Reprising this series of … errr … insights from my students, collected from exams and essays over the years. I offer you: A Student History of Philosophy (Being a compilation of student research, gently edited by Stephen R.C. Hicks, Rockford University) Is philosophy a waist of time? Ethical debates have been around for a long […]
Still learning from my students about the history of philosophy Read More »
Lecture Six: Do claims to knowledge and morality merely mask power? Foucault argues that sex rhetoric has “a tactical role to play in a transformation into discourse, a technology of power.” And Derrida asserts that “the revolution against reason can be made only within it.” Themes: Power as substrate. Structuralism and Post-structuralism. Dekonstruction. Postmodernism. Alexis
Via Edward Fox, a quotation from Paul Berman’s (recommended) Terror and Liberalism: “In the years around 1950, writers from several parts of the world set out to produce a new literature of political analysis, different from any political literature of the past, with the goal of describing and analyzing the totalitarian political passions of the
Berman: From what ghastly depths come fascism and communism? Read More »
On Thursday, November 17, I’ll be at Campbell University in North Carolina to give a talk at the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business on being the entrepreneur of one’s life. Here’s the talk description: You Are the Entrepreneur of Your Life: Business, Ethics, Politics: How do you educate yourself for jobs that don’t exist yet? Education is
Talk on entrepreneurism at Campbell University, North Carolina Read More »
From this WSJ review of Abigail Carroll’s Three Squares, a book about American eating habits across the centuries, here are two eyebrow-raising excerpts. 1. In 1744, a traveler was invited to eat a meal with a ferryman and his family. The traveler describes it this way in his journal: “They had no cloth upon the
Are you rich enough to own a chair? Colonial American eating habits Read More »
On Wednesday at 5 pm Eastern, Dr. David Kelley and I will discuss the Philadelphia Declaration of the a new 2024 venture, which seeks to mind the common cultural ground among key religious and secular groups. Its four-point mission and value statement is here: The Philadelphia Declaration For Freedom and Responsibility July 13, 2024 Preamble
*What is the Philadelphia Declaration?* — with David Kelley and Stephen Hicks Read More »
Reviving this contest for readers: What is the longest sentence ever written by a philosopher? I mean the kind of sentence that, as you are reading it through — trying to hold the context and decipher the meaning — flows majestically onwards, or meanders along deceptively, with occasional side streams (and parenthetical remarks), until your cerebrum
Current champion in Philosophy’s Longest Sentences contest — Kierkegaard Read More »
Reprising this amusing anecdote from Tchaikovsky, by Anthony Holden. Tchaikovsky was traveling from St. Petersburg to Tiflis “via the scenic route, aboard a steamship down the Volga. Concealing his identity from the other passengers, he agreed one evening to accompany an amateur soprano in a romance by Tchaikovsky, only to be told by the singer
Could Tchaikovsky play Tchaikovsky? Read More »