The teachings of Phistophicles, lesser known ancient Greek philosopher, are now available for all to learn from…

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Like many who have studied philosophy, Socrates has long had an established place in my intellectual pantheon. How could the man who essentially created Western philosophy occupy any lesser place?
After reading I. F. Stone’s The Trial of Socrates I am left shaken. How could I have read so many works and listened to so many [...]

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Let the commoners tell you, while I shall eat cake…

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My interest in literary theory has so greatly waned that I could do no more than skim Terry Eagleton’s article on Mikhail Bakhtin. But it did remind me that I was, at one point, captivated by his work, particularly his thoughts on polyphony and “the carnival.”
But what I remember now is the reminiscence by a [...]

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Among contemporary philosophers, I know of none who equalled Rorty in confronting his colleagues - and not only them - over the decades with new perspectives, new insights and new formulations. This awe-inspiring creativity owes much to the Romantic spirit of the poet who no longer concealed himself behind the academic philosopher.
Habermas responds to the [...]

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Jean Baudrillard, long a philosophical hero of mine, has died. Baudrillard is often lumped in with other postmodern French philosophers (Lyotard, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, etc) as retrospectively incomprehensible and oh-so-passe, revered only by a few graduate students and their mentoring faculty. I think that’s generally unfair and short-sighted, but particularly so with Baudrillard, because some [...]

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As Sartre constantly reminds us, we are what we do.
In short, existentialism is not a philosophy that allows us to feel sorry for ourselves in the midst of our malaise. It is a philosophy with which we can come to grips with these terrible times and actually change them. The recent midterm election was encouraging. [...]

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If only a few more blog entries could approach Anscombe’s potent blend of incisiveness and brevity…

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My discovery today (I’d be upset it took me so long except that just means I have a huge archive of wonderful stuff to read through): 37days. You can read about the blog if you want, but “write like hell” pretty much sums it up…

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We work in the company of others (philosophers and farmers, artists and scientists, as we variously require), and we work in the dark. The historian Daniel Boorstin has remarked that ignoring the past in making decisions is like trying to plant cut flowers. Likewise, to ignore the future, when “we’ll all be dead,” is to [...]

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I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art. This seems like a poisonous lesson for a would-be artist to grow up with. And one consequence is that if the artist is excessively dependent on simply being “liked,” [...]

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Breakfast with Brontosaurus
I have only three criteria for whether a work should be read and reread and taught to others, and they are: aesthetic splendour, cognitive power, and wisdom

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Remember when Alan Sokal published a gibberish paper in Social Text and people around the world proclaimed the death of postmodern literary theory and the exposure of the post-structuralist Emperor’s lack of clothes?
Now that MIT students have done the same thing in a scientific journal, I expect all those pathetic naysayers to join hands and [...]

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“If I told you that you had a nice text/body, would you hold it/it against me?”

via Graham Foust’s interview in Here Comes Everybody

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The idea of “difficulty” implies to me that one is faced with a problem or situation or task for which there is a solution involving more than the purely personal. Otherwise “difficult” is the wrong word and should be replaced with “impossible” right?
So, I have to develop a generosity of spirit when confronted by a [...]

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“Any philosophy that can be summed up in a nutshell belongs in one.”
“Relative Thinking” pretty well reflects my feelings about the death of Derrida and the bogus– but expedient– mischaracterization of the mythical “relativists” used by just about anyone who wants to lob easy criticisms at schools of philosophy and approaches to literature (and life) [...]

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