Various notes and excerpts
Over the years I've taken copious notes on various topics of philosophy. In case anyone is interested, I'll link to several sets of such...
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May 19, 201612 min read
Bertrand Russell, and David Hume, on philosophy
[Old notes.] Reading The Problems of Philosophy (1912) by Bertrand Russell. I’m inclined to agree with most of it. (In a lot of ways I’m...
Jan 29, 201613 min read
Intellectual origins of American radicalism
Staughton Lynd's Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism (1968) is a fantastic exploration of the ideological offshoots and effects...
Jan 22, 20163 min read
On the use and abuse of “perspective” for life
[Excerpt from this book.] There are delights and dangers in adopting a broad perspective on oneself and one’s society. Looking at the...
Jan 10, 20165 min read
The paradox of free will
[From an email.] Jerry Coyne does not impress me [in this talk], although at least he seems less irrational and annoying than Daniel...
Jan 4, 20166 min read
Two interpretations of love
Max Scheler’s Ressentiment (1912), while dated and silly in some respects, is worth reading. Scheler is a semi-Nietzsche in his...
Sep 30, 20153 min read
Notes on anarchism
[Old notes from my journal. See also this post.] Reading parts of a collection of essays published in 1978 called Anarchism, edited by J....
Sep 28, 20152 min read
Thoughts on thinkers
[Some notes I took a while ago. They may be kind of obvious, but I think it’s interesting to adopt something like Hegel’s perspective on...
Sep 10, 20151 min read
"The human harvest"
From Peter Marin: “Kant called the realm of [human] connection the kingdom of ends. Erich Gutkind’s name for it was the absolute...
Aug 8, 20153 min read
Excerpts on happiness
It’s a cliché but it’s worth repeating: one cause of modern loneliness is the attitude of treating people as means to an end, namely...
Apr 15, 20152 min read
Götzendämmerung
Albert Camus: “We [moderns] read more than we meditate. We have no philosophies but merely commentaries. This is what Étienne Gilson...
Feb 10, 20154 min read
From the Greeks to the Enlightenment
[A book excerpt.] The best way to think about the human task of living is that it should be, as Nietzsche said, a continual journey of...
Feb 8, 20152 min read
Thoughts on morality
The “moral sphere” has extended in recent centuries, so that now such things as slavery, colonialism, racial segregation, and...
Oct 29, 20144 min read
Socialism and communism
[Excerpt from a book.] The awesome power of business propaganda is revealed in the fact that most Americans scorn the idea of socialism,...
Sep 30, 20143 min read
Thoughts on Marxian common sense
[From this book.] An example of intellectuals’ need to make everything more complicated and difficult than it has to be is the unending...
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