Kołakowski notes, “automatic thought is not really thought: it is the antithesis of thought. Thought, in the strict sense in which we are using the word here, means creative thought—precisely that activity which no automatic mechanism can replace.”…. His observations on “the enormity of material and spiritual desolation caused by the Stalinist system”; and his… Read More Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009): Modernity’s Patching Up
Once you learn what the “uni-context” is, you won’t stop seeing it everywhere Derek Thompson Here are some questions that I consider self-evidently compelling about the modern world: Why is the news media so interested in telling you how much the world sucks all the time? Why are so many of us obsessed with distraction… Read More A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird
The World at First Light: A New History of the RenaissanceBernd Roeck Tom Verde Historians typically trace the birth of the Renaissance to fourteenth-century Florence. Then, after three centuries, that brilliant era of artistry eventually gave way to the Reformation, with its shift away from humanism, and the Enlightenment, which picked up (and ran) where… Read More Why the West?
From “The Burnout Society” to “The Tonality of Thought,” tech philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s ultra-short books reveal why online liberation has felt more like voluntary captivity. Matt Elmore Byung-Chul Han is one of Europe’s most widely read philosophers. His audience in the United States has grown considerably over the last decade, though mostly outside the academy;… Read More Why Is Digital Freedom Making Us Exhausted and Sad? The philosophy of Byung-Chul Han
NB: A profound reminder that our self-appointed decolonisers themselves need to decolonise their minds. DS भारतीय ज्ञान परंपरा और संघी एजेंडा पर समाजशास्त्री प्रो. पुरुषोत्तम अग्रवाल के तीखे सवाल। क्या हिंदुत्व एजेंडा के तहत सिर्फ वैदिक-ब्राह्मण परंपरा का महिमामंडन हो रहा है और बौद्ध, जैन तथा लोकायत जैसी लोक परंपराओं को दरकिनार किया जा रहा… Read More भारतीय ज्ञान परंपरा या RSS का कोई छुपा हुआ एजेंडा? Indian Knowledge System: प्रो. पुरुषोत्तम अग्रवाल
A course on history and philosophy in Delhi This is the second offering in the Recollection Series. The first Recollection lectures were offered in August 2025. Prof. Dilip Simeon is a historian and a teacher with five decades of teaching experience. He has taught at Ramjas College (University of Delhi); at Ashoka University; and campuses abroad. His doctoral… Read More Recollection 2026
Will Buckingham – 2020 Our knowledge of Diotima is so sparse that many people have concluded that she was not an historical figure, but instead a literary invention. Diotima appears as a character in Plato’s Symposium, where Socrates refers to her as “a woman of Mantinea—a woman who was wise in many things.” And our knowledge of her doesn’t extend… Read More Diotima Climbs the Ladder of Love / The truth about love
NB: A well written account of the ideas of a great thinker. However, when the author tells us that ‘Straussians are not necessarily but mostly Republicans‘, it jars, because in his own words, Strauss ‘did say that philosophy had been endangered by adopting a political agenda‘. The domain of the spirit cannot be reduced to… Read More The Legacy of Leo Strauss After 50 Years
John Boersma Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger By Waller R. Newell; 2022 Waller Newell: Interview: The Characteristics of Tyranny Today’s political discourse is rife with the prognosis that liberalism is in trouble, evidenced by the rise of anti-liberal and post-liberal thought, each of which maintains that a politics based on material self-interest is incapable… Read More Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger
Albert Camus has long been misunderstood, but a new translation of his complete notebooks offers a corrective By Matthew Lamb The Complete Notebooks by Albert Camus. Translated by Ryan Bloom Source: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1957/camus/biographical/ EACH NEW TRANSLATION of a work from a major author should spark a reevaluation of that author’s critical reception and public reputation. Since his death in 1960, a… Read More Fame! A Misunderstanding
After the truth-shower 