At the beginning of a new era, Bacon asks: * What can make science and philosophy productive and generative, not stagnant and sterile as it currently is? * Should we really give tradition much credence? * Learning begins with the senses, but how do we overcome our senses’ and intellects’ native weaknesses? * What is […]
“Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” | Francis Bacon |Philosophers, Explained Read More »
A debate from 2014, I believe, between Andrew Bernstein and Dinesh D’Souza, hosted at the University of Texas. Arguments about religion typically fall into three categories: 1. Philosophical arguments about supernaturalism, faith and reason, the source of morality, and so on.2. Scriptural arguments about passages in the religion’s core texts.3. Historical arguments about the record
Christianity: Good or Bad for Mankind? Bernstein and D’Souza Read More »
Via Classically Liberal, reprising this intriguing connection. In a letter to his former master, Frederick Douglass explains his decision to escape from slavery: “The morality of the act, I dispose as follows: I am myself; you are yourself; we are two distinct persons, equal persons. What you are, I am. You are a man, and
Frederick Douglass and Ayn Rand Read More »
In a letter from 1890, Karl Marx’s colleague takes up the widespread anti-Semitism in their movement. My favorite line: “anti-Semitism betokens a retarded culture.” (Still true 130+ years later.) Further from Engels: “Hence anti-Semitism is merely the reaction of declining medieval social strata against a modern society consisting essentially of capitalists and wage-labourers, so that
Engels chides socialists for their Anti-Semitism Read More »
For Valentine’s Day, reprising my round-up of philosophers talking to their sweethearts – collected from conversations overheard at smoky cafés, college libraries, mountain caves, and seminar rooms the world over. The Aristotelian: “I wish to marry you, for I know that my happiness, both of body and soul, is contingent upon our union in the
Should I marry you? — Philosophers answer the big question Read More »
My favorite headline so far in 2024: Kaliningrad Governor Blames Immanuel Kant for Ukraine War.* The governor of Kant’s hometown no doubt has in mind Kant’s late “Perpetual Peace” essay, which projects a future republican cosmopolitan federation of states committed to universal duties and dignities. Such a future is the opposite of Putin’s nationalistic and
Ukraine war: Blame Immanuel Kant? Read More »
Binary oppositions are rare in philosophy and politics. Frequently, apparent enemy positions share implicit underlying premises. Related: This abstract philosophical taxonomy from Chapter 1 of Explaining Postmodernism:
Our Three-Way Culture War [Chart] Read More »
I’ve been reading Richard Seaford’s Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy. Seaford’s theme: “the monetisation of the Greek polis in the sixth and fifth centuries BC contributed to a radical transformation in thought that is, in a sense, still with us. Academics—perhaps because they are more interested in texts than in money—have
Greek money and philosophy Read More »