In the Crito, Socrates is in prison awaiting execution for impiety and corrupting the youth. His impiety was judged to be a matter of questioning and possibly disbelieving the traditional gods, and his corrupting the youth was a matter of his teaching them to do the same. (See Apology.) Crito arrives at the prison, having […]
Socrates’ two bad arguments for not escaping Read More »
I’m again doing some work on the philosophy of money, now that we’re into the Bitcoin and crypto era, so reprising this piece. At the Library of Law and Liberty’s site — my reaction to Leonidas Zelmanovitz’s ambitious work in the philosophy of money: Review of The Ontology and Function of Money: The Philosophical Fundamentals of
My review of Zelmanovitz on money’s truth and money’s health Read More »
“Tell something to children, tell them the whole thing right to the end, and they’ll still ask: Then what? What comes next?”
“Children are the only bold philosophers. And bold philosophers will always be children.”
Zamyatin: Children as bold philosophers Read More »
[This is Appendix 3 of Nietzsche and the Nazis. Sources for the quotations are at the end of this post.] Appendix 3: Quotations on German anti-Semitism Martin Luther (1483-1546): “The Jews deserve to hang on gallows, seven times higher than ordinary thieves.” And: “We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them.”[189] Immanuel
Appendix 3: Quotations on German anti-Semitism [Nietzsche and the Nazis] Read More »
I’m all confused. The hot-headed Nietzsche’s startling line from his 1887 Genealogy of Morals has always stuck with me: “the truly great haters in world history have always been priests.” That’s from the First Essay, Section 7, in the context of his analysis of slave morality born of ressentiment. But now I read that, according
A flotilla of ships is approaching your shore. Does it matter to you whether they are carrying smartphones and shoes — or rockets and soldiers? In his Economic Sophisms, Frédéric Bastiat makes this exasperated point: “A French ironmaster says: ‘We must protect ourselves from the invasion of English iron!’ An English landlord cries: ‘We must
War metaphors and trade — Bastiat Read More »
Reprising this quotation about things that stay the same: “King Louis XIV, the Sun King, died after seventy-two years on the throne. As he lay dying, the old king counseled his heir, his five-year-old great-grandson: ‘I loved war too much, do not imitate me in this, nor in my excessive spending habits.’ The five-year-old presumably
The Sun King’s dying wish Read More »
Reprising this from Thomas Akehurst’s Philosophy Now essay on why Bertrand Russell blamed German fascism on German philosophy: “What is less well known is that in the 1930s and 1940s Russell’s attention turned to the idea that the origins of Nazism were primarily philosophical.” Russelll, according to Akehurst, mentioned several German philosophers by name, among
Why did Bertrand Russell blame German fascism on German philosophy? Read More »