First posted on June 12, 2014, upon learning of his passing NB: Stanley Rosen passed away on May 4, 2014, in Philadelphia, USA. (Read an obituary here). I never met him, but only managed to convey my regards via a couple of messages. I was introduced to his writing about a decade ago, and was profoundly moved and… Read More Stanley Rosen (1929-2014). A great philosopher
The best-selling author is a gifted storyteller and popular speaker. But he sacrifices science for sensationalism, and his work is riddled with errors Darshana Narayanan Watch videos of Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the wildly successful book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and you will hear him being asked the most astonishing questions. Harari’s… Read More The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari
Deni Farm, owner Edilson Pereira Duarte”; “Mato Grosso Farm, owner Vanderlei Martins de Oliveira”. These two signs, incorporating the Brazilian flag, are nailed to trees on either side of the road leading to Kapot village, in the Capoto/Jarina Indigenous Land, northern Mato Grosso state. A barrier spans the road leading into Kapot. Drivers must get… Read More Brazil’s Indigenous peoples mobilise against encroachment on their lands
As the private transportation sector shifts focus to batteries, biofuels, and green hydrogen, fossil fuel stakeholders have been seeking new avenues of revenue in the petrochemical industry in general, and in plastics in particular. That’s bad news for a world already swimming – literally – in plastic pollution. Product manufacturers and other upstream forces could reverse… Read More 600 million metric tons of plastic may fill Earth’s oceans by 2036 without immediate action
First posted January 26, 2017 Three forces carved the landscape of my life. Two of them crushed half the world. The third was very small and weak and, actually, invisible. It was a shy little bird hidden in my rib cage an inch or two above my stomach. Sometimes in the most unexpected moments the… Read More Heda Margolius Kovaly (1919-2010) : Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941–1968
He and I had quarreled. A quarrel doesn’t matter – even if those who quarrel never see each other again – just another way of living together without losing sight of one another in the narrow little world that is allotted us. It didn’t. keep me from thinking of him, from feeling that his eyes… Read More Jean-Paul Sartre: Tribute to Albert Camus (February 1960)
First posted March 27, 2012 ‘Do you know’, Napoleon once said to Fontanes, ‘what astounds me most about the world? The impotence of force to establish anything. There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind. In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind’ Conquerors, you see, are sometimes… Read More Albert Camus: The Almond Trees (1940)
First posted December 10, 2012 From the Socialist Register, 1974 Dear Edward Thompson Why I am not very happy about this public correspondence is because your letter deals as much (at least) with personal attitudes as with ideas. However I have no personal accounts to settle either with Communist ideology or with the year 1956;… Read More My Correct Views on Everything: Leszek Kolakowski’s correspondence with E. P. Thompson (1974)
First posted December 05, 2016 In honour of Adam Zagajewski being awarded the 2016 Jean Améry Prize for European essay writing, Eurozine publishes Zagajewski’s defence of ardour. That is, true ardour, which doesn’t divide but unifies; and leads neither to fanaticism nor to fundamentalism. We’re left with the impression that the present day favours only… Read More Adam Zagajewski: A defence of ardour
Albert Camus speech at Uppsala University; on December 14, 1957, four days after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. In Create Dangerously: The Power and Responsibility of the Artist; he argued “To create today means to create dangerously. Every publication is a deliberate act, and that act makes us vulnerable to the passions of a… Read More Albert Camus: Create Dangerously (1957)
After the truth-shower 