[This excerpt is from Chapter 5 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault] Marxism and waiting for Godot First formulated in the mid-nineteenth century, classical Marxist socialism made two related pairs of claims, one pair economic and one pair moral. Economically, it argued that capitalism was driven by a logic of competitive […]
Marx’s three failed predictions [EP] Read More »
I’m re-reading Peter Watson’s The German Genius: Europe’s Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century (Harper Perennial, 2011). It’s a powerful history of the intellectually most powerful nation in Europe in the last three centuries. Watson introduces his theme and its scope this way: Between the publication of Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s groundbreaking
Peter Watson on *The German Genius*, 1754-1933 Read More »
From Abraham Maslow’s Maslow on Management (Ann R. Kaplan, 1998): “The key question isn’t What fosters creativity? But is it Why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not Why do people create but Why do people not create
Maslow on natural creativity — quotation Read More »
The tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius I (died 367 BCE), liked having intellectuals and creative types in his court. Plato the philosopher, Philistus the historian, and Philoxenus the poet were in his circle at various times. Yet the tyrant was capricious—especially when he thought his own literary accomplishments were under-appreciated. Philoxenus once voiced a negative opinion
Tyrants and Poets Who Have Integrity — anecdote Read More »
A favorite from Jacob Burckhardt’s great The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860): In the Middle Ages, “Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation — only through some general category. In Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective treatment and consideration of
Burckhardt quotation on the birth of individualism in the Italian Renaissance Read More »
I think of him as the anti-Homer poet. While Homer’s subjects are gods and heroes, Archilochus writes of drunkenness, running away to live and perhaps fight another day, the common man with his feet planted firmly on the ground — and, occasionally of sweet love. Not much is known about him other than that he
From the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno’s 1913 The Tragic Sense of Life, on how Kant first destroys rational belief in the existence of God but then resurrects that belief on moral grounds. Or: how Kant’s head says No to God but his heart says Yes. Or: how mortal man cannot find God but the
Unamuno on Kant on God in the first two Critiques Read More »
Medieval medical know-how: “John of Gaddesden (1280-1349), physician to Edward II and compiler of the encyclopaedic Rosa anglica medicinae [The English Rose of Medicine], recommended reciting the gospel over an epileptic patient while bedecking him with peony and chrysanthemum amulets or the hair of a white dog” (From Roy Porter’s excellent The Greatest Benefit to
Curing epilepsy — peonies, the gospel, and hair of the dog Read More »