In Man In The Modern Age (Routledge, New York, 1959), Karl Jaspers writes: The term ‘masses’ is ambiguous….If we use the word ‘masses’ as a synonym for the ‘public,’ this denotes a group of persons mentally interlinked by their common reception of certain opinions, but a group vague in its limits and its stratification, though atContinue reading “Karl Jaspers On The ‘Phantom’ Public”
Category Archives: Books
GK Chesterton On Conservatism’s Necessary Changes
In Orthodoxy (Image Books, 1959) G. K. Chesterton writes: Conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of changes. If you leave a white post alone it will soon beContinue reading “GK Chesterton On Conservatism’s Necessary Changes”
An Unsettling Vision Of An Ugly Word
I’ve been reading Garry Wills‘ Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1994; a light and entertaining read this election season) over the past couple of days–on the subway, naturally. On Monday night, as I rode back to Brooklyn from Manhattan to pick up my daughter on daycare, I came toContinue reading “An Unsettling Vision Of An Ugly Word”
Gramsci And Nietzsche As Philosophers Of Culture
In ‘Socialism and Culture’ (reprinted in The Gramsci Reader, Selected Writings 1916-1935, David Forgacs ed., New York University Press, 2000) Antonio Gramsci writes: We need to free ourselves from the habit of seeing culture as encyclopaedic knowledge, and men as mere receptacles to be stuffed full of empirical data and a mass of unconnected raw facts,Continue reading “Gramsci And Nietzsche As Philosophers Of Culture”
Artificial Intelligence And Go: (Alpha)Go Ahead, Move The Goalposts
In the summer of 1999, I attended my first ever professional academic philosophy conference–in Vienna. At the conference, one titled ‘New Trends in Cognitive Science’, I gave a talk titled (rather pompously) ‘No Cognition without Representation: The Dynamical Theory of Cognition and The Emulation Theory of Mental Representation.’ I did the things you do atContinue reading “Artificial Intelligence And Go: (Alpha)Go Ahead, Move The Goalposts”
The Civil War, The Emancipation Proclamation, And The Slow ‘Disintegration’
In his revisionist history of the Reconstruction A Short History of Reconstruction (Harper and Row, New York, 1990, pp.2) Eric Foner writes: [T]the [Emancipation] Proclamation only confirmed what was happening on farms and plantations throughout the South. War, it has been said, is the midwife of revolution, and well before 1863 the disintegration of slavery hadContinue reading “The Civil War, The Emancipation Proclamation, And The Slow ‘Disintegration’”
Apple’s ‘Code Is Speech’ Argument, The DeCSS Case, And Free Software
In its ongoing battle with federal law enforcement agencies over its refusal to unlock the iPhone, Apple has mounted a ‘Code is Speech’ defense arguing that “the First Amendment prohibits the government from compelling Apple to make code.” This has provoked some critical commentary, including an article by Neil Richards, which argues that Apple’s argumentContinue reading “Apple’s ‘Code Is Speech’ Argument, The DeCSS Case, And Free Software”
‘Nausea’ And Psychedelia: Was Antoine Roquentin Tripping?
My re-reading of Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre‘s existentialist classic, for this semester’s independent study on existentialism has now prompted me to blog on it two days in a row. Today, I find myself returning to a question which I had first considered a couple of decades ago during my first reading of Nausea: Was Antoine RoquentinContinue reading “‘Nausea’ And Psychedelia: Was Antoine Roquentin Tripping?”
Jean-Paul Sartre On ‘An Odd Moment In The Afternoon’
In Jean-Paul Sartre‘s Nausea, Antoine Roquentin offers us a characteristically morose reflection about a very particular hour of the day: Three o’clock. Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. An odd moment in the afternoon. Today it is intolerable. [New Directions edition, 2007; pp. 14] Monsieur Roquentin isContinue reading “Jean-Paul Sartre On ‘An Odd Moment In The Afternoon’”
From Austerlitz To Auschwitz
I’ve only recently read Elie Wiesel‘s Night (last week, in fact), and as is my habit, I skipped the preface (by Robert McAfee Brown) and the foreword (by François Mauriac) and went straight to the text. Once I was done, I returned to these preliminary sections. In the foreword, I read Mauriac describe his encounter with a youngContinue reading “From Austerlitz To Auschwitz”
Samir Chopra 