I’m an uncultured bumpkin with little taste for the finer things in life. My list of failures is long and undistinguished. I do not like opera: God knows, I’ve tried; I’ve attended a few performances–thanks to some free tickets sent my way by discerning friends and culture consumers–but no dice, it didn’t catch. I cannotContinue reading “On Being An Educated Philistine”
Tag Archives: philistinism
Peter Thiel Should Attempt the Anatomically Impossible
A few years ago, I made note of Peter Thiel’s showboating program to give young folks a cool hundred grand if they dropped out of college to pursue their dreams. This scheme, cooked up by a Stanford graduate, a venture capitalist and hedge-fund manager, was in transparent alignment with various neoliberal schemes cooked up to denigrateContinue reading “Peter Thiel Should Attempt the Anatomically Impossible”
Melville On ‘The Most Dangerous Sort’: The Outwardly Rational Madman
In Billy Budd, Sailor (Barnes and Noble Classic Edition, New York, p. 40) Herman Melville writes: [T]he thing which in eminent instances signalizes so exceptional a nature is this: though the man’s even temper and discreet bearing would seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the less in his heartContinue reading “Melville On ‘The Most Dangerous Sort’: The Outwardly Rational Madman”
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”
Peter Gay On Bourgeois Insecurities (And Mine)
In Pleasure Wars: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, (WW Norton, New York, 1998) Peter Gay writes: Only the most determined could gather up the leisure and the energy after a hard week’s toil, or for that matter the money, to haunt museums, or follow compositions in the concert hall with a score, let alone travelContinue reading “Peter Gay On Bourgeois Insecurities (And Mine)”
Samir Chopra 