Perverse Egalitarianism (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
Back to book reports then [at least we don't pretend to do "real" philosophy this way, right'] I’m reading Arthur Ripstein’s Force and Freedom, a book entirely dedicated to Kant’s Rechtslehre. So far I like it quite a bit, particularly the very simple and exegetical presentation, even if somewhat unexciting in terms of possible connections between [...]
The Real Revo (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
Note: I fixed the errors in this post. Have another look. It makes more sense now. Immanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher who asserted that moral autonomy as central to humanity and that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means. Kant was opposed to most forms of collectivism and [...]
The Brooks Blog (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
Call for Papers 2010 ISRLC Conference, University of Oxford 23rd – 26th September 2010 Abstracts are now being sought for a panel on German Idealism at the 2010 International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture conference taking place at the University of Oxford next September on the topic, "Attending to the Other: Critical Theory and Spiritual Practice". German Idealism and...
Sophistpundit (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
I just recently found this post at This Field is Required discussing how Kant's moral philosophy is insufficient to provide guidance even on the simple matter of whether or not you should let someone cut in line. The post is a followup on an earlier one that dealt more briefly with the matter as well as two other philosophies that have trouble with the line-cutting scenario. The followup came in response...
The Modern Historian (Free subscription) | 11/14/2009
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on 27th August 1770 in Stuttgart, which was then part of the Duchy of Württemberg where his father served as a revenue officer. Hegel learnt Latin from his mother at a young age and later attended the Stuttgart Gymnasium. At his father's suggestion he embarked on a career as a protestant clergyman, enrolling at the University of Tübingen seminary in...
Cognitive Daily (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
Greta and I did our undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago, or as a commonly-sold T-shirt on campus put it, "where fun goes to die." To say that Chicago didn't emphasize academics over a social life is to deny that people literally lived in the library (a full-scale campsite was found behind one of the stairwells in the stacks; students had been living there for months). It's...
Habermasian Reflections (Free subscription) | 11/03/2009
Habermas’s Later Pragmatist Turn By Ali Rizvi Robert Brandom describes pragmatism “as a movement centered on the primacy of the practical.” This primacy of practice over theory is manifested in Habermas’s writings in two ways. First, it emerges in his lifelong insistence on the primacy of “know how” (what he often calls intuitive knowledge) over “know that.”...
Perverse Egalitarianism (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
During the morning life agenda setting meeting, Shahar mentioned this book to me and an accompanying review by Allen Wood: Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy, Harvard UP, 2009, 399pp., $49.95 (hbk), ISBN 9780674035065. Reviewed by Allen Wood, Stanford University One sunny spring day nearly forty years ago, I was sitting in an open [...]
Rome of the West (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
I MUST ADMIT that I find it hard not to plagiarize Dr. Peter Kreeft . But I don't feel so bad, because Dr. Kreeft said (in one of his audio lectures) that he has a difficult time not plagiarizing C. S. Lewis. Fallible Blogma has a project called Support a Catholic Speaker Month , which hopes to introduce to a larger audience the 100 most popular Catholic speakers in the English language. I chose to...
Sacramento Bee (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009
Michael Gerson is distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group. There have been various attempts over the decades to bury moral philosophy – to dismiss convictions about right and wrong as cultural prejudices, or secretions of the brain, or matters so personal they shouldn't even affect our private lives. But moral questions always return, as puzzles and as tragedies. Would we push a hefty...
Leiter Reports: A Group Blog (Free subscription) | 10/27/2009
Not sure when these were announced, but one philosopher was among the winners: Anne Margaret Baxley (Wash U/St. Louis) for a project on Kant's ethics.
Just In Just Out (Free subscription) | 10/26/2009
Technological Cooperation in Dairy and Food Processing to drive the Indo-French Collaboration: Idrac The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) organised an Interactive session with Ms Anne- Marie Idrac, Minister for Foreign Trade , France and Business Meetings between French Delegation members and Indian Industry on 26 October 2009. The session was honored with the presence of Mr. Subodh Kant Sahai,...
Campaign for the American Reader (Free subscription) | 10/25/2009
Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Force and Freedom: Kant's Legal and Political Philosophy by Arthur Ripstein.About the book, from the publisher:In this masterful work, both an illumination of Kant’s thought and an important contribution to contemporary legal and political theory, Arthur Ripstein gives a comprehensive yet accessible account of Kant’s political philosophy. Ripstein shows...
frog design™ (Free subscription) | 10/20/2009
My mom always told me “Make your passion your profession, and you’ll be a happy man.” She was right, and I am glad I followed her advice. Yet I appear to be part of a minority. In an article about growing disenchantment at work (“Hating What You Do”) , this week’s Economist cites a survey conducted by the Centre for Work-Life Policy, an American consultancy. It...
frog design™ (Free subscription) | 10/20/2009
My mom always told me “Make your passion your profession, and you’ll be a happy man.” She was right, and I am glad I followed her advice. Yet I appear to be part of a minority. In an article about growing disenchantment at work (“Hating What You Do”) , this week’s Economist cites a survey conducted by the Center for Work-Life Policy, an American consultancy. It...
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