Salon.com > Philosophy

A rapper’s red scare

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:45:00 +0000

Grammy Award-winning rapper Lupe Fiasco, who once called President Barack Obama a terrorist, is known for his outspokenness, provoking debates about politics, government and rap. In March, the on-again-off-again Twitter user drew fans in with a spirited Twitter discussion over violence in rap with socially conscious rappper Talib Kweli.

But Fiasco's Twitter presence is now at threat, as his management took control of his feed after the rapper prompted a conversation about Marxism:

Self-help hits rock Botton

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:58:00 +0000

IS THE VERY IDEA of an intelligent self-help book a paradox? It is certainly trying to serve two demanding masters: philosophical speculation and practical action. After all, readers don’t pick up self-help books just to ruminate on life’s dilemmas, but to be guided to solutions. The new series of self-help books published by the London-based School of Life, co-founded by the Swiss-born popular philosopher Alain de Botton, echoes the school’s lofty approach to problems, claiming to be “intelligent, rigorous, well-written new guides to everyday living.” Yet to peruse the School of Life’s calendar of classes is to fall into a vortex of jargon pitched somewhere between the banal banter of daytime talk shows and the schedule for a nightmarish New Age retreat: “How to Have Better Conversations,” “How to Realise Your Potential,” “Developing a Compassionate Mind: One Day Intensive,” “Philosophy Slam,” “Learning How to Say No,” “Getting Better at Online Dating,” “Resilience: One Day Workshop.” Before long, I was ready to sign up for “How to Stay Calm.”

When Derrida discovered Marx

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 15:00:00 +0000

ON THE OCCASION of the 20th anniversary of the “Whither Marxism?” conference conceived by Stephen Cullenberg and Bernd Magnus and organized by the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California, Riverside, we asked Peggy Kamuf to reflect on the lecture that Jacques Derrida delivered there: “Specters of Marx.” The lecture was eventually published as a book, translated into English by Kamuf, and subtitled The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. It stands as a landmark text in Derrida’s oeuvre.

“I meant to read Marx my way when the time came.” So Jacques Derrida declared in an interview with Michael Sprinker in 1989. Four years later, the conference “Whither Marxism?” was going to give him the occasion to do just that: read Marx his way. That was also the year, of course, the Berlin Wall fell, and then the dominoes continued to fall all over the former Communist bloc. So — in the ruins of Marxism, on the grave (good riddance!) of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinism, or whatever name is finally settled upon for the monstrous construction that had just fallen apart — the time had finally come to read Marx.

HP Lovecraft, pulp philosopher

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:22:00 +0000

H.P. LOVECRAFT'S WORK has not received a great deal of attention from literary critics. Until relatively recently, the majority of “treatments” of his oeuvre have been in the form of B-movies. While it’s surprising that Roger Corman, director of seven features based on the stories of Lovecraft’s great predecessor, Poe, only did one Lovecraft film (The Haunted Palace, itself marketed as “Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace,” despite being based on Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward), some of the stable of effects of Lovecraft’s fiction — his characters’ tendencies to simply tell you their emotions (usually on a scale between repulsion and disgust), their inability to adequately describe the most startling creatures and architectures — make his stories ripe for the B-movie treatment. The telegraphed emotions of his characters justify stilted or hysterical acting, and the incomplete, contradictory visual descriptions of creatures like Cthulhu or the Old Ones — not to mention the “strange, beetling, table-like constructions suggesting piles of multitudinous rectangular slabs or circular plates or five-pointed stars” hovering miles above us in At the Mountains of Madness — seem to cry out for a gauzy camera style that conceals the tawdriness of the set design, the recycled monster costumes, and the failures of the lighting crew.

I woke up at age 35

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Dear reader,

I'd like to tell you a couple of things about my personal life and then I would like to make a request. Two things happened this week; one brought joy and one brought pain. I was told I'm still cancer-free. And our dog died.

Three years after surgery and proton beam radiation therapy for a sacral chordoma there is no sign of recurrence. Dr. Christopher Ames of UCSF, toward whom I have the crazy mix of extreme emotions one can only have toward a surgeon who has opened one up and carefully cut away bone and tissue and helped to make one whole again, said, "Go enjoy your life." So Norma and I went and had lunch at the Cliff House, on whose deck we were married almost 20 years ago.

Then our dog died. He was the second of our two standard poodles to die within the last year. That was rough.

Now we have no more dogs to die. We feel strangely alone in the house.

So it's been up and down, as life is. Those of you who have loved dogs and seen them die, and/or who have gone through the terror and pain of cancer surgery and radiation, will relate. I say this not to ask for sympathy but to signal that you and I are not alone in these things. I know you are out there and I know you know what it is like.

