Category Archives: Items of the academy / learning

A New Liberal Arts

Posted on June 1, 2018 by

The traditional liberal arts (logic, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) arose for two reasons: to preserve knowledge and to render young men fit for positions of influence. Knowledge had pretty much been wiped out in western Europe with … Continue reading →

Posted in Historical episodes, Items of the academy / learning | 3 Comments

Enlightenment now

Posted on April 30, 2018 by

(Reading Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now) I am totally down with this book. Its main thesis is that the core values of the Enlightenment – Reason, Science, and Humanism – have resulted in human life being better in every measurable way. … Continue reading →

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Philosophy as an art of concepts

Posted on April 23, 2018 by

Around the beginning of the 20th century, the intellectual landscape changed radically and forever. The old view, let’s say, presumed the intelligibility of a God’s eye perspective: a vision of Things as They Are, or Things as They Really Are … Continue reading →

Posted in Historical episodes, Items of the academy / learning, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff | 1 Comment

Philosophy as enchantment?

Posted on October 19, 2017 by

[What follows is a version of an address recently given at the Mountain-Plains Philosophy Conference, where a good time was had by all.] In a lecture at the University of Munich in 1919 – the year before he died – … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Historical episodes, Items of the academy / learning, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff | 5 Comments

Philosophy and its history

Posted on October 8, 2017 by

Philosophy and its History: aims and methods in the study of early modern philosophy, edited by Mogens Laerke, Justin E. H. Smith, and Eric Schliesser (Oxford UP, 2013). For the longest time, philosophers were interested in their own history only … Continue reading →

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On productive criticisms

Posted on September 16, 2017 by

I have been in a couple of discussions recently in which someone opined that certain sorts of objections or criticisms are not “productive”. The basic idea is that a criticism should not be wholly negative; it should point out a … Continue reading →

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Truth: an initial stab at the thing

Posted on August 30, 2017 by

On campus we are having a series of discussions under the title of “facticity.” No, it’s not a headlong plunge into German idealism and the impossible task of capturing the brute “thatness” of what experience coughs up. Instead, it is … Continue reading →

Posted in Historical episodes, Items of the academy / learning, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff, Uncategorized | 4 Comments