by Bharath Vallabha Context is a funny thing. In an academic context – of philosophy courses and institutional structures – for a long time, my gut reaction to the great Enlightenment thinkers like Locke, Hume and Kant used to be: “Oh, not just more of this again. Their views, marred by racism, exhibit a false sense of universalism, and we […]
by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ To my fellow professional academics (and especially philosophers): Just stop it, ok? Stop it! What am I talking about? Our current penchant for attacking our colleagues personally and professionally, when they disagree with us on moral and political subjects that we care strongly about; our pursuing such attacks so as to silence these colleagues, rather […]
by Mark English In his autobiography, Bertrand Russell wrote of the “devastating effect” certain criticisms which D.H. Lawrence once made of his social and political views had on him. These events occurred in 1915. “I was inclined to believe that he had some insight denied to me,” Russell wrote, “and when he said that my pacifism was rooted in blood-lust […]
by C.J. Uberroth ___ In teaching high school mathematics for the last seven years, I’ve begun to realize that there are some issues in our field that seem ubiquitous. The first is the death of estimation. Students faced with a simple arithmetic problem will sooner jump to their phone for the answer than think about what answer they should obtain. […]
by Mark English Daniel Kaufman has written on a number of occasions of certain unfortunate trends in contemporary culture, some involving a disconnect between self-perceptions and social reality. In the past he has highlighted the moral vacuousness and hypocrisy associated with ‘the cult of the self’ as well as the distortions and dangers of identity politics. He recently wrote an […]
by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Civilization has…no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. —Mustapha Mond (1) 1. Hedonism is the view that […]
by Mark English I recently wrote a piece in which I looked at the views of some 20th-century thinkers on language, metaphysics, science and philosophy. My main focus was on the logical empiricists and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In his youth, Wittgenstein worked with Bertrand Russell and then subsequently with the Vienna Circle before taking a rather different direction from the late […]
E. John Winner I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn’t have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you’re guilty you’ll get it in the neck and if you’re innocent you can’t possibly […]
by David Ottlinger There was a time, I remember it distinctly, when I felt that having opinions on the Enlightenment put me very much in the minority. As an undergrad, in the late aughts, I read a great deal of Locke, Rousseau, Tocqueville and especially Kant. I and my fellow students in the philosophy department found these figures exciting and […]
by Mark English Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein were diametrically opposed in their respective attitudes to science and religion. They had many other profound disagreements, but they were united in one respect at least. They both rejected the metaphysics of Idealism. Metaphysically speaking, Russell was mainly concerned to counter idealist notions and to defend a science-friendly and empirical view of […]
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