Our new president has literary and athletic skills. Not only can he write and speak eloquently and grammatically (his inauguration speech was meticulously crafted); he is also a fluent mover on the basketball court, with good coordination and ball sense. His predecessor was notoriously clumsy around language; he spoke as if language were a disease […]
Most Americans have no trouble believing that God exists, but they are uncertain about whether an American ruling class exists. They seem to think the idea of a ruling class is restricted to European aristocracies of yore and assorted eastern potentates of today. InThe American Ruling Class Lewis Lapham takes a wry trip across America, ostensibly […]
I’ve just finished reading Rose George’s The Big Necessity, about toilets and human waste (euphemism alert!)–as part of my interest in the emotion of disgust. I’d strongly recommend Aurel Kolnai’s monograph “On Disgust” as a philosophical treatment of the subject; it contains some excellent phenomenological work with some important conceptual distinctions (far better than most of what passes […]
Why is death bad? Not for the same reason life is–that it contains bad experiences; it contains no experiences. The badness of death consists in the removal of all intentionality, not its suffusion by bad intentional objects. This has the implication that a consciousness without intentionality, as may be supposed for the early fetus, has […]
I went to see Bill Maher’s documentary last night, on a balmy Miami night. Afterwards the rains came down in Biblical proportions, thus announcing God’s displeasure at the film and my attendance (I thwarted His wrath under a convenient restaurant umbrella). It’s an enjoyable and instructive film, especially if you enjoy groaning at people’s amazing […]
I’m thinking seriously about play and games in preparation for my forthcoming seminar on sports and philosophy (which will include actual physical activity). I’ve just read three books related to this. First is Mark Rowlands’ new book The Philosopher and the Wolf, a stunningly good narrative about the author’s relationship with his “pet” wolf. Among many […]
