Preview: In several conversations over the last months, people have independently raised a troubling sign of the times. Since the mid-2010s, it seems, “Alt-Right” bloggers have begun to populate Facebook and other online venues of the “Modern Stoicism” movement, claiming that the ancient philosophy vindicates their misogynistic and nativist views, complete with sometimes-erroneous…
Preview: /Review of Randall Auxier’s, Metaphysical Graffiti: Deep Cuts in the Philosophy of Rock (Chicago: Open Court, 2017), 396 pages./ “There’s a certain type of song that only the virtuoso poet-songwriter can pull off,” observes Randall Auxier. It may even seem to be a genre in itself. Some examples everyone knows are Don McLean’s “American Pie,”…
Preview: A recent item from the science news website of Physics Today describes in readily accessible detail the plans to update the International System of Units of measurement (abbreviated “SI”) so as to base those units on what are currently understood to be “universal constants” of nature. This is viewed as a very exciting development in the field of metrology (the…
Abstract: This essay notes the relationship between meaning and the felt passage of time. The concrete experience of fluctuations in the rapidity of passage seems to be universal to the human condition. We often associate the rapid passage of time with pleasure. This article shows that this commonly held view of passage is mistaken and…
Abstract: In the first part of the paper the author focuses on the way the great historian and thinker Gershom Scholem understood the Lurianic idea of tsimtsum (i.e. divine contraction as the first act of creation) as the key category of Jewish theology. Next, he combines the conceptual structure emerging from the Scholemian understanding of…
Abstract: John Dewey, as Sidney Hook characterized him, was the philosopher of science and freedom. Dewey, as Larry Hickman has demonstrated, was also a philosopher of technology. And, as most people familiar with Dewey know, he was a philosopher of education and democracy. The complex of technology, science, freedom, education and democracy requires re-examination, not only…
Abstract: The article focuses on a change in the understanding of death. Transhumanism is here understood as a reaction to the technicization of culture. One of the areas which are declared to be transcended by technology is human mortality. Analysis of such a change is conducted to show that one does not need a working technology that abolishes death, but that the…
Abstract: In recent decades, the internet has become our predominant public space and yet the role of art in this space remains largely unthought. This paper argues that graphic art, and in particular digital graphic art, has great power to shape and transform our thinking and experience. But with that power comes an enormous…
Abstract: This article considers the appeal of the cute body and its ambiguous relationship with the lovable. While cuteness is an aesthetic that is subjectively determined and expressed, it can also embellish a body with features that are standardized by systems of commodification. The cute body possesses a diminutive and vulnerable charm, but…
Abstract: Philosophy should seriously take into account the presence of computers. Computer enthusiasts point towards a new Pythagoreanism, a far reaching generalization of logical or mathematical views of the world. Most of us try to retain a belief in the permanence of human superiority over robots. To justify this superiority, Gödel’s theorem has been invoked, but it…