Clik here to view.
Christopher Hitchens dies: what he believed
The obituaries for Christopher Hitchens are being written and published now just after he died. I don’t know about you, but the obituaries that give the disceased their own voice and that connect...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Peter Tudvad on Kierkegaard’s anti-Semitism
There has reportedly been a hot controversy over the last year in Denmark, thanks to Peter Tudvad’s book examining the anti-Semitism of Kierkegaard. Below is a transcript of an interview that M[arilyn]...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Michael Dummett dead
One of my personal heroes died yesterday, Michael Dummet (Oxford). Not only was Michael particularly important in my own philosophical development, but I greatly admired the way he fought tirelessly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
of the knowledge of evil, and of the sexes
One of the staples of literature is speculation about good and evil. One of the earliest stories describes, as the earliest temptation to evil, the very desire to gain knowledge of good and evil:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Do you know where the milk is?
Yesterday we talked about Michael Dummett. Here is Dummett recounting his first and only meeting with Ludwig Wittgenstein: “Do you know where the milk is?” (audio recording 1 minute 27 seconds) Here...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Whose Relativism? Mine, Yours, Theirs?
“Relativism” was an absolutely bad thing when I was a little kid, growing up in the household of evangelical Bible-believing Christian missionaries, who preferred “absolute Truth,” which is what the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Found in Athens, lost in translation and in lore: Lyceum
Found in Athens on this very day, fifteen years ago, was the lost Lyceum. The old web page of the Greek Embassy in New York still has this announcement: “Important Archaeological Sites, Aristotles’...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is Aristotle dead?
Kurk writes: I think we, in the West, swim in Aristotelianism and methods and syllogistic conclusions to such an extent that we are blind to how big his contributions have been and still are. Maybe....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bertrand Russell: First Media Academic?
Alexandre Borovik points to this BBC Radio 4 broadcast. Just the title Bertrand Russell: First Media Academic? seems to capture something very true about Russell – a man who undoubtedly thrived on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Earnest-Tracey edition of John Henry Newman’s “Oxford University Sermons”
John Henry Newman is not only an intellectual giant; he is especially interesting because his spiritual thought developed over time. The story of Newman’s spiritual evolution has been elegantly told...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“Jewish Indiana Jones” Pleads Guilty to Fraud Charges
The New York Jewish Week today posted this remarkable story. I wish I had heard the story earlier—before the rabbi’s claims had been exposed. It’s nearly as much fun as Morton Smith’s discovery (or, as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Aristotle’s rhetorical Urbanities and the Septuagint’s
Indeed, it [i.e., “the 'urbanity/beauty' (or 'political/beauty') meme”] seems so subsumed into Athenian culture that by the time of Aristotle’s Politics, it seems to be taken for granted. Theophrastus...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Anthrophagy and the doctrine of resurrection
From the Los Angeles Review of Books, a review by Steven Shapin (Harvard) of Cătălin Avramescu’s An Intellectual History of Cannibalism (Princeton 2009, I have not read this book): While the cannibal...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Soul Loss
Many cultures make distinctions between the parts of the self: body vs. mind, body vs. soul, mind vs. emotions, soul vs. spirit. Sometimes the distinctions are less dualistic and more tripartite: body,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Let’s Talk Idolatry (An Invitation to Dialogue)
I grew up in a very Protestant household. Not terribly devout, but steadfastly Protestant. In third grade, all the kids were invited to wear something green for St. Patrick’s Day. My father insisted I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1 Timothy 2:11-12 — Plato and Paul, Teaching Against Loud Men and Women
In this post, we’re going to consider Plato’s and Paul’s teachings against loud men and loud women. We’ll be looking at Plato’s Republic (aka his Politeia, or his Πολιτεία). And we’ll be looking at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
St. Anselm’s Sexist Trinitarianism: in and by the Monologion
When others were calling him “Father Anselm,” the one we all know now as St. Anselm wrote something sexist. What’s more, he wrote it in a sexist way. That is, he wrote intentionally in such a way...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stanford’s junk science on organic food
We all make spelling errors. Most of us do not put out press releases claiming scientific breakthroughs on the basis of a spelling error. A team of researchers from Stanford published a meta-analysis...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Richard Blum on the reception history of Aristotle
Paul Richard Blum has a new book out, and a new video supporting that book, on the reception history of Aristotle entitled Studies in Early Modern Aristotelianism. I have just ordered the book, but...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book review: “Dating AI: A Guide to Falling in Love with Artificial...
Dating AI is one of those marvelous and weird books written that can only be written a dilettante. The author, who works as the head of bioinformatics and medical IT at a research clinic in Moscow,...
View Article
