the spectacle is the guardian of sleep: Guy Debord Tom Bunyard The Society of the Spectacle was written, as Guy Debord once put it, ‘with the deliberate intention of doing harm to spectacular society.’ Following the book’s publication in 1967, he and the Situationist International (SI) declared that it sought ‘nothing other than to overthrow… Read More History and revolution in Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle
By Richard Wolin Martin Heidegger’s influence has been enormous. Richard Rorty once justifiably claimed that it would be impossible to write the intellectual history of the 20th century without acknowledging Heidegger’s titanic impact. But these tributes to Heidegger’s prodigious achievements are question-begging in one crucial respect: they neglect to consider what we are actually reading when… Read More To Sanitize the Master’s Corpus: On the Heidegger Hoax
Dilip Simeon NB: This work-in-progress paper was my contribution to a conference hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Bergen, Norway. The conference( May 31-June 2, 2023) was titled 200 Years of Socialism: Revisiting the Old Dilemmas: First Annual Global Research Programme on Inequality Lecture Abstract: The Bolshevik confiscation of the… Read More Militant capitalism, bad infinity, and the longing for total revolution
The destruction of truth is so advanced in capitalist culture that it should come as no surprise that even in the halls of Critical Theory, imagined sanctum sanctorum of independent consciousness and conscience, truth is now openly profaned and condescended to by some among those who, historically, have been charged with sheltering its sacred flame… Read More John Sanbonmatsu: Postmodernism and the corruption of the academic intelligentsia (2006)
First posted May 27, 2016 RP 193 (Sept/Oct 2015) / Commentary Schneier, who was privy to Snowden’s troves before publication, lists four modes by which the peoples’ victory was secretly undermined by the NSA and GCHQ. First, their weakening of cryptographic algorithms. Second, their piggybacking of domestic surveillance applications through enforced secret back doors – for example,… Read More Daniel Nemenyi: Submarine state – On secrets and leaks
First posted December 05, 2017 by Harriet Swain The historian, a key player in the libel case involving Holocaust denier David Irving, talks about Trump, Goebbels and why he agrees with John Bercow NB: This is a therapeutic article for those who are beginning to falter in their belief in truth, not the Absolute, but the… Read More Richard Evans: the film Denial ‘shows there is such a thing as truth’. By Harriet Swain
First posted December 18, 2016 Total responsibility in total solitude – is this not the very definition of our liberty? Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most important philosophers and writers of the 20th century. He lived through World War II first as a French prisoner of war, then as a professor of philosophy associated… Read More The Republic of Silence: Jean-Paul Sartre on the Aftermath of War and Occupation
Dear Colleagues and Friends, As a full month draws to a close since the tragic death of philosopher and teacher Samarveer, the words and the attached article below, supremely inadequate though they might be as tokens of remembrance, are nonetheless by way of a small tribute for him. I shall be grateful if the mail… Read More No Banner For Samarveer
NB: To begin with, its global warming, not ‘climate change’, the term is itself an example of Orwellian manipulation. DS By Kathleen Dean Moore / Salon In medieval times, gamekeepers trained dogs to the hunt by setting them on the trail of a dead rabbit they had dragged through the forest. Once the dogs were baying… Read More How Big Oil is Manipulating the Way You Think About Climate Change
First posted June 06, 2016 Henri Bergson’s debate with Albert Einstein reached and swayed the 1921 Nobel committee. NB – it is remarkable that the Roman Catholic Church banned three of Bergsons books in June 1914; and the Nazi’s banned Einstein after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 – DS This Philosopher Helped Ensure There Was No Nobel for… Read More Jimena Canales: This Philosopher Helped Ensure There Was No Nobel for Relativity
After the truth-shower 