Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth Ideology – that is what… gives the evil-doer the necessary steadfastness and determination . . . the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good… in his own and others’ eyes From this point the roads go to the right… Read More The Gulag Archipelago: An Epic of True Evil
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
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
First posted December 23, 2013 Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long shot: Charlie Chaplin Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot and look like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot: Groucho Marx My way of joking is to tell the… Read More Lewis Lapham on Mark Twain, laughter and ‘the world’s colossal humbug’
When British people say ‘we do pageantry like nobody else’, they are indirectly admitting that we depend disproportionately upon the past to give meaning to the present. Jeremy Seabrook It may have been the grey of the London sky and the tender green of new leaves on plane trees along the Mall that lent to… Read More The Underlying Sadness Beneath the Glittering Coronation of Charles and Camilla
It takes the expansive perspective of an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist who ponders the origins and unfolding of the universe to place today’s parochial debates over intelligent technology in the context of planetary evolution. BY NATHAN GARDELS In Noema, Sara Walker bends the modern mind to link the coming future to the primordial past. “The technologies we are… Read More From Biosphere To Technosphere
First posted August 01, 2015 I got out my tape-recorder. My mum frowned. She wasn’t expecting that. “Is it for the Marx Memorial Library?” Because that was what old communists did: donated their body for medical research and their history for class analysis. But I just wanted to record what had happened. To remember Us.… Read More Jo McMillan – Lenin, mum and me: my communist childhood
Van Badham The western drift away from seeking moral instruction from the church is understandable; the morality plays staged every day on Reddit’s infamous “Am I the Asshole?” threads are far more entertaining. A few weeks ago, a post went viral in which the author seeks a public verdict on the question “AITA for asking… Read More The culture of mistrust is bleeding into our personal lives. No wonder there’s a sex recession
Rather than confront the inherent role of the university as a class-sorting mechanism (as well as an engine of the military-industrial complex),.. educators settled on a pedagogical model that valued the individual and immediate experiences of students over general civic and literary instruction. In lieu of learning a shared curriculum, students earned course credits through… Read More The Language of Democracy
After the truth-shower 