Tag Archives: benefits of philosophy
Thought Faces the Future
One of the reasons that, back in my professorial days, I thought studying philosophy was beneficial was that a culture’s preferences and beliefs could be tracked to its underlying assumptions. A culture rests on what it thinks is true and … Continue reading
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Tagged A.J. Ayer’s after-death experience, acupuncture’s holistic view, American Philosophical Association, APA’s Proceedings and Addresses, bad money drives out good, benefits of philosophy, brute power vs functional power, cancel-culture, cultural cowardice, cultural mediocrity, culture of intimidation, current cultural theme, current intellectual theme, dismissing Ayer’s after-death experience, explaining away new data, fashions in oppression, feminism’s real-world failings, feminism’s unanticipated side-effects, foundational views in culture, Gramsci’s hegemonic powers, how philosophy can help life, humanities vulnerable to intimidation, intellectual dead end, Jean-Paul Sartre, mapping knowledge, mapping what we do and don’t know, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, mechanism vs holism, mending fractures and the mechanistic view, NY Times Book Review, oppressor vs oppressed, philosophy and cultural diagnostic, philosophy and the zeitgeist, philosophy at the frontier of thought, philosophy immune to intimidation, philosophy unscathed by culture of intimidation, philosophy’s frontier problems, philosophy’s key to effective living, philosophy’s real task, postmodernism and power-relations, postmodernism and the play of interpretations, postmodernism vs objectivity, premonitions and time-bound human experience, reconceiving feminist theory, Sartre and defining one’s self, Sartre and irreducible freedom, Sartre and personal freedom, Sartre as cultural trendsetter, Sartre’s key insight, Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex, the invisible oppressed, The New York Review of Books
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Philosophy and Me
Philosophy and Me Goodness, who cares! you might well think, seeing the title of this column. But isn’t that what concerns each of us, whenever we’ve been required or drawn to read some philosophy? What about me? How does this … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, bigotry, books, Christianity, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, health, Hegel, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, history, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, institutional power, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, nineteenth-century, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, poetry, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, race, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, roles, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, seventeenth century, sex appeal, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theology, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, victimhood, victims, violence, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged 19th-century nihilism, Abigail L. Rosenthal's "A Good Look at Evil", benefits of philosophy, Classical skepticism, competing moral claims, competing truth claims, condemnation syndrome, contemporary philosophers, cultural guilt, current intellectual life, Descartes and the moderns, dominance v subordination, exercises of power, finding common ground, Greco-Roman culture, guilt and regret, hypocrisy, implicit absolutism, intellectual common ground, intercultural disputes, Jesuits of the Sorbonne, Kepler and Galileo, manipulative accusers, manipulative use of guilt, oppressed and oppressor, pagans v Christians, philosophers and guilt, philosophers as midwives of history, philosophic skill, philosophy as its own warrant, philosophy as personal, philosophy making a difference, philosophy the longest conversation, post-modernism and objective truth, post-modernism and objective values, post-modernism and philosophy, significance of philosophy, silence of philosophy, St. Augustine, the task of philosophy, unmasking power plays
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