Reddit launches original Web series

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 20:23:00 +0000

When most people think of Reddit, they imagine a trove of user-generated content and mishmash of links, the birthplace of new Internet memes and the door to the seedy underbelly of the Internet. Reddit is and always will be all of these things, but now it is one more: the creator of an educational Web series.

The latest organization to join media companies like Amazon and Netflix in producing original video content, the site's first series takes discussions from its "Explain Like I'm Five" subreddit to explain in-depth concepts in an easily digestible format.

From THR:

The "Explain Like I'm Five" subreddit, which the company says gets an estimated 4 million page-views monthly, was chosen because its discussion concept seemed fit for a video series.

The series features actors Michael Kayne and Langan Kingsley explaining broad topics to children in a classroom. The series covers diverse subject matter: "The Crisis in Syria," "Existentialism and Friedrich Nietzsche" and "The Volatility of the Stock Market" are the titles of the three episodes.

The ELIF series is produced by Jared Neumark, the founder of Landline TV and former co-director of content at College Humor. Each clip ends with a message pointing viewers to DonorsChoose.org, a online charity that helps provide teachers with classroom resources.

When is it ethical to kill somone?

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 12:45:00 +0000

Applied ethics should interest all but the most philosophy shy, as it poses moral questions of everyday use.

Applied ethics is the application of moral theory to the real world. I first read the five books that we are going to talk about here 25 years ago, which was the beginning of a burgeoning of applied ethics, with people like Jonathan Glover and Peter Singer applying theory to real issues like euthanasia, capital punishment, poverty, distribution of income, animal rights, abortion – questions of life and death.

Talking of which, I understand you’re a bit of an expert on “trolleyology”. What is a trolley problem?

How to live well: A handy reading list

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:45:00 +0000

Over the New Year, people will be looking at themselves, making resolutions, starting afresh. Do you think that this introspection is a good thing, or are we too full of anxiety when we re-evaluate our lives?

It’s important to keep asking yourself the question, what am I doing with my life? Shall I go in new directions? Throughout history there have always been people who have been interested in this question. Tolstoy, for example, was always asking himself whether he was doing the right thing with his life.

Of course, the New Year is a great peg to hang these questions. The real issue, though, is how we go about making changes in our lives. I like to make a distinction between introspection and outrospection. In the 20th century we were obsessed with introspection – the idea that the way to find meaning in our lives is to look inside us, at our drives, motivations and priorities. That introspective approach really comes out of psychoanalysis and the self-help industry.

The Bible goes Greek

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0000

THE VIEW THAT ATHENS AND JERUSALEM represent two very different and antagonistic sources of Western civilization has long been a feature of the Western tradition. It dates back at least to Tertullian’s passionate second-century polemic against Greek philosophy. Those Enlightenment thinkers who preferred Greek reason to Hebrew revelation confirmed it resoundingly. And again just over a century ago, again from the side of Athens, the culture critic Matthew Arnold boiled down his civilization to two fundamental forces:

And to give these forces names from the two races of men who have supplied the most signal and splendid manifestations of them, we may call them respectively the forces of Hebraism and Hellenism. Hebraism and Hellenism, - between these two points of influence moves our world.

Today as well — arguably to the greatest extent since the Enlightenment — the camps of religion and culture view each other with a deepening mutual distrust.

Who will save the eurozone?

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 22:13:00 +0000

“WHO WILL WILLINGLY DIE for [. . .] the EEC?”

When Benedict Anderson asked this sarcastic question in 1983, referring to the European Economic Community, a now-forgotten ancestor of today’s European Union, he did not have to add that, for better or worse, many people are willing to die for their nation. They’ve proved it, war after war after war. Anderson’s point was that nationalism moves mountains, but its potent we’re-all-in-it-together feeling tends to stop short at the border. The survival of your country may be capable of stirring your gutsiest emotions; the survival of the eurozone almost certainly isn’t. Unless you’re a banker.

Dumb tweet: Mike Tyson on the philosophy of mind

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 21:51:00 +0000

Hat tip Jeremy Scahill for retweeting:

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Is drone war moral?

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 15:00:00 +0000

[UPDATE BELOW]

“I see mothers with children, I see fathers with children, I see fathers with mothers, I see kids playing soccer ... [but] I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy. I have a duty, and I execute the duty.” By their own accounts, drone pilots spend weeks stalking their targets -- observing the intimate patterns of their daily life such as playing with their children, meeting neighbors, talking to their wives -- before finding a moment when the family is away to launch the missile that will end their target's life. Afterward they drive home like any other commuter, perhaps stopping at a fast food restaurant or convenience store before coming home to their families for the night. “I feel like I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done, I just don’t deploy to do it.”

