Category: ethics

• July 28, 2011

  A philosophical review of Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

  Geoff Dyer’s novel Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, published in 2009, might just as well have been a play or a dialogue. The first part takes place in Venice, the second part in Varanasi. The protagonist Jeff Atman–yes, that is his surname–is a freelance journalist who writes about art, music, and celebrity. He attends…
• July 26, 2011

  Rethinking financial prosperity

  Update (7.27.11) Nice broadside from Vinay Gupta regarding Umair Haque’s larger project. What is Wealth? I take it one of the philosophical consequences of the housing bubble, the economic downturn, and the debt crisis has been to compel us to rethink our conception of prosperity. “What is wealth? What does it mean for a nation or…
• July 25, 2011

  Tell that to Quine! (& other miscellany)

  1 “That philosophers should be professors is an accident, and almost an anomaly. Free reflection about everything is a habit to be imitated, but not a subject to expound; and an original system, if the philosopher has one, is something dark, perilous, untested, and not ripe to be taught, nor is there much danger anyone…
• July 23, 2011

  ‘In the beginning was the relation’: On becoming less strange

  We are strangers to each other despite our seeming transparencies, our open confessions, our public language. We use the same words and mean different things. We use different words and mean something else. We stand inside the clatter and the grind and say our public sayings. Some spend our mornings prizing apart concepts. But to…
• July 22, 2011

  The discourse of choice is the burden we carry

  We are strangers to each other. Our moral incoherences go stated but unremarked. “Who are you to say?” “That’s just your opinion.” “Well, let’s just agree to disagree.” “Because I said so.” “That’s my choice, not yours.” We have even forgotten the question: What general beliefs confer rational authority upon a set of social practices?…