On grasping human things in human terms Wilfred M. McClay Back in the 1980s, an editor at Harvard University Press had the bright idea of asking some of the leading lights of the day to write their own version of a philosophical dictionary, modelled on Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique (1764). The project petered out rather quickly, presumably because… Read More The burden of the humanities
Ibn Sina, known in the West as ‘Avicenna,’ and his contemporary Biruni set out to redefine law, medicine and philosophy in the 11th century The Genius of their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni, and the Lost Enlightenment; By S. Frederick Starr Reviewed by Maxwell Carter I never realized quite how idle and inadequate I was until reading… Read More Central Asia’s Big Thinkers
Displacing and destroying peoples by colonisation is not just a historical Western evil but a global and contemporary one Lachlan McNamee In 1931, Japan invaded northeast China and established a client state called Manchukuo (Manchuria). To secure control over Manchuria, over the next 14 years, the Japanese government lured 270,000 settlers there by offering free… Read More Settler colonialism
NB: This essay brings us closer to the irredeemable racism of the rulers of the ‘free world’; and their habit of transferring their guilt and responsibility for mass crimes onto the shoulders of others. Here is another argument, directed at thoughtful Israelis (the AV is at this link). It is made by someone who is… Read More Michael Brenner: Europe-Jews-Muslims
NB: The only people benefiting from this conflict are arms dealers. Western establishments make immense profits from warfare, and have an interest in eternal conflict. As Orwell said, war has been abolished by becoming permanent. DS Defence majors such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Gruman, Huntington Ingalls, L3Harris Tech and General Dynamics have gained at least… Read More Israel-Hamas War: US arms industry stocks rocket (October 10)
Bernard Williams argued that one’s ethics is shaped by culture and history. But that doesn’t mean that everyone is right Daniel Callcut Travel and history can both inspire a sense of moral relativism, as they did for the Greek historian and traveller Herodotus in the 5th century BCE. What should one make of the fact… Read More Wrestling with relativism
Scholars of genocide are criticizing the dangerous use of the Holocaust to justify Israeli mass violence against Palestinians…This weaponization of Holocaust memory by Israeli politicians runs deep. In 1982, Israeli PM, Menachem Begin compared the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Beirut to Adolf Hitler in his bunker in Berlin… in October 2015, Netanyahu took this weaponization to… Read More Israel must stop weaponising the Holocaust
Birdwatchers from around the world have celebrated the arrival of a rare eastern osprey chick in South Australia. Fran Solly, secretary of the Friends of Osprey conservation group, says everyone in Tumby Island and Port Lincoln knows about the chick that hatched last Thursday. But the livestream has captivated bird watchers from as far away as… Read More Rare eastern osprey chick hatches in South Australia, captivating birdwatchers around the world
By Anthony Grafton Reading Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s encyclopedic study of magic is like stumbling into a vast cabinet of curiosities, where toad bones boil water, witches transmit misery through optical darts, and numbers, arranged correctly, can harness the planets’ powers. Anthony Grafton explores the Renaissance polymath’s occult insights into the structure of the universe, discovering a… Read More Marked by Stars: Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy
NB: A great scholar, a deeply humane person and an optimist of the spirit. This is sad news, but one must be grateful that she lived a long and fulfilling life. She and her husband Professor Chandler Davis were committed war resisters and anti-imperialist intellectuals. I salute them both; and offer my deepest condolences to… Read More Natalie Zemon Davis, Historian of the Marginalized, Dies at 94
After the truth-shower 