Meandering home

Review: Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

Seven years after his The Better Angels of our Nature, the book in which he presented abundant statistics and reasons why violence has declined, Steven Pinker has published an even more ambitious tome defending the idea and ideals of Enlightenment. The controversy that arose from the 'cautiously optimist' view he presented in 2011 might have ...

16 January, 2019

Enlightenment, materialism, Nietzsche, positivity, religion, Steven Pinker, violence

Philosophy, Reviews

Conversation and Correspondence

It has been said - I heard the physicist Freeman Dyson relating it - that the human urge to converse is akin to the termite's instinct to build castles. Perhaps the truth of this becomes most clear in the edge case of the hermit who converses or corresponds with an imaginary interlocutor. Henry David Thoreau ...

4 June, 2018

communication, conversation, correspondence, Nietzsche, Peter Watson, religion, rules

Philosophy

Hitch

Christopher Hitchens died four years ago today. Of course, he went far too early. We need "contrarian" intellectuals like him more than ever, to put into words what we would call the enlightened position on the Issue, because there really is only one Issue left. Call it the refugee crisis, call it climate change, call ...

15 December, 2015

friendship, Hitch-22, Hitchens, James Fenton, Martin Amis, Nietzsche, Salman Rushdie

The good life

Magic in the Moonlight – Woody Allen

I like this film precisely because Woody Allen is repeating himself. I have seen this film many times already. The Purple Rose of Cairo, Scoop, Midnight in Paris. There are a number of lovely reviews on IMDB so I'll skip the remarks about scenery, acting, and storyline (just this much: I think all these aspects ...

15 June, 2015

appearance, Colin Firth, magic, Nietzsche, Woody Allen

Reviews

the boys and Nietzsche

there's boys and they love their Nietzsche their friend from the brittle yellow paperback they keep between the old mattress and the squeaking bed frame thus spoke, and boyish backs strengthen thus spoke, beyond good and evil beyond the province thus spoke, untimely many auroras have dawned behind the boyish ears countless Nietzsches countless bed ...

14 September, 2013

Nietzsche

Poetry

What do I think about Zizek?

What is he thinking?As a learned philosopher with a funny blog, I should have an opinion or two about the Thinking Beast of Ljubljana, the populist, famous, celebrated, roaring, one and only, please welcome Slavoj Zizek (the adornments on the Zs are intentionally left out) who twists psychoanalytical theories together with rabid Marxism and generates ...

20 February, 2012

Marxism, Nietzsche, thinking, Zizek

Philosophy

May 14. First day at sea.

We will leave today. Fabien arrives to wake us up and we finally set sail. Before we reach open waters, we buy some large chunks of ice to refrigerate the ham and cheese we have for the sandwiches during the sea crossing. I take a last glance at the town of Cartagena, that looks out ...

31 May, 2009

berth, Cartagena, Gaia, good food, Nietzsche

Uncategorized

February 17. Meat and Metaphores.

I want to find my way into the cave underneath us, explore the big hollow caverns that lie below the fundament of our civilization. I want to descend as far as I can, and breath the stale air of the dark grotto that is filled with highly inflammable gasses. The weight of our civilization compresses ...

18 February, 2009

library, Lisbon, metaphore, Nietzsche

Travel