The Greeks were the first to do philosophy, and one of the perennially great questions is: Why the Greeks and not some others? Various answers focus on their cosmopolitan trading economy, their concurrent development of democratic politics, or some other combination of factors. I have long thought that the Greeks’ naturalistic religion was a positive, […]
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[This excerpt is from Chapter 5 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault] Marcuse and the Frankfurt School: Marx plus Freud, or oppression plus repression Marcuse had long labored in the trenches of academic philosophy and social theory before coming to fame in America in the 1960s. He studied philosophy at Freiburg
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[This excerpt is from Chapter 3 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault] Heidegger’s synthesis of the Continental tradition Martin Heidegger took Hegelian philosophy and gave it a personal, phenomenological twist. Heidegger is notorious for the obscurity of his prose and for his actions and inactions on behalf of the National Socialists
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The education of children is a highly philosophical enterprise — the project is long-term, of great importance, requires a strategic understanding of human life, and puts our actual values to the test. In my Philosophy of Education course, we spend much of our time finding where the rubber meets the road — that is, connecting
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[This is the Bibliography for Nietzsche and the Nazis.] Nietzsche and the Nazis—Bibliography Ahern, Daniel R. 1995. Nietzsche as Cultural Physician. Pennsylvania State University Press. Allison, David B. 2001. Reading the New Nietzsche. Rowman and Littlefield. Anchor, Robert. 1972. Germany Confronts Modernization, German Culture and Society, 1790-1890. D. C. Heath. Barkai, Avraham. 1990. Nazi Economics:
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In raising the question of why philosophy begins with Thales, we first looked at Homer, the great shaper of the Greek mind before the philosophical and scientific revolution: Before philosophy: Homer’s world. In that post, I abstracted five statements from The Iliad: H1. Supernatural causation is part of the explanation for natural events. H2. Supernatural
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“In Athens haircuts and hairstyles had social and political implications. Aristocratic horsemen still wore long braids and gold hairpins. The common man (and the politicians who spoke for him) preferred a short cut, though not quite a crew cut. The customer sat on a low stool, his body draped in a sheet to catch the shorn locks. The barber then cropped and curled the hair, anointed the head with scented oil, and trimmed the beard to a neat point. (At Athens any man with a long unkempt bead ran the risk of being mistaken for a philosopher).”
Facial hair and philosophers Read More »