Recently, Daniel Dennett took the opportunity to, as John Protevi put it, “settle some old academic scores.” He did this by making the following observation in an interview with The Guardian: I think what the postmodernists did was truly evil. They are responsible for the intellectual fad that made it respectable to be cynical aboutContinue reading “Brave Analytic Philosophers Use Trump Regime To Settle Old Academic Scores”
Category Archives: Philosophy
A Pleasantly Illegal Side-Effect Of A Humanized Interaction
For almost three years now, during those weekdays that I spend in the CUNY Graduate Center library trying to get some reading and writing done, I have, on occasion, been a participant in the following ‘encounter’ or ‘exchange’: I pour myself a cup of coffee at the dining commons and on arriving at the cashContinue reading “A Pleasantly Illegal Side-Effect Of A Humanized Interaction”
Political Pathology And The Inability To Accept Love
In a post on ‘the underestimation of the capacity to love‘ I wrote of its converse, ‘the inability to accept love’: That inability, that lowered view of oneself, the judgment that one is unworthy of the love, caring and commitment that is sent our way by our lovers, parents, children, and friends, leads many to rejectContinue reading “Political Pathology And The Inability To Accept Love”
Hannah Arendt On The Rehabilitation Of George W. Bush
In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, New York, p. 144-145, [1963], 2006), Hannah Arendt, making note of Heinrich Himmler‘s ‘change of heart’–as German defeat loomed in the Second World War–with regards to the Final Solution, as he considered suspending the mass killings at Auschwitz, writes: It was aboutContinue reading “Hannah Arendt On The Rehabilitation Of George W. Bush”
Writing And Therapy
Writing can be therapeutic. Not just autobiography and memoir, the obvious venues of this particular kind of clinic; letters, novels, short stories, poems, screenplays, can all enable a ‘working through‘ because they call upon a kind of ‘remembering,’ a dynamic ‘free association,’ unprompted and unbidden, that trawls through the various levels and layers of ourContinue reading “Writing And Therapy”
The ‘Pundits’ Are Right: Exploiting War Widows Is Presidential
It’s a hoary tradition; it’s what you do. You fight a war; you send men and women to their deaths (after they’ve sent other men and women and children to their deaths); then, at home, you make plans to fight another war, and you beat the war drums and fill up the war chests byContinue reading “The ‘Pundits’ Are Right: Exploiting War Widows Is Presidential”
A Simple, Memorable Act Of Kindness
In a pair of posts which cast a wistful glance back at my running days, I made note of a graduate school summer in which I brushed up against the edges of genteel poverty: I had no financial aid from graduate school and no regular employment (I worked hourly as a waiter once in aContinue reading “A Simple, Memorable Act Of Kindness”
The Inseparability Of The Form And Content Of Arguments
Is it more important for philosophers to argue well than it is to write well? Posed this way, the question sets up a false dichotomy for you cannot argue well without writing well. Logic is not identical with rhetoric, but the logical form of an argument cannot be neatly drawn apart from its rhetorical component.Continue reading “The Inseparability Of The Form And Content Of Arguments”
Work Ain’t Working For Us (And Hasn’t Been)
‘Work’ is a four-letter word, variously used to describe an activity for which a bewildering array of pejorative adjectives have been deployed over the years. Slogans abound, on bumper sticker and office cubicle alike: we’re working for the weekend; thank God it’s Friday; a bad day fishing is better than a good day working; andContinue reading “Work Ain’t Working For Us (And Hasn’t Been)”
Goethe On The ‘Inexhaustible’ Poet
In Marx’s Concept of Man, Erich Fromm credits Goethe as having “developed the idea of man’s productivity into a central point of his philosophical thinking….all decaying cultures are characterized by the tendency for pure subjectivity, while all progressive periods try to grasp the world as it is, by one’s own subjectivity, but not as separate fromContinue reading “Goethe On The ‘Inexhaustible’ Poet”
Samir Chopra 