Gotta love it when an irrational tax system that punishes capital, a hyper-regulatory bureaucratic structure that stifles business growth and efficiency, and a body of economic policies that floods the market with unbacked liquidity while diluting real wealth, all combine to cause one of the worst economic fuckups since the Great Depression.  And ( Read more... )

"“Sexual identity is part of the futility of art,” says Bataille; however, according to Porter[1] , it is not so much sexual identity that is part of the futility of art, but rather the absurdity, and eventually the paradigm, of sexual identity. The masculine/feminine distinction intrinsic to Smith’s Mallrats emerges again in Dogma.

Thus, Sartre ( Read more... )

I found an interesting take in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the different views of what philosophy is - the Modern (post-Cartesian) view versus the Medieval (Thomistic) view:

To begin with, a common sense claim:  "No human being and thus no philosopher is pure reason, mind alone, without previous history as he embarks on the task of ( Read more... )

 I've been working my way steadily through Kaufmann's Existentialism from Dostoevsky through Sarte, having finally completed Jaspers, stormed through Heidegger (who I'm now reading some secondary material on, because, well, wtf?!!), and am now kicking back with Sartre towards the end of the book.  It's amazing stuff.  A lot of good ideas, a lot of ( Read more... )

 Causes of Deaths of Philosophers

And the Winners are:

Searle: Chinese food
Augustine: Hippo
Heraclitus: Fell in the same river twice
Thales: Drowned
Zeno: Run over by tortoise

And the runners-up:

Abelard: Nun
Anselm: Than which no deadlier can be conceived
Aristotle: Excessive moderation
Bacon, F: Hit by idol in market place
Berkeley: Divine neglect
Calvin: ( Read more... )

Just because.

Philosophy: Who Needs It

"Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. As against the special sciences, which deal only with particular aspects, philosophy deals with those aspects of the universe which pertain to everything that exists. In the realm of cognition, the special ( Read more... )

Yes, this is Ali G interviewing Noam Chomsky. Respect.

Tonight I will be giving a talk on the Drug War at the New Intellectual Forum.  Should be fun.

The quintessential statement of libertarian individualism from 500 BC:

The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 57

If you want to be a great leader, 
you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts, 
and the world will govern itself.

The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have, 
( Read more... )

In a fit of insomnia last night, I picked up W.H.D. Rouse’s translation of the Great Dialogues of Plato, and read the Meno, which I hadn’t tackled since my junior year of college.  In it, Meno asks Socrates whether virtue can be taught, or whether it comes to us by nature.  Socrates responds, in true Socratic fashion, with a question of his own: ( Read more... )