Reprising this worth-reading piece on the Maoism of Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault and other fellow-travelers: Alan Schrift’s critical discussion, in Philosophy in Review, of Richard Wolin’s The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s, which is now out in a second edition. Excerpt: “For young leftists—and this […]
Refreshing this from Thomas Sowell’s classic Ethnic America: I am struck by this comparison he makes between the desperate state of the Irish peasantry in Ireland and the black slaves in America: “A French traveler in the early nineteenth century returned from a trip that included America and Ireland and wrote: ‘I have seen the
Irish peasants and black slaves Read More »
From the preface to Andy Grove‘s (recommended) Only the Paranoid Survive: “The sad news is, nobody owes you a career. Your career is literally your business. You own it as a sole proprietor. You have one employee: yourself. You are in competition with millions of similar businesses: millions of other employees all over the world.
Andy Grove on the entrepreneurial employee Read More »
The flowchart is from the end of Chapter 5 of Stephen Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy Publishing, 2004, 2011), summarizing the argument developed in that chapter. Click the image to enlarge. See also Professor Hicks’s discussions of the philosophers’ primary texts, in his Philosophers, Explained series:
The Evolution of Socialist Strategies Read More »
In his open letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), Galileo offered a defense of science against the prevailing heavy hand of religious orthodoxy: “But I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other
Galileo’s modern compromise: Letting science work *with* religion Read More »
Literature should be a source of wonder, insight, delight, and sublime experience. And yet … the profession is sickly, jaded—and for a generation has repelled aspiring writers, teachers, and scholars. A diagnosis from “When Nothing Is Cool,” by Lisa Ruddick (thanks to Michael Strong for the recommendation). Ruddick quotes writing coach Gina Hiatt on clients
What happened to English Literature departments? Read More »
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 »