The Eternal City Chapter 39 of Catch-22, “The Eternal City”, is the heart of the novel, though it stands out like an amputated thumb. It is stylistically quite unlike the rest of this five-hundred-page work. There is no humor in it. It is bleak to the point of pugilism: it pulverizes the reader. Yossarian is […]
Catch America The reaction to Catch-22 constitutes an interesting sequel to the book itself. Ostensibly about World War II, it took off during the Vietnam war. It inaugurates the Sixties in America. Among the more perceptive critics, we find Robert Brustein writing in the New Republic (a magazine for which I used to write). He […]
Philosophy Naturalized Quine’s famous paper “Epistemology Naturalized” advocates handing epistemology over to the psychologists. No more traditional a priori epistemology; let’s have empirical science instead. Cognitive science replaces conceptual analysis—that sort of thing. This will put an end to endless irresoluble philosophical disputes and set epistemology on the path to academic respectability (you know the […]
Catch 22 I have been reading Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, published in 1961, a book I have long wanted to read. It is better than I expected, less time worn, more trenchant (and funny). As it happens, I once met Heller at a party in New York, sometime in the 1990s. He was a likeable […]
America and Americans What do you get if you remove America (the idea) from America (the place]? What if you remove American values, enshrined in the Constitution, from American society? Equality, free speech, free belief, the rule of law—what if you take all that away? The obvious answer is Americans—those individual people. But what makes […]
A Scary Thought A scary thought crept into my head yesterday: What if MS-13 had supported Trump all along? What if they had praised and flattered him, called him their leader, wore MAGA hats? What if they had joined forces with the rioters on January 6th? What would be his attitude now? I really don’t […]
Anger and Morality Anger is inseparable from morality: we are naturally angry at what is unjust, unfair, blameworthy, evil. Jesus was angry at the money lenders and pharisees. There is no point in denying it. Emotivism used to say that moral judgement is all about boo and hurrah, but it should have said that moral […]
1000 Essays I was just re-reading Simon Blackburn’s intelligent and sympathetic review of my book Philosophical Provocations: 55 Short Essays (2017) in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2018). He praises the book highly, recommending it as a good text for a graduate class. The book contains essays written in the style of the essays published on […]
Counterfactual Music I was discussing my musical history the other day and I reported that in my childhood I didn’t like any of the music I heard on the radio and watched on TV. In fact, I positively disliked it. This was the era of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Pat Boone, Vera Lynne, […]
Meetings Larry David’s “My Dinner with Adolf” brings up an important point. Bill Maher met Donald Trump for dinner at the White House: was he wrong to do so? The meeting was justified by invoking the principle that it is a good idea to meet with people with whom you disagree. Surely, we should be […]