Starting in November 2018, Philosophy Ripped From The Headlines! is being delivered in weekly installments, month by month. Every installment contains (1) excerpts from some articles, or full articles, that recently appeared in online public media, (2) some follow-up thoughts for further reflection or discussion, and (3) a link for supplementary reading. 1. “Larry Krasner’s … [continue reading]
Hazel Barnes’s “Self-Encounter: A Study in Existentialism,” Episode 1: Being and Nothingness.
I. Introduction by Z Hazel Barnes was an American philosopher, the first translator of Sartre’s L’être et le néant, aka Being and Nothingness, into English, and the author of seven original books in Existentialist philosophy, including The Literature of Possibility: A Study in Humanistic Existentialism (1959) and An Existentialist Ethics (1967). In The Literature of … [continue reading]
The Philosophy of Policing, Crime, and Punishment.
“Diogenes Sheltering in His Barrel,” by John William Waterhouse PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS #8: The philosophy of borders, immigration, and refugees. #7: The philosophy of old age. #6: Faces, masks, personal identity, and Teshigahara. #5: Processualism, organicism, and the two waves of the organicist revolution. #4: Realistic idealism: ten theses about mind-dependence. #3: Kant, universities, The Deep(er) … [continue reading]
Democratic Socialism and Social Anarchism: Convergence, Prima Facie Divergence, Reconciliation.
APP Editors’ Note: This is the ninth in a series on the historical and philosophical foundations of anarchism and socialism, with special reference to social anarchism (aka “anarcho-socialism,” “libertarian socialism,” etc.) and democratic socialism. We decided to devote the first five installments of the series to the Democratic Socialists of America, aka the DSA, and … [continue reading]
An Existential Argument for Anarchism.
APP Editors’ Note: This is the eighth in a series on the historical and philosophical foundations of anarchism and socialism, with special reference to social anarchism (aka “anarcho-socialism,” “libertarian socialism,” etc.) and democratic socialism. We decided to devote the first five installments of the series to the Democratic Socialists … [continue reading]
Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm.
APP Editors’ Note: This is the seventh in a series on the historical and philosophical foundations of anarchism and socialism, with special reference to social anarchism (aka “anarcho-socialism,” “libertarian socialism,” etc.) and democratic socialism. We decided to devote the first five installments of the series to the Democratic Socialists of America, aka the DSA, and … [continue reading]
The Blue Pill Without Amnesia–On the Philosophical Foundations of Political Correctness, Part 3.
PART 1 PART 2 6. Coercive Liberalism “We are condemned to be free” may have been a key slogan of Existentialism, but it is equally true of today’s liberalism. But at least, the existentialists viewed the human condition as absurd, since we had to experience the responsibility of freedom without ever being able to shake … [continue reading]
The Creek and The Cloud.
APP Editors’ Note: As we’ve said many times, whereas professional academic philosophy imposes various kinds of self-defeatingly silly, vitiating constraints on the form and content of works of philosophy–in effect, intellectual, moral, and political border-patrolling–APP is committed to the radical contrary thesis that there are no in-principle constraints on the form and content of real … [continue reading]
The Blue Pill Without Amnesia–On the Philosophical Foundations of Political Correctness, Part 2.
PART 1 4. Reversed Teleology I wish to draw attention to a different aspect of the “retrospective twist” I described in part I of this essay. As I indicated, this technique is applied by reading works of, for instance, Kant, with a contemporary mindset. It is easy to frame Kant as a bigot, racist and … [continue reading]
Free Places, Not Safe Spaces.
APP Editors’ Note: Impelled by an Ontario government mandate to produce a freedom of expression policy, the administration at Western University, aka University of Western Ontario, aka UWO, has created an Ad Hoc committee to create such a policy. From October 2 to 5 they will have consultative sessions with members of the campus community. … [continue reading]