Tag Archives: The New York Review of Books
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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Are We Seeing a Culture Shift?
Are We Seeing a Culture Shift? Dates vary, when people try to characterize a phase of culture, but for (let us say) the past 50 years, opinion-shapers in our culture have functioned under the aegis of the following influences: post-structuralism, … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, alienation, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, book reviews, books, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, Hegel, hegemony, heroes, hierarchy, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, immorality, institutional power, Jews, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, memoir, memory, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, nineteenth-century, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, philosophy, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, roles, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, 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, twentieth century, twenty-first century, victimhood, victims, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged Adam Kirsch, aesthetic intentions, Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, anything goes, artist's intentions, blacklisting, Cathleen Schine, conscious intentions, contradictory doctrines, creative intention, cultural framework, culture shift, Cynthia Ozick's Antiquities, debate at Davos, deconstruction, denouncing the denouncers, dominant group, Ernst Cassirer’s The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, falsifiable claims, group agendas, group domination, hegemony, idealist v materialist, impartial justice, intentions as irrelevant, intentions no excuse, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, John Gray, Jonathan Rée's Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English, Marxism, objective reality, objective truth, opinion shaper, paradigm shift, philosophy in culture, philosophy's impact, Plato v Epicurus, post-modernism, post-structuralism, reality check, recognition of truth, relativism, rules of the road, search for truth, self-understanding, Steve G. Lofts, taking life seriously, the beautiful people, The New York Review of Books, universal values, writer's aim
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Wickedness and Suffering
Wickedness and Suffering Does that heading about cover it? Eugene Ionesco, the brilliant Franco-Romanian playwright, wrote Tueur sans gages [Killer without wages], a play that opens with his characters marveling over the great neighborhood to which they feel fortunate to … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, beauty, Biblical God, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, Christianity, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, institutional power, Jews, journalism, Judaism, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, ontology, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, public facade, public intellectual, radicalism, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romantic love, secular, seduction, self-deception, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, terrorism, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged a beautiful neighborhood, alligator attack, anti-Zionism, autobiographical book, C-Span, career pinnacle, coping with grief, delegitimation of Israel, dystopia, earthly paradise, Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels’ Why Religion? A Personal Story, enlightenment ideals, Eugene Ionesco, fear and denial, fleeing for one’s life, fragile heart, Franco-Romanian playwright, genocidal preparations, God’s grief, God’s master plan, God’s suffering, green card, haves and have nots, Helen Zia’s Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao’s Revolution, hiking accident, human fragility, ideal places, immigration benefits, immigration dangers, Ionesco’s Killer without wages, Ionesco’s Tueur sans gages, losing America, love at risk, mad killer, moral equations, moral equations unbalanced, opportunistic progressives, perfecting the world, plight of refugees, political narratives, power of unreason, problem of evil, refugees worldwide, repairing the world, selective reporting, sheep and wolves, successes and losses, suffering and malice, suffering in nature, the beautiful people, The New York Review of Books, the suffering world, the world’s grief, true love, un beau quartier, utopian community, virtue signaling, wickedness in man, world-shattering grief
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Sex and Porn
Sex and Porn O boy! A hot topic! I bet I get a hundred million followers! Some years ago, a friend of mine, a well-known feminist writer, discovered that her psychiatrist husband was being unfaithful to her. Worse, his infidelity … Continue reading
Posted in academe, action, alienation, art, autonomy, chivalry, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, ethics, evil, exploitation, faith, fashion, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, guilt and innocence, health, history, history of ideas, id, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, institutional power, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master, mind control, nineteenth-century, oppression, philosophy, political, political movements, power, psychology, relationships, roles, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, slave, social conventions, sociobiology, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged a life of one's own, Abigail L. Rosenthal's "Getting Past Marx and Freud", addiction, animality, art of being a woman, Arthur Schopenhauer, being with-it, betrayal, book reviews, Charles Darwin, contemporary mores, Darwin’s Origin of the Species, decadence, divorce, enforcing consensus, erotic expectations, Friedrich Nietzsche, German Romanticism, getting hooked, group pressure, historical romance novels, human motivation, human nature, hypnotic therapy, ID, infidelity, inhibitions, Intellectual fashion, libido, Linda Tarazi’s Under the Inquisition: an experience relived, losing inhibitions, medical malpractice, Nancy Jo Sales’ American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, obsession, past life regression, past life therapy, past lives, peer pressure, Peggy Orenstein’s Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape, pleasure, political correctness, pornography, post modernism, primal aims, prudish, psychiatric malpractice, reductionism, repression, reviewers, romance novels, settled science, sex, Sexuality, sociobiology, soft porn, Spanish Inquisition, species aims, the new normal, The New York Review of Books, the unconscious, theory-driven, traditionalism, trauma, trendiness, uptight, will-to-life, will-to-power, woman’s wisdom, Zoe Heller
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“The Suffering of the Situation”
“The Suffering of the Situation” While the record snowfall piled up, higher than my shoulders where it touched the house in some corners, I was not thinking how beautiful it all was. I was not breaking out the marshmallows to … Continue reading →