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…
Preview: /Review: Toward a Philosophy of Higher Education: Contemporary Philosophical Proposals for the University, edited by Aaron Stoller and Eli Kramer (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 268 pages/ Editors Aaron Stoller and Eli Kramer have organized and edited a group of essays that include a variety of perspectives regarding the present problems and tensions…
Preview: /Douglas Anderson interviewed by Eli Kramer/ As history tells us, Greek philosophy was not a profession but a feature of living – an active search for a good life. It was not driven by final answers but, if Plato is to be believed, by an ongoing eros for beauty and goodness. The phrase “philosophy of culture” reminds me of…
Preview: /A Reply to: Randall Auxier, “Cassirer: The Coming of a New Humanism”/ Randall Auxier delivered a paper at the Cassirer conference (published in this issue of Eidos) in which he advanced what he calls “new humanism.” To add to the discussion initiated by Auxier, in this paper I will critique (and thereby praise) posthumanism for its inability to move past the human….
Abstract: This article sets out a manifesto for the development of an international values-based practice fully engaged with the diversity of cultural values and implemented through the resources of the international movement in philosophy and psychiatry. Anticipated by mid-twentieth century ordinary language philosophy of the “Oxford School,” the last three decades have witnessed…
Preview: /Review of Daniel Burston’s, A Forgotten Freudian: The Passion of Karl Stern (London: Karnac Books 2017), 256 pages./ When the chief editor of Eidos kindly asked me to write a review of Daniel Burston’s new book devoted to Karl Stern, I kept a straight face and gritted my teeth. I did not want to reveal the fact that I had never…
Preview: /Review of Anthony J. Steinbock’s, Limit-Phenomena and Phenomenology in Husserl (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 155 pages./ This cohesive collection of essays from Anthony Steinbock is vital for understanding the situation of henomenological philosophy. Along with the exegesis of texts central to its development, he shows a way of doing phenomenology “after” Husserl,…
Preview: /Roger Scruton interviewed by Mikołaj Sławkowski-Rode/ Beauty and power (here I mean primarily political power) have a relationship with a long and turbulent history perhaps first explicitly acknowledged by Plato. Beauty is often employed in the service of power (national anthems, and emblems are perhaps the most obvious example), but sometimes also serves to undermine it…