Löwy raises the right question about the generation straddling 1900: So much of understanding the past 100 years turns on getting the answer right. That’s my project in Nietzsche and the Nazis and Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.
Löwy on anti-capitalist intelligenstia Read More »
I’m preparing a lecture on philosopher David Hume, who was ruthlessly skeptical about everything—causality, abstraction, induction, objective morality, the self, and the existence of God. And I remembered this amusing anecdote: Related: My Philosophers, Explained series of close readings of major texts.
Hume’s bog and the Lord’s Prayer Read More »
Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago Bulls and Chicago White Sox: “You’ve got to learn to lose. Most of the time in sports you lose. Only one team wins the World Series each year—29 of them don’t.” In Entrepreneurial Living, edited by Stephen R. C. Hicks and Jennifer Harrolle. In this volume of interviews with
Friedrich Nietzsche made this indictment and prediction about the effect of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy: “As soon as Kant would begin to exert a popular influence, we should find it reflected in the form of a gnawing and crumbling skepticism and relativism.” Strong language, and it goes against a popular interpretation of Kant as the savior
Why did Nietzsche say Kant leads to crumbling relativism? Read More »
I saw this license plate in Chicago: And apparently Rand and Hicks really do intersect in Chicago: I infer that the philosophy gods and the car guys are trying to tell me something. Related: My close reading of Rand’s classic essay, “Man’s Rights,” in the Philosophers, Explained series.
Where I should buy my next car? Read More »
The Sexual One Percent We have a fairness problem in the United States: The pleasures of sex are unequally distributed across the population. Data from scholarly publications reveal the following: * Artists self-report having sex 2.3 times as often as non-artists. * Gay males have significantly more sex than heterosexual males. * Regular church-goers, especially
The Sexual One Percent Read More »
Much modernist and postmodernist architecture is ghastly. So there’s a point about making comparisons with older architecture. But not this way: Are the buildings on the left average buildings from 200 years ago? Or are they the best of 200 years ago, such that they were preserved while the 99% of average and terrible buildings
False comparisons of old and new architecture Read More »
The sections on Arendt and her relationship with philosopher Heidegger appear at the 17:46 and 1:11:23 times in Jeffrey Van Davis’s documentary on Martin Heidegger’s life and thought. See also the episode on Martin Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?”, in the *Philosophers, Explained* series:
Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, in the “Only a God Can Save Us” documentary Read More »