Everyday ethics

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Given the choice between allowing five people to die and killing one person, what would you do? What is the utilitarian argument for vegetarianism? Should we be able to sell our kidneys? The philosopher suggests some answers.

Applied ethics should interest all but the most philosophy shy, as it poses moral questions of everyday use.

The neuroscience of happiness

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 22:00:00 +0000

They say money can’t buy happiness. But can a better understanding of your brain? As recent breakthroughs in cognitive science break new ground in the study of consciousness -- and its relationship to the physical body -- the mysteries of the mind are rapidly becoming less mysterious. But does this mean we’ll soon be able to locate a formula for good cheer?

Shimon Edelman, a cognitive expert and professor of psychology at Cornell University, offers some insight in "The Happiness of Pursuit: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About the Good Life." In his new book, Edelman walks the reader through the brain’s basic computational skills – its ability to compute information, perform statistical analysis and weigh value judgments in daily life – as a way to explain our relationship with happiness. Our capacity to retain memories and develop foresight allows us to plan for the future, says Edelman, by using a mental “personal space-time machine” that jumps between past, present and future. It’s through this process of motivation, perception, thinking, followed by motor movement, that we’re able not only to survive, but to feel happy. From Bayes’ theorem of probability to Shakespeare’s "Romeo and Juliet," Edelman offers a range of references and allegories to explain why a changing, growing self, constantly shaped by new experiences, is happier than the satisfaction any end goal can give us. It turns out the rewards we get for learning and understanding the workings of the world really make it the journey, not the destination, that matters most.

The Socrates you don’t know

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:20:00 +0000

This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the Loeb Classical Library, one of the most remarkable publishing projects in modern history. Yet as with everything book-related in the year 2011, the Loeb centenary carries with it a touch of wistfulness, and an uncertainty about the future. For the Loeb classics are the monument of a book culture that now seems on the wane -- a culture that prized the making and owning of physical books, not just for the pleasure of turning the pages, but from a sense that the book was the natural, predestined vessel of every expression of human thought.

Which leading 20th-century philosopher took this photo?

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:01:00 +0000

Ludwig Wittgenstein is known above all for his groundbreaking work as a modern philosopher. But he was also an enthusiastic amateur photographer whose pictures -- from a "composite" family image to a jaunty shot of a friend posing as if he were in a gangster film -- are intriguing and revelatory.

Sixty years after the Austrian thinker's death, the Wittgenstein Archives (located at Cambridge University, where the philosopher studied and taught) have gathered some of Wittgenstein's own artistic efforts, along with other related photographs, for an exhibition.

The photographs have philosophical as well as artistic significance. An explanatory piece published by the university says:

“Examined Lives”: The secret lives of philosophers

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 01:26:00 +0000

Plato has Socrates say, in the "Apology," that the unexamined life is not worth living. Many of Socrates' successors took this saying to heart, regarding the examination of life as definitive of their calling. With "Examined Lives," a set of beautifully written and richly informative mini-biographies of a dozen philosophers, James Miller explores what this meant to each of them. His conclusion is a negative one: the combination of wisdom, self-understanding and self-possession that Socrates' successors took to be the gold standard for the philosophical life proved impossible for most of them to attain, and, in some cases, what they preached and what they practiced fell widely apart.

The implication is that where they failed, we cannot expect to succeed; the Socratic ambition, Miller says, represents "an unending quest, with no firm goal and no certain reward, apart from experiencing, however briefly, a yearning for wisdom and a desire to live a life in harmony with that yearning -- come what may."

Lost Kafka writings resurface, trapped in Kafkaesque trial

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:12:00 +0000

It seems almost Kafkaesque: Ten safety deposit boxes of never-published writings by Franz Kafka, their exact contents unknown, are trapped in courts and bureaucracy, much like one of the nightmarish visions created by the author himself.

The papers, retrieved from bank vaults where they have sat untouched and unread for decades, could shed new light on one of literature's darkest figures.

In the past week, the pages have been pulled from safety deposit boxes in Tel Aviv and Zurich, Switzerland, on the order of an Israeli court over the objections of two elderly women who claim to have inherited them from their mother.

"Kafka could easily have written a story like this, where you try to do something and it all goes wrong and everything remains unresolved," said Sara Loeb, a Tel Aviv-based author of two books about the writer. "It's really a case of life imitating art."

Literary experts in both cities are sifting through the boxes, and the contents are expected to be of priceless literary and monetary value. What exactly is there remains unknown, but the papers include handwritten manuscripts, letters and various literary works by the famed Jewish Czech writer, said Meir Heller, an attorney for the Israeli National Library, which also claims ownership of the trove.