The main character is a young architect. A creative designer — he is visionary and innovative the use of materials. Before he can finish his formal training, a conflict with a teacher leads to his expulsion. So he has an extra challenge to breaking into his profession. Another major character is a highly intelligent and
A book recommendation Read More »
My colleagues in the Department of Philosophy, Shawn Klein and Matthew Flamm, will be leading a reading group on Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Adam Smith is best known as an economist and a critic of mercantilism and as an early advocate of market economies. Less well known is Smith the moral philosopher.
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A warning to start: This video is repulsive, but I can’t stop thinking about it. The scene is Christmas morning, and we see a youth opening a present. He first thinks he’s gotten an Xbox — but then he realizes that his present is clothes packaged in an Xbox container. We see the kid’s emotions
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I will be giving a talk next week to a graduate philosophy class at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. The theme of my talk is: What Philosophers Need to Know about Economics. Over the past generation BGSU has developed one of the country’s strongest programs in applied ethics and political philosophy, so it will
Heard on a call-in talk show about this year’s most popular songs. A young woman phoned in to give her opinion about the rankings and along the way made this comment: “A lot of radio stations have ‘The Drive at 5’ shows, when they play a lot of cool songs without commercials. I think it’s
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[This excerpt is from Chapter 4 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault] Fichte on education as socialization Johann Fichte was a disciple of Kant. Born in 1762, he studied theology and philosophy at Jena, Wittenberg, and Leipzig. In 1788 he read Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, and that reading changed Fichte’s
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[This is Section 16 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.] 16. Eugenics Nazi education and censorship attempted to control people’s minds. The Nazis also controlled the bodies of their citizens as much as possible. Milder controls involved new public-health measures such as an aggressive campaign against smoking: the Nazis banned smoking in certain public places, ran
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[This is Section 17 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.] 17. Economic controls Through education and censorship, the Nazis attempted to socialize the German mind. Through public health measures and eugenics, they attempted to socialize the German body. A natural extension of both policies was to socialize German economic production. As would be expected by the
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