Husserl’s well-tended archive has given him a rich afterlife, while Nietzsche’s was distorted by his axe-grinding sister Peter Salmon I have a terrible fear that I shall one day be pronounced holy: from Ecce Homo; by Friedrich Nietzsche On the morning of 24 September 1938, a Franciscan priest by the name of Herman Van Breda… Read More Paper trails
In Aeschylus’ ‘Persians’, Xerxes though defeated, was not dethroned. He went on to rule for another decade or more. But the spirit of freedom and democracy set alight by that struggle lived on for more than a century Vijay Tankha What could the earliest extant Greek tragedy have to say about the recent elections? Nothing… Read More Why an ancient Greek tragedy has resonance in politics today — in India and beyond
Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer’s film Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds (2020) takes viewers on an extraordinary journey to discover how shooting stars, meteorites, and deep space impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future. In Clive’s words (responding to Brother Guy Consolmagno of the… Read More ‘Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds’
Corine Pelluchon THE REVERSAL OF REASON INTO IRRATIONALITY AND THE SCHEME OF DOMINATIONThe COVID-19 pandemic and the threat of collapse due to climate change and the erosion of biodiversity point to the aberrations of a development model that is based on the unlimited exploitation of natural resources and other living beings. More than ever, it… Read More Ecology as new Enlightenment
NB: NATO, Russia, North Korea etc are all flexing nuclear muscles. The film referred to above was made sixty-one years ago, and is even more relevant, given the increase in the number of insane old men dreaming of mushroom clouds. And this is a link to the source of this article, the Cardiff University Philosophy… Read More Dr Strangelove: how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. Stanley Kubrick, 1963
The spectacle is the guardian of sleep: Guy Debord # 136 The monotheistic religions were a compromise between myth and history, between the cyclical time that still governed the sphere of production and the irreversible time that was the theater of conflicts and regroupings among different peoples. The religions that evolved out of Judaism were… Read More Society of the Spectacle
Questions, observations, suggestions. The addressees should be able to recognise themselves अहंकार व्यक्ति के अज्ञान और मूर्खता का परिचायक है : गीता (३ / २७) The spectacle is the guardian of sleep: Guy Debord Good is self-existent, evil is not. It is like a parasite living in and around good. It will die of itself when… Read More Unsolicited thoughts from an elder citizen
The birds they singAt the break of day‘Start again,’ I heard them say‘Don’t dwell on what has passed awayAnd what is yet to be …’ – Leonard Cohen, Anthem +++++++++++ Hour by hour, life is kindly offered usWe have learned but little from yesterdayOf tomorrow, all knowledge is forbidden,And if I ever feared the coming… Read More The present is our happiness
जनमत कभी विचारधारा विहीन नहीं हो सकता लेकिन हमारे अंदर दार्शनिक साहस न हो तो हम खुद को नष्ट कर लेंगे दिलीप सिमियन This essay first appeared in Outlook magazine on April 11, under the title The Crisis of Ideology क्या हम उस युग में पहुंच चुके हैं जिसमें विचारधारा का अंत हो चुका है?… Read More विचारधारा का संकट
go upright among those who are on their knees / among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust / and let your helpless Anger be like the sea / whenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beaten… Two poems by ZBIGNIEW HERBERT (1924-1998) / TRANSLATED BY John and Bogdana… Read More The Adventures of Mr Cogito
