December 20, 2016/February 6, 2017 What started as a discussion about the (doomed?) state of continental philosophy turned last week to the reasons that analytic philosophers claimed the ‘continental flag’ for themselves. Now, the discussion concludes by moving into the relationship between analytic philosophy and the sciences, and what this means for everyone. Babette Babich: … [continue reading]

December 13, 2016/January 30, 2017 The dialogue began when I asked Babette Babich what characterises the (dying) tradition of continental philosophy, and why so many philosophers feel the need to ‘claim’ the term for their work. Following on from last week, the discussion continues as we explore the appropriation of the continental title by analytic … [continue reading]

December 06, 2016/January 23, 2017 Last week I asked Babette Babich what characterises the (dying) tradition of continental philosophy, and why so many philosophers feel the need to ‘claim’ the term for their work. This week, the discussion continues as we move towards a positive exploration of continental philosophy practices, as opposed to the thriving … [continue reading]

APP editor’s note: This conversation was originally published HERE, and is being re-published in APP with the authors’ permission. Babette Babich’s philosophical writing is exuberant, poetic, and very much in the spirit of Nietzsche. Hardly coincidental that she is director of The Nietzsche Society and editor of the journal New Nietzsche Studies. In these series … [continue reading]

A long, long time ago, in a far-away land, I read Arthur Danto’s Transfiguration of the Commonplace, because I was thinking about philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of art on the one hand and critical social and political theory on the other, and was intrigued by Danto’s thesis that differences in collective intentionality determine the difference … [continue reading]

I. Introduction: The Age of Trump By now, it’s self-evident to everyone that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 US Presidential election to Donald Trump because: (1) Clinton’s campaign arrogantly failed to address the concerns of angry, fear-driven, lower-to-middle income, non-urban, relatively under-educated, nativist white voters, whereas (2) Trump directly played to those concerns and effectively … [continue reading]

I.  Introduction In a recent edgy essay, “Why Hasn’t Professional Philosophy Produced Any Important Ideas in the Last 40 Years?” I argued that although it’s almost certainly the case that philosophers have produced some brilliant ideas, i.e, philosophical ideas that manifest great intellectual creativity, insight, and originality, open up a new way of looking at … [continue reading]

1. Where Academic Philosophy Went Wrong, by Charles Huenemann. CH’s personal blog, 19 August 2014 A potted history: I believe Peter Sloterdijk is right that the Enlightenment has been followed by philosophical cynicism, or an impressive array of natural knowledge unaccompanied by any faith in providence. The U.S., which became the dominant intellectual and cultural … [continue reading]

The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn‘t absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; the idea of great progress is a delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that … [continue reading]