Like many other people, I am troubled by this phrase when I hear it. The usual scenario: A successful person makes a donation to a worthy cause but downplays any praise by saying “I’m only giving back.” The usual gentle rejoinder is to point out that the phrase assumes that the giver has taken something […]
Those of us in the democratic-republican West often find it impossible to understand how the world could go to war so often in the 20th century. We were raised in a culture that had internalized Locke, Jefferson, Mill, and others—for whom the goal of peace and respect for others’ rights to life, liberty, and property
Werner Sombart on heroes versus merchants Read More »
My article on the deep controversies over Kant, “Kant at the Masked Ball,” is now out in the academic journal Reason Papers. Thanks to editor Carrie-Ann Biondi, Ph.D., for her intelligent and efficient production of the issue. Here’s my opening: “1. Which of the Two Kants?We should grapple with the fact that two opposing traditions
“Kant at the Masked Ball” — article published Read More »
Revisiting this deeply personal question: Do I have what it takes to be a philosopher-king? Maybe not, according to Plato’s Republic Book 6 description of the true philosopher’s character. A real philosopher, he says: 1. Will love the pursuit of truth [485b],2. Will be indifferent to the pleasures of the body [485d],3. Will not be
Could I be a philosopher-king? Read More »
Thus spake Friedrich: “Kant’s joke. — Kant wanted to prove, in a way that would dumbfound the whole world, that the whole world was right: that was the secret joke of this soul. He wrote against the scholars in favor of popular prejudice, but for scholars and not for the people.” Nietzsche, *The Gay Science*,
Kant’s joke, according to Nietzsche Read More »
One of the major, major pessimists in history. I quoted him earlier in the context of contemporary anti-humanism and those calling for human extinction. But lest we think of Arthur as always grim and cranky, here’s a delightful zinger. Schopenhauer, assessing Kant’s moral philosophy: “I should liken Kant to a man at a ball, who
Schopenhauer’s sense of humor Read More »
Kleist was widely traveled, energetic, a brilliant writer — and a suicide at age 34. Why? In reviewing Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, Ian Brunskill writes: “Kleist in his youth had espoused with enthusiasm all the optimism of the Enlightenment. Reason would conquer all; happiness would come with experience and understanding. In March 1801,
Kleist: How Kant ruined my life Read More »
Refreshing these two strikingly similar passages from Georg Hegel and Søren Kierkegaard, philosophers I generally think of as stylistically opposed. At issue are two key questions:1. What is the origin of the universe?2. What is the self? Hegel on the beginning of the universe: “So far, there is nothing: something is to become. The beginning
Philosophical style: Hegel and Kierkegaard Read More »