Meaning and Melancholia: Life in the Age of Bewilderment

Christina Wilkins reviews Meaning and Melancholia: Life in the Age of Bewilderment (2018), authored by Christopher Bollas “We have changed.” (127) This simple sentence, uttered towards the end of the book, encapsulates everything psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas is trying to say in Meaning and Melancholia: Life in the Age of Bewilderment. Through an examination of the major changes of… Read More Meaning and Melancholia: Life in the Age of Bewilderment

15th February 202315th February 2023 Dilip

Problems, problems

A good philosopher must find his obsession, and it will drive him for the rest of his life: Thomas Nagel Johnny Lyons If asked by someone who is unfamiliar with philosophy what they might read to begin to grasp the subject, I would recommend Thomas Nagel’s What Does It All Mean? If pressed as to why this… Read More Problems, problems

15th February 202315th February 2023 Dilip

‘Notes on the Death of Culture’ by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Nobel laureate argues that we have reached a time in which there is no culture The intellectuals, the supine media, the political class have abandoned substance and discrimination and with treacherous enthusiasm adopted the idea of the image as truth. The liberal revolution of the 1960s, especially the events of 1968 in France, and… Read More ‘Notes on the Death of Culture’ by Mario Vargas Llosa

13th February 202313th February 2023 Dilip

Living for Pleasure by Emily Austin: an Epicurean guide to happiness

A timely guide to the Greek philosopher – and rival to the Stoics – who saw freedom from anxiety as the ultimate goal Julian Baggini Epicurus’s distinctive feature is his insistence that pleasure is the source of all happiness and is the only truly good thing. Hence the modern use of “epicurean” to mean gourmand.… Read More Living for Pleasure by Emily Austin: an Epicurean guide to happiness

10th February 202310th February 2023 Dilip

Taking the time to exist

Work and leisure, deemed opposite, are both caught up in the contemporary socio-economic pressure to be productive; time off, forced into servicing respite or distraction, is a commodified entity. Could a universal right to ‘otium’, the ancient concept of time, free from worldly concerns, create the opportunity to work on oneself through oneself? Jean-Miguel Pire… Read More Taking the time to exist

9th February 20239th February 2023 Dilip

Angelique Kidjo: the diva from Benin carries with her a fierce history

Her debut album Parakou was released in 1990, but it took her hit song Agolo for her to burst into global reckoning and galvanise the world’s dance floors in 1994. In the Yoruba language “agolo” refers to the metaphysical significance of time, a cyclical phenomenon conjoining life with death – life being a gift that must be cherished and… Read More Angelique Kidjo: the diva from Benin carries with her a fierce history

9th February 2023 Dilip

The Lady Vanishes

Gandhiji has been killed by his own people for whose redemption he lived. This second crucifixion in the history of the world has been enacted on a Friday – the same day Jesus was done to death one thousand nine hundred and fifteen years ago Father forgive us These lines in white on a black… Read More The Lady Vanishes

29th January 202329th January 2025 Dilip

Wallace Stevens and the ‘Academy of fine ideas’

First posted October 21, 2011 The law of chaos is the law of ideas,Of improvisations and seasons of belief. Ideas are men. The mass of meaning andThe mass of men are one. Chaos is not The mass of meaning. It is three or fourIdeas or, say, five men or, possibly six. In the end, these… Read More Wallace Stevens and the ‘Academy of fine ideas’

23rd January 202324th December 2025 Dilip

Dag Herbjørnsrud – The African Enlightenment

First posted December 15, 2017 The highest ideals of Locke, Hume and Kant were first proposed more than a century earlier by an Ethiopian in a cave The ideals of the Enlightenment are the basis of our democracies and universities in the 21st century: belief in reason, science, skepticism, secularism, and equality. In fact, no… Read More Dag Herbjørnsrud – The African Enlightenment

20th January 2023 Dilip

A philosophy professor’s final class

A tribute to Richard Bernstein, 1932-2022 “All academic thinking, whether right, left or middle, is conservative in the extreme,” Arendt had written to him. “Nobody wants to hear what he hasn’t heard before.” Recalling these words, Bernstein leaned toward his laptop camera, growing bigger on our screens. We must all fight off this tendency to… Read More A philosophy professor’s final class

18th January 2023 Dilip

After the truth-shower

Philosophy, history, literature, current affairs, and other stuff. Posted by Dilip Simeon

Tag: philosophy