How could I write songs of hatred when I felt no hate? And, between ourselves, I never hated the French, although I thanked God when we were rid of them. How could I, to whom the only significant things are civilization and barbarism, hate a nation which is among the most cultivated in the world,… Read More The Great Unread: Goethe’s Faustian life
The major intellectual and moral preoccupations of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who died this week at the age of 96, speak to key issues of modernity and morality that leftists will be grappling with for a long time. Nick French: Alasdair MacIntyre Leaves a Legacy to Wrestle With lasdair MacIntyre, the preeminent moral philosopher known for… Read More Alasdair MacIntyre Leaves a Legacy to Wrestle With / Alasdair MacIntyre obituary
In the end, traditional liberal values are what Lindsay and Pluckrose are plumping for…. They conclude with a set of proposals for rethinking concepts such as ‘justice’ and ‘equity’, along lines allegedly more harmonious with reason, proof, logic, evidence, individuality, and choice, and less encumbered by group-think and by obscurantist, inflammatory collectivist rhetoric. Less propaganda,… Read More Cynical Theories
A wise and wonderfully enjoyable book on the enduring power of stupidity. “Paul made possible the transformation of the Gospels’ beautiful moral ideal into an anti-intellectual ideology that was enshrined permanently in the Christian scriptures and has since passed into our secular societies. That ideology has attracted a certain sort of mind ever since –… Read More Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know
By Maria Popova In 1957, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) became the second youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to him for work that “with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” (It was with this earnestness that, days after receiving the coveted accolade, he sent his… Read More Albert Camus on Strength of Character and How to Save Our Sanity in Difficult Times
Hannah Arendt’s confrontation with totalitarianism The “total domination of man” was radically evil, in Arendt’s eyes, not only because it was unprecedented but because it did not make sense. She asked: Why should lust for power, which from the beginning of recorded history has been considered the political and social sin par excellence, suddenly transcend… Read More Evil: The Crime against Humanity. Hannah Arendt’s confrontation with totalitarianism
Anand Vaidya and Manjula Menon Ideas from classical Indian philosophy help illuminate the enigmas of selfhood, consciousness and the nature of reality A note from Manjula Menon: My husband Anand Vaidya died on 11 October 2024, from complications due to cancer. He was only 48, yet had already carefully forged multiple trails through the contemporary philosophical landscape.… Read More By the light of brahman
પ્રોફેસર દિલીપ સિમ્યન (ગયા વર્ષે ૨ ઑક્ટોબરે મહાત્મા ગાંધીના ૧૫૫મા જન્મદિન નિમિત્તે લેખકે દિલ્હીમાં ગાંધી શાંતિ પ્રતિષ્ઠાનમાં વ્યાખ્યાન આપ્યું હતું. મૂળ અંગેજીમાં આપેલા આ વ્યાખ્યાનના હિન્દીમાં થયેલા અનુવાદ પરથી અહીં ગુજરાતીમાં તરજુમો પ્રસ્તુત છે). અનુવાદક: દીપક ધોળકિયા ******* લેખકનો પરિચયઃ શ્રમિક સંબંધી બાબતોના ઇતિહાસકાર, દિલ્હી યુનિવર્સિટીની રામજસ કૉલેજમાં અધ્યાપન કાર્ય કરતાં એક માળીનો પગાર રોકવાના સત્તાવાળાઓના નિર્ણય વિરુદ્ધ… Read More ગાંધીજીનું સમુદ્રી વર્તુળ
1/ He went to bed, turned on the BBC World News and switched it off again. Half-truths. Quarter-truths. What the world really knows about itself, it doesn’t dare say. John le Carre, Our Kind of Traitor; 2011, p 241 2/ We live in very remarkable times. We find with astonishment that progress has concluded an alliance with… Read More Reflections on ideology, morality and conscience
Nothing has so radically transformed the world as the distinction between true and false religion NB: This is one of the most thought-provoking studies in the history and philosophy of religion that – in my limited reading – I have come across. The author Jan Assman (1938-2024) was a German Egyptologist, cultural historian, and religion… Read More The Price of Monotheism
After the truth-shower 