Kant Without Kantianism

A new book out and a nice review article is accompanying it – looks very interesting: Recensé : Gérard Lebrun, Kant sans kantisme, préfaces de Paul Clavier et Francis Wolff. Paris, Fayard, 2009, 341 p., 22 euros. Gérard Lebrun n’a jamais autant publié que depuis sa mort, survenue en 1999. Les deux seuls livres qu’il [...]

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Objectology: A Distorted View.

John comments on the issue of objectology and politics (I am going to combine both of his comments here): Why should every philosophy be expected to address politics just because all philosophers are affected by politics? “Ontology is play-science for philosophers,” says the I.T. post in question, and I can’t help but agree. But I [...]

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Trauma and Philosophy [blog]

I just stumbled across a blog, Trauma and Philosophy, maintained by Frank Seeburger, a philosopher at the U of Denver. It’s quite excellent and includes close readings and brief reactions to a wide range of literature related to trama including Lifton’s book on Nazi doctors, Felman and Laub’s book on trauma, musings on Heidegger, Henry [...]

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New Storm A-brewing?

Nina Power posts a short (and somewhat cryptic) note on what appears to be the same annoying tendencies in “contemporary philosophy” I’ve been complaining about – I’m expecting a series of irritating (and very very long) posts from objectologists on the topic of how no one really understands them and how what they’re doing is [...]

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The Dunghill of Servility (J.F. Fries on Hegel)

Jakob  Friedrich Fries is only remembered these days as “personal and professional enemy of Hegel” (as Terry Pinkard puts it somewhere in his biography of Hegel) – the relationship was of course very interesting in terms of our understanding of Hegel’s character and does not really make Hegel into a very likable person at all. [...]

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Heidegger and Nazism, again.

Not to be dismissive about Heidegger’s Nazism or anything, but the dialogue has begun (yet) again.  I bookmarked an article entitled “Heil Heidegger,”  for myself (and others, of course) on Twitter last week.  The article discusses a recently translated book revolving around  Heidegger’s Nazism and I just had a chance to look closely at it.  [...]

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Met In HD: Aida (A Quick Reaction)

Just a quick note on today’s broadcast of Aida from the Met: it was good but not great (wife nods in agreement). No, it was not due to the lack of elephants, though the three main characters were admittedly quite large. I am not against opera body types by any means, I’m all for voluptuousness [...]

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Robert Service’s New Biography of Trotsky

There’s a review of it in The Times.  I remember reading his 2002 biography of Lenin with great interest, and I haven’t had a chance to read his Stalin biography (never had much interest in Stalin actually). In any case, an anecdote: Trotsky liked to hang out in Cafe Central in Vienna (as I have [...]

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Met in HD: Aida (10/24)

After the horrible reviews of what looked like a fiasco of Tosca (with Karita Mattila), I didn’t go to the opening broadcast of this season’s Met in HD series. The second opera in the program – Aida – looks like a good place to start this year. The broadcast is this Saturday, October 24th (check [...]

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Random Link: History of Canon Law.

Stumbled across these lectures (kind of boring if you start with the opening lecture, but it gets going) on the history of canon law. Having learned much from Harold J. Berman’s work (Law and Revolution), I got interested in canon law as a precursor of modern legal systems – it’s some fascinating stuff.

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