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who’s to bear the blame?
I don’t suppose that the suspects arrested for a murder in the Bronx know about the epistemological quandaries raised by their game of “hot potato”. They did seem to know that Carvett Gentles should be the one who shoots the target, for the simple reason that he didn’t yet have a criminal record. (One imagines [...]
Also posted in politics Tagged bronx, crime, debate, epistemology, gentles, ny times, philosophy, vasquez Leave a comment
Nietzsche’s critique and Exodus
I’ve been browsing a copy of the Bible (King James Ed.) my parents gave me for Christmas last year. Besides wondering exactly why my parents saw fit to give me a bible this of all years, it has been interesting to read with a mind towards F. Nietzsche’s critique of Christian morals. I had to [...]
Posted in philosophy Tagged bible, exodus, god, israelites, moses, Nietzsche, psychoanalysis, ressentiment 1 Comment
a half-baked marxism for our half-baked times
I keep putting this one off. N+1 Magazine ran Mark Greif’s “On Repressive Sentimentalism” in their latest issue. Not sure why I purchased a subscription in the first, but the tome-like issue arrived on my doorstep about a week or so ago and I’ve finally made my way through the piece. As if by coincidence, [...]
Also posted in politics Tagged abortion, angst, gay marriage, greif, irritable bowel syndrome, marriage, marxism, N+1, new york Leave a comment
the birth of reactionary liberalism
This week saw the death of Irving Kristol, varyingly referred to as the architect, founder, promulgator of neoconservatism, a movement itself blamed for many things, often contradictory: the resuscitation of intellectual conservatism, the death of McCarthy-style “olive-branch liberalism”, the creation of a new, unabashedly imperialist brand of American liberalism.
As Kristol’s contemporary Theodore Draper writes,
What is [...]
Posted in philosophy Tagged 9/11, America, george w bush, iraq war, irving kristol, liberalism, neoconservatism Leave a comment
anglophiliac
Mick Hume has this to say about the Lockerbie release:
In the past two decades, however, US power has seriously waned and Britain’s has all but disappeared. The loss of American influence in the Middle East has been brought to a head by the Iraq debacle and the rise of Iran. The UK is now a [...]
Also posted in politics Tagged britain, China, libya, lockerbie, peace, special relationships, war Leave a comment
Zizek’s Critique of Schelling’s Critique of Hegel’s Critique…
I’ve been captivated recently by the philosophy of Slavoj Zizek. I think this is because he’s less rigorous than the old Germans and doesn’t seem to have the existential hangups of other European philosophers I’ve spent time reading (I’m thinking of you, Sartre and Heidegger). I can’t profess to having read anything more than a [...]
Posted in philosophy Tagged China, existence, Hegel, indivisible remainder, Lacan, Marx, philosophy, Schelling, USA, zizek Leave a comment
bastille day
Many people think that freedom and liberty are the bedrocks of our national ideology. Bastille Day and Independence Day give us time to remember the sacrifices of those before us made to secure the political autonomy we enjoy every day.
I’d like to call this the positive conception of freedom. Freedom, in this understanding, is something [...]
in desire, sin?
The interminably moralistic Roger Scruton advises the young and crazy to pursue a flight into temperance:
In just such a way we should define sexual temperance, not as the avoidance of desire, but as the habit of feeling the right desire towards the right object and on the right occasion. That is what true chastity consists [...]
solipsism in philosophy
Crooked timber has an interesting little piece on the haughtiness of philosophers. From the article:
Philosophy seems to be an outlier within the humanities, just as Linguistics is; we have less in common with the other humanities in terms of the concepts and methods that we deploy, and even the subject matter, than they have with [...]
Also posted in criticism Tagged dialectic, english, history, interpretation, method, philosophy, sciences Leave a comment
speculative realism