[Reposting this now, just for fun.] Brazil a century ago: “Sarah Bernhardt [the French actress] in 1886 … shocked [Brazilian] society with her daring swimsuit and alarmed the city’s inhabitants by entering the water … . At the time, Brazilians had believed a quick dip in the sea had some medical efficacy, but only around […]
Brazil’s swimming ethos, then and now Read More »
G. W. F. Hegel: “From the Kantian system and its completion I expect a revolution in Germany.” Johann Holderlin: “Kant is the Moses of our nation.” “Within a few years of the publication of his Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was recognized by his contemporaries as one of the seminal thinkers
Some post-Kantians on Kant, pro and con Read More »
Stanley Fish, postmodern provocateur, gave a talk at Indiana University when I was a graduate student there in the late 1980s. He was then working on what would become There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech, And It’s a Good Thing, Too. Fish’s theme was social construction and oppression: We all are products of our
How Randy Newman Solved Stanley Fish’s Credibility Problem Read More »
Immanuel Kant famously said this: “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”[1] And this: “The history of *nature*, therefore, begins with good, for it is God’s work; the history of *freedom* begins with *badness*, for it is *man’s* work.”[2] And he regularly makes other slights against human nature. So
Kant versus human perfectibility — strange interpretations Read More »
For use in my courses, additions to my Texts in Philosophy page. All files are PDFs. William Bennett and Milton Friedman, Open Letters on the War on Drugs, from The Wall Street Journal (1989). Nathaniel Branden, “Self-Esteem in the Information Age” (1997). Max Forrester Eastman (1883-1969), excerpt from Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955).
Texts in Philosophy — very early 2017 additions Read More »
Penguin has published a new translation by R. Kevin Hill and Michael Scarpitti of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Will to Power. In the mid-1880s Nietzsche was extraordinarily productive making and reworking notes for an intended magnum opus. But he did not complete it and turned to publishing the final few short books of his career before
*The Will to Power* — new translation by Hill and Scarpitti Read More »
In a recent post, philosopher-turned-businessman Robert Garmong made this observation: I’m now convinced that 99% of business success comes down to skill at defining and applying concepts. Those who are mere cogs in the machine, generally speaking, are those who don’t really understand the concepts. They may grasp the rules, but not the reasons. They
Who succeeds in business — Garmong on *conceptual* thinking Read More »
