however, here you are preventing correct information from entering Wikipedia by insisting that the truth about my birthdate and birthplace etc must not rely on information coming from me but must come from someone else. So if I have a friend write and publish a biographical article about me, then it can be cited as a source, but if I myself provide the same information then it is not to be trusted. The idea seems to be that something cannot be a fact until it is quoted somewhere; the map is more important than the actual landscape. Nbape (talk) 17:25, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

I must say I find this quest for verification excessively pedantic That is something that is better discussed at WT:V, not here.

I don't know why the insufficient context tag was placed: you are best off contacting the editor who placed it directly.

With regard to notability, the general premise is that subjects must be notable (because Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information), and for academics in humanities there are generally three routes:

• Via the general notability guideline, which requires multiple reliable independent sources with significant coverage of the subject.
• Via the special notability guideline for academics. I do not think that any of the criteria are met, though I have not performed an absolutely exhaustive search.
• Via the special notability guideline for authors, which essentially requires multiple books with multiple reviews. My personal reading/benchmark for this is at least two books, with at least two decent reviews (so not Amazon or Goodreads) each. I think this is the one that's most likely to be met. I have found one scholarly review each for two of your books; my searches were a little more exhaustive, but again not complete here. If you can provide links to more reviews, I'd be happy to consider adding them to the article. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 17:40, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

My book Normative Identity was reviewed in Choice Reviews https://www.choicereviews.org/ Unfortunately, it is behind a pay wall; the review is to be found in the issue of December, 2017, and has the number 55-1308.

My book Ethical Aspects of Political Terrorism is mentioned in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry "Terrorism" as "the first philosophical book-length study in English" of terrorism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/terrorism/

My book Nationalism and Morality is briefly discussed by Donald L. Horowitz in a review of philosophical literature on nationalism and secession in "Self-Detmination: Politica, Philosophy, and Law (Nomos, vol. 39, 1997, pp. 421–463). Nbape (talk) 18:23, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. I will try and weave at least the Choice Reviews book review in. I think that the mention in https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/terrorism/ is too brief to be especially useful, and I have not had the opportunity to search for the Nomos article myself yet. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 08:29, 8 September 2025 (UTC)