On Being Cool The concept is ubiquitous without being properly defined.[1] Yet we all know what it is (well, not all of us). John Lennon was cool, Paul McCartney not so much. Steve McQueen was cool, but not Sylvester Stallone. Brando, Newman, Redford, Jagger, Presley—all cool. For me, it starts with the hair and the […]
As you say, Colin, “so many things to choose from, so many traits to cultivate and exploit!” What we want, in identifying our human essence, is something broad enough to take in the multiplicity of the radically different forms of human life—something that covers the “manual workers, artists, scientists, priests, musicians, entrepreneurs,” not to speak of […]
Cancel Culture and Free Speech (I don’t like the phrase “cancel culture” because it suggests that there is something cultural about it, and it is more like annihilation than mere cancellation; but I will go along with it.) When a person is cancelled because of their speech there are two forms of speech that are […]
Human Nature Philosophy According to Aristotelian tradition, every species has a specific nature. Every natural kind has a unique defining form. Chemical substances provide the model: each chemical element has a constitutive atomic structure. Natural kinds have determinate nominal and real essences—attributes that characterize them uniquely. The human kind is no different: it has a […]
In Defense of Offensiveness It is amazing how much people hate free speech. They are totally against it. Why? The answer is obvious: they hate the truth. And why do they hate the truth? Because truth implies criticism—of them. Someone might tell the truth about them and they don’t want that. Why don’t they want […]
The Clustering Problem How and why do properties cluster together into an object? How and why do many accidents join together to form a single substance? How do they constitute a cohesive unitary whole? The properties are separate existences yet they form clusters: what binds them together? What is the unifying glue? Why don’t they […]
Moral Rigidity We think of the morally rigid person as stiff, stern, intolerant, inflexible, old-fashioned, stubborn, and unintelligent. No one wants to be accused of being morally rigid—the Victorian prude, the stern and strict headmaster, the punitive prison warden. It’s just not nice, not cool, not lovable. But isn’t rigidity part of what morality is? […]
Al Franken and Me I was at George Soros’s wedding in 2013, a lavish affair with hundreds of people in attendance, talking to Senator Al Franken. I explained George’s favorite joke to Al: What is the difference between a Hungarian and a Rumanian? They will both sell you their mother, but the Hungarian will deliver. […]
Knowledge of Matter and Mind We don’t naturally know the nature of matter. We can’t know it just by looking. We had to figure it out over a long period of time. It wasn’t easy to discover the atomic theory. But the same is not true of the mind: here we do naturally know whereof […]
Extremism and Violence People (pundits, politicians) have been trying to figure out the origins of political violence. We are told that such violence stems not from the radical left or the radical right but from being too radical. We need more political moderation, less “radicalization”. The dictionary (OED) gives us the following for “radical”: “relating […]