Category: Philosophy
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On James Lindsay, Liberalism, and “American Realism”
For the past several months, James Lindsay has been on a crusade against something that he is calling the “woke right.” In general, I think that this discourse has produced way more heat than light, and to be truthful, if you follow me on Twitter, I’ve been pretty guilty of a fair amount of that…
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“I Don’t Really Care, Margaret.”
The Death of the “Politics of Moral Engagement” At the end of his book Justice, after arguing (correctly) that morally neutral government was an impossibility, Harvard philosophy professor Michael Sandel urged liberal America to take up a “politics of moral engagement” and asked if, in a pluralistic society, it was possible to conduct our politics…
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Psychology vs Morality: Unpacking the Jonah Hill Situation
The individualism of modern society and the increasingly rapid and disruptive rate of social change brings about a situation in which for increasing numbers there is no overall shape to the moral life but only a set of apparently arbitrary principles inherited from a variety of sources. In such circumstances the need for public criterion…
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Review of What Is Art? by Leo Tolstoy
“I know that the majority of people who are not only regarded as intelligent but are indeed intelligent, capable of understanding the most difficult scientific, mathematical and philosophical reasonings, are very rarely capable of understanding a most simple and obvious truth, if it is such as requires that they admit that a judgement they have…
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Escaping the Cool Kid Panopticon
The pursuit of meaning isn’t a weekend retreat My undergraduate degree was in philosophy, and early in my coursework, I took a class on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Naturally, we didn’t read the whole thing. It’s massive. But our professor, who was an Aussie and who, every time he said Kant’s name, sounded as if…
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Is Finding a Purpose for Losers?
The Bourgeois Man Makes His Case. Going by the title, you might assume that this book would be some religious self-help text about strengthening one’s faith. You’d be wrong. Published in the aftermath of WWII, The True Believer is instead an attempt to describe the psychology of the individual member of a mass movement, any…
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The Horror of Infinity Pool: Absolute Nihilism
“The line between good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.”~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn This movie is going to get completely spoiled. Infinity Pool tells the story of James and Em Foster, a couple of young socialites, who are thrust into a nightmare…
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The Social Construction of Reality by Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann
The question at hand is how does what passes for “knowledge” and “reality” within a given social situation or context achieve this status? How do groups of people come to share an agreed upon “reality?”
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The Will to Power by Friedrich Nietzsche
Exploring the final work of the West’s most controversial philosopher Dostoevsky once said, “If Christ is not the truth, I prefer to remain outside the truth with Christ.” Though anybody can understand the words, to truly understand the sentiment is a difficult thing. Everyone finds ways to deceive themselves; it is another matter entirely to…
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The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
Meaning, Nihilism, and the Question of Suicide Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus is singularly obsessed with one question: is suicide a valid reaction to realizing that one lives in an absurd world? The Absurd It’s important to understand what Camus means when he refers to an absurd world. He doesn’t simply mean that we live…
The Barking Years 