Reprising these reflections from reading Eric Axelson’s Congo to Cape: Early Portuguese Explorers. Always an interesting question to ask how great ventures begin: Why did they start when and where they did? Why were they initiated by those individuals or groups and not others? The circumnavigation of Africa was a great achievement over many decades.
Why did Portugal become a great exploring nation? Read More »
Anti-Liberals in Canada are now controlling home purchases: Foreigners not allowed. Their hope is that this will force demand and thereby prices down. Dwell on that for a moment. The Canadian government is telling Canadian home owners: We want to make your homes less valuable. Or this: Suppose that 1,000 foreigners want to buy million-dollar
Canada’s gov’t to foreign home buyers: “Keep out!” Read More »
Jeffrey van Davis’s documentary on Martin Heidegger’s life and thought, with interviews of leading scholars of Heidegger. See also the episode on Martin Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?”, in the *Philosophers, Explained* series:
“Only a God Can Save Us” — Heidegger documentary Read More »
When I teach Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, my focus in class is philosophical, but I point out along the way how her fiction-writer’s methods concretize, dramatize, and foreshadow her abstract themes. One of my favorite examples is based on the premise that first meetings matter in life and literature. Here are our first meetings of
80th Anniversary of *The Fountainhead* Read More »
My ongoing series on the great philosophers, each episode devoted to a key text with my commentary.
The Philosophers You Need to Know Read More »
For use in my courses, additions to my Texts in Philosophy page. Aristotle, Books 1-4 of Nicomachean Ethics (c. 335 BCE) Alain Badiou, “The Adventure of French Philosophy” (2004). Immanuel Kant, On Education (1803). Maximilien Robespierre, The Cult of the Supreme Being (1794).
Texts in Philosophy — late 2022 additions Read More »
Title: “Is Dugin Fascist, Neo-Marxist, or What? (And what Is Dugin’s Political Advice to Putin?“) Description: Alexander Dugin claims that Fascism and Communism are dead—and that Liberalism is evil. So a fourth political theory is needed for Russia’s future. What alternative does he propose? And is it really a fourth alternative—or a re-packaging of old
Hicks lecture on Alexander Dugin, Gdansk, Poland, December 16 Read More »
“The fiercest fanatics are often selfish people who were forced, by innate shortcomings or external circumstances, to lose faith in their own selves. They separate the excellent instrument of their selfishness from their ineffectual selves and attach it to the service of some holy cause.” (Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of
On fanatics and ineffectual selves (Eric Hoffer) Read More »