Tag: philosophy

The Political Prophet Harvard Didn’t Want

In our age of global conflict, István Hont is finally having his moment Danielle Charette and William Selinger In 2001 a dispute over hiring in Harvard’s government department briefly became national news. The faculty had voted unanimously to offer a tenured position to the historian István Hont (1947-2013), a specialist in Enlightenment political thought at King’s College,… Read More The Political Prophet Harvard Didn’t Want

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Cage in Search of a Bird

Michael Wood The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka; edited by Reiner Stach, translated by Shelley Frisch. In​ September 1917, having just discovered he had tuberculosis, Franz Kafka took a break from his work at an insurance company in Prague and spent eight months with his sister Ottla in the village of Zürau, now called Siřem. He also seemed… Read More Cage in Search of a Bird

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Lee McIntyre. The Attack on Truth and our age of willful ignorance

First posted June 12, 2015 To see how we treat the concept of truth these days, one might think we just don’t care any more. Politicians pronounce that global warming is a hoax. An alarming number of middle-class parents have stopped giving their children routine vaccinations, on the basis of discredited research. Meanwhile many commentators… Read More Lee McIntyre. The Attack on Truth and our age of willful ignorance

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Michael Rectenwald: Postmodernism, the Academic Left, and the Crisis of Capitalism

First posted March 11, 2013 Those who are obsessed by language finally come to the conviction that there is nothing but interpretation: Stanley Rosen in Hermeneutics as Politics (1987) It seems almost unnecessary to note that this theoretical perspective is matched by the self-abnegation of its praxis. To be sure, postmodern theory itself arose due to the… Read More Michael Rectenwald: Postmodernism, the Academic Left, and the Crisis of Capitalism

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Sam Dresser: How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

First posted August 25, 2019 They were an odd pair. Albert Camus was French Algerian, a pied-noir born into poverty who effortlessly charmed with his Bogart-esque features. Jean-Paul Sartre, from the upper reaches of French society, was never mistaken for a handsome man. They met in Paris during the Occupation and grew closer after the Second World… Read More Sam Dresser: How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

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My Correct Views on Everything: Leszek Kolakowski’s correspondence with E. P. Thompson (1974)

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)

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Totalitarian Friendship: Carl Schmitt in Contemporary China

First posted October 04, 2020 By Jackson T. Reinhardt For the past several years, the study of German jurist Carl Schmitt has exploded in China. Floria Sapio remarks that Schmitt has enjoyed “enormous currency among mainland Chinese scholars since the 2000s.” Even though Schmitt has received a recent revitalization of interest of his thought among Western scholars, he… Read More Totalitarian Friendship: Carl Schmitt in Contemporary China

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