Posts from the ‘Philosophy’ Category
On a dark autumn night in New Orleans, Amanda Henley, aged 29, who years before had lost her older brother to suicide, unexpectedly came across a staged and over-produced photo depicting a pornographically sexualized suicide. Her brother’s death had affected her profoundly — affected her in a way she’d never been able to articulate. She […]
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Just recently, I came across the following Q & A, which, whether you agree with it or not — and her name, I know, is either toxic or life-affirming (I’m not an objectivist, for the record, but I liked The Fountainhead) — you will almost certainly find as provocative and thought-provoking as I did. It’s […]
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The definition of philosophy — judging, at least, from very nearly every philosophical dictionary on the planet — has confounded philosophers for centuries, the concept being “too large,” it is sometimes said, to properly capture in concise fashion. Yet at the same time, in all branches of philosophy, minutia is cataloged to complete weariness. This […]
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A reader writes: Dear Sir: You are reported to have said that there is no order or disorder in the universe apart from what man himself puts there — this in spite of your well-known preoccupation with a fluid and congruent universe. Can you tell us how you reconcile this, with regard in particular to […]
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In a lecture he delivered at Cornell University, Vladimir Nabokov said this: “A work of art shouldn’t make you think, it should make you shiver.” And yet in reply to that one must ask: what about those of us who actually like for a book to make us think? What about those of us who […]
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Cynic and skeptic are often confused and often conflated, though in actuality the only thing they really have in common is that their provenance is philosophical. The difference between the cynic and the skeptic is the difference between epistemology and ethics. It is the difference between brain and body. Skepticism is an epistemological word. Cynicism […]
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(c)Ray Harvey 2011