My dad was an unhappy man. He used to complain about the slightest thing being out of place – a pen, the honeypot, his special knife with the fattened grip. By the time his health really started failing, his arthritis so bad he could no longer get out of bed, his condition became all he … Continue reading Don’t Take Life So Seriously: Montaigne’s Life Lessons
Ye shall do this, ye shall do that: Making sense of Passover (from a non-Jewish point of view)
This article originally appeared at The Jerusalem Post. A long green cloud appears in the night sky and hovers next to the moon. It then breaks into witch-like fingers and descends to earth. I’ll never forget that scene, as well as the eerie music accompanying it. It comes from the classic 1956 film The Ten … Continue reading Ye shall do this, ye shall do that: Making sense of Passover (from a non-Jewish point of view)
Your Only Failure Is Your Utter Lack of Culture: Eight Life Lessons from Anton Chekhov’s Letter to His Brother
You have only one failing, and the falseness of your position, and your unhappiness and your catarrh of the bowels are all due to it. That is your utter lack of culture.
Hey Parents: Let Your Children Be Radical Novelties!
In “Becoming Parents to Ourselves” Eldar Sarajlic, an assistant professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, offers some words of wisdom on parenthood. Although he gets stuck in the weeds at some point and assumes that our personal identities are built on rational reflections (when they are also built on chance or … Continue reading Hey Parents: Let Your Children Be Radical Novelties!
The Radical Queen is Dead, Long Live the Traditional Elites: Zizek’s Takedown of Game of Thrones (Season 8)
The stakes in the final conflict are thus: should the revolt against tyranny be just a fight for the return of the old kinder version of the same hierarchical order, or should it develop into the search for a new order that is needed?
Oddballs of English Philosophy: Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English by Jonathan Rée
Despite the disarming glee of this intellectual romp, [Jonathan] Rée doesn’t quite banish the thought that, for the English, philosophy is what history was to Henry Ford, bunk — a notion clinched by T.S. Eliot’s portrait of Bertrand Russell as Mr Apollinax, wittering incomprehensibly and laughing like an irresponsible foetus at his own wit.
What’s Wrong with Being a Generalist?
I’ve always thought that life is too short, the world too big, and the wonders of existence too many, to specialize in anything. But today’s ruling ethos says that specialization is the key to advancing career-wise or to becoming a celebrated pianist. Is this really true?
The Philosophy of The Filthy, Excessive and Unclean
Philosophers don’t often discuss filth and all its disgusting variations, but investigating the unclean turns out to be as useful an exercise as examining the highest ideals of justice, morality and metaphysics.
Feral Philosophy 