In Robert Hanna’s recent essay, “How to Escape Irrelevance: Performance Philosophy, Public Philosophy, and Borderless Philosophy”–itself building on Carlo Cellucci’s recent essay, “Philosophy at a Crossroads: Escaping From Irrelevance”–Hanna describes and critically analyzes two contra-professional-academic-philosophy movements, namely public philosophy and performance philosophy. Both kinds of philosophy respond to the increasing irrelevance of professional academic philosophy, … [continue reading]
An Open Letter to the University of Chicago Philosophy Department, Re: “Thinking And Being: A Conference With Irad Kimhi.”
All theory, my friend, is grey But green life’s golden tree.(Faust I) If there were a verb meaning ‘to believe falsely,’ it would not have a meaningful first person present indicative. (L. Wittgenstein) I was thinking, which is something a man should not do. (Dean Jagger as Colonel Stovall, in “Twelve O’Clock High,” Twentieth Century … [continue reading]
The New Inquisitors.
Back in 2010, nobody expected the identitarian inquisition. Their chief weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to identity politics. They have come to dominate universities, centrist and leftist political parties, much of the mass media, and the most powerful corporate tech giants. The chief dogma of The Identitarian Church is … [continue reading]
Philosophy Ripped From The Headlines!, Issue #17, 1 (February 2019): Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain, and Our Moral Obligations.
Philosophy Ripped From The Headlines! is delivered online in (occasionally discontinuous) weekly installments, month by month. Its aim is to inspire critical, reflective, synoptic thinking and discussion about contemporary issues–in short, public philosophizing in the broadest possible, everyday sense. Every installment contains (1) excerpts from one or more articles, or one or more complete articles, … [continue reading]
Hazel Barnes’s “Self-Encounter: A Study in Existentialism,” Episode 3: To Leap Or Not To Leap.
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]
Hazel Barnes’s “Self-Encounter: A Study in Existentialism,” Episode 2: The Far Side of Despair.
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]
THINKING FOR A LIVING: A PHILOSOPHER’S NOTEBOOK, May 2018 – January 2019, Omnibus Edition.
The Omnibus Edition contains the first nineteen installments of THINKING FOR A LIVING, revised and collected into a single volume, as a downloadable .pdf for universal free sharing– PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS #19: The incoherence and impossibility of personal immortality. #18: A new argument against capital punishment. #17: Fear, denial, and loathing in the philosophy of mind. … [continue reading]
Philosophy and Profanity.
Profanity (aka cursing, cussing, swearing, etc.) is civil-disobedient, counter-cultural, defiant, disruptive, edgy speech. (Profanity can also occur via other forms of expression, e.g., gestures, voiced music/singing, or pictures, although for simplicity’s sake in this little essay, I’ll focus mostly on speech.) The terminology of profanity in contemporary secular societies usually derives from words standing for … [continue reading]
Philosophy Ripped From The Headlines!, Issue #16, 4 (January 2019): Martin Luther King Jr on Nonviolence and Social Change, and King’s Dangerous Radicalism.
Philosophy Ripped From The Headlines! is delivered online in (occasionally discontinuous) weekly installments, month by month. Its aim is to inspire critical, reflective, synoptic thinking and discussion about contemporary issues–in short, public philosophizing in the broadest possible, everyday sense. Every installment contains (1) excerpts from one or more articles, or one or more complete articles, … [continue reading]
The Incoherence and Impossibility of Personal Immortality.
THINKING FOR A LIVING: A PHILOSOPHER’S NOTEBOOK 19 PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS #18: A new argument against capital punishment. #17: Fear, denial, and loathing in the philosophy of mind. #16: The political aesthetics of outer space. #15: The paradox of distributive social justice, and what is to be done? #14: How a priori knowledge is really possible. … [continue reading]