Meillassoux: Lenin’s Best Disciple

Here’s another one. All that business about Meillassoux’s arch-fossil argument being so immensely and devastatingly novel that surely now all the idealists correlationists will die a horrible death reminded me of Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-criticism, a rather bombastic and, as some argued, not very deep philosophical book, written primarily for political reasons. Whatever the case [...]

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When In Doubt, Read Hegel.

So I happened to get to this part of the most awesome collection of articles bound to change the world forever and it sounded very familiar:

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Beyond the Divide (one view of the intellecutal payoff)

I came across this interesting account of analytic – continental divide,” Before and Beyond the Analytic Divide” (pdf), by Matthew Sharpe, wherein he suggests: …a rapprochement between analytic and continental philosophers is a good we might at least pray for, as the ancients would have said. Why? First, because both sides, as well as harboring [...]

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More Philosophical Tribalism

Crispin Wright discussing McDowell’s Mind and World: …if analytical philosophy demands self-consciousness about unexplained or only partially explained terms of art, formality and explicitness in the setting out of argument, and the clearest possible sign-posting and formulation of assumptions, targets, and goals, etc, then this is not a work of analytical philosophy (“Human Nature? in [...]

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I Wonder Who the Target Is?

Needless to say, this can apply to anyone, but considering the ever present didaskalia on the accessibility of writing on Professor Marvel’s blog, it must surely be him: See in particular Sellars’ demanding but profoundly rewarding Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes, London Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. Contrary to widespread opinion, Sellars is [...]

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Hongrie: Orbán cible les philosophes

Une campagne antisémite relayée par les médias proches du pouvoir attaque cinq intellectuels. (PDF)

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Philosophical Tribalism (and Remorse)

I’ve been reading through some of the essays in Postanalytic and Metacontinental: Crossing the Divide this morning (NDPR review here).  While I’m hoping to say some more about those essays later on, (for one, there is a particularly excellent essay about transcendental reasoning) a remark early on in the introduction made me chuckle.  Discussing two [...]

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Commonplaces of Academic Life: NDPR Review of Levinasian Meditations

Since I wasn’t all that interested in reading it to begin with, I completely forgot Richard Cohen’s  Levinasian Meditations had already been published until I saw this review by Martin Kavka in the NDPR just now.  The review certainly  makes for some interesting reading.   While Kavka admits Cohen broaches some important, if not crucial topics [...]

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Academically Adrift?

I just saw this article in The Chroncle of Higher Ed about the recently published book, Academically Adrift, which  paints a rather depressing picture of the critical thinking skills of college grads. This paragraph caught my eye: While these students may have developed subject-specific skills that were not tested for by the CLA, in terms [...]

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Emotional Vampire Bullshit Goes Mainstream.

“As a physician, I’ve found that the biggest energy drain on my patients is relationships. Some relationships are positive and mood elevating. Others can suck optimism and serenity right out of you. I call these draining people “emotional vampires.”

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