Earlier today, during the course of a peaceful civil disobedience action–at the Israeli mission to the UN, on Manhattan’s East Side–protesting the humanitarian catastrophe currently underway in the Gaza Strip, twenty-six protesters, including moi, were arrested and taken in custody. The protesters included Norman Finkelstein, my Brooklyn College colleague Corey Robin, and my cellmate for theContinue reading “Protesting For Gaza: A Day in Gaol”
Category Archives: Philosophy
On The Alleged Undesirability of Inconsistency
Inconsistency in our beliefs–and thus actions–is often held to be not just a cognitive failure, a breakdown of rationality, but also a moral failure of sorts. Sometimes the inconsistent are accused of hypocrisy, of disingenuousness. We are urged to forensically examine their utterances and actions, sifting through the traces they leave, all the better to indictContinue reading “On The Alleged Undesirability of Inconsistency”
V. S. Naipaul on Diversion and Inspiration
In “The Author’s Note”, a preface of sorts to The Return of Eva Peron with The Killings in Trinidad (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1980), V. S. Naipaul writes, These pieces…were written between 1972 and 1975. They bridged a creative gap: from the end of 1970 to the end of 1973 no novel offered itself toContinue reading “V. S. Naipaul on Diversion and Inspiration”
Isaac Bashevis Singer on A Rabbi’s Crisis
In Isaac Bashevis Singer‘s “I Place My Reliance on No Man” (collected with other short stories in Short Friday) Rabbi Jonathan Danziger goes to pray in his synagogue one Monday morning. As he prays, he encounters a crisis: When the rabbi came to the words, ‘I place my reliance on no man,’ he stopped. The words stuck inContinue reading “Isaac Bashevis Singer on A Rabbi’s Crisis”
Christopher Hitchens: Pro-War, Anti-Death Penalty
A few days ago, Corey Robin wondered on his Facebook status: Something I never understood about Christopher Hitchens: how such a fervent opponent of the death penalty could be such an avid supporter of war. Supporters of the death penalty, of course, are notoriously fond of war (they also tend to be ‘pro-life’ in theContinue reading “Christopher Hitchens: Pro-War, Anti-Death Penalty”
Freedom in the Absence of Social Convention
In reviewing Arturo Fontaine‘s La Vida Doble, “a harrowing examination of violence during the Pinochet period,” whose heroine is Lorena, “a female terrorist who is tortured, changes sides, and becomes a torturer herself”, David Gallagher writes: But why in fact do good fathers and meek husbands and generous lovers undertake such cruel torture? Here Lorena seesContinue reading “Freedom in the Absence of Social Convention”
Making the Abstract Concrete
A few weeks ago, I posted the following quip as my Facebook status: You don’t really get _Civilization and its Discontents_ till you bring up a child. And then, a week or so later: Apropos of my recent comment that you don’t really get _Civilization and its Discontents_ till you raise a child: I don’tContinue reading “Making the Abstract Concrete”
Dreams of the “Undiscovered Country”
Hamlet suggested that “What dreams may come after / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil / Must give us pause” and that “The dread of something after death / The undiscovered country, from whose bourn / No traveler returns, puzzles the will.” The eternally indecisive Danish prince was right, of course: many, ifContinue reading “Dreams of the “Undiscovered Country””
Evicted From The Twenty-Twenty Club
In 1998, I learned I no longer had twenty-twenty vision. This knowledge did not come to me suddenly. On a couple of occasions at work–on the open-plan office floor of an online brokerage–I noticed I could not clearly read the lettering on the ticker-tape that ran across some of the large monitors that hung from theContinue reading “Evicted From The Twenty-Twenty Club”
No Atheists in Foxholes, My Ass
Here is vignette #7 from Ernest Hemingway‘s In Our Time: While the bombardment was knocking the trench to pieces at Fossalta, he lay very flat and sweated and prayed oh jesus christ get me out of here. Dear jesus please get me out . Christ please please please christ. If you’ll only keep me from gettingContinue reading “No Atheists in Foxholes, My Ass”
Samir Chopra 