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"Awakenings," and the power of music
[From 2008.] Reading Oliver Sacks’s Awakenings, which is about his experiences with post-encephalitic, Parkinsonian patients. It’s a good...
Jul 14, 20166 min read
Elite pretentiousness
The following is the beginning of an essay I wanted to write years ago on the concept of pretentiousness, a phenomenon the ubiquity of...
Jul 9, 20165 min read
The silliness of logical positivism
[Old jottings from my journal.] Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, from the selections I’ve read so far, is sensible. (That isn’t...
Jul 5, 20165 min read
On "lesser evilism" in politics
The following is a long comment I wrote on a Facebook thread months ago arguing against a left-wing friend that--in swing states--one...
Jul 2, 20164 min read
The utility of "God"
I attended my first Episcopalian service last night [in April 2010]. It was Maundy Thursday, so we did the whole foot-washing thing and...
Jun 23, 20162 min read
An underwhelming encounter with Christians
A misadventure. [Written in 2006.]— At lunch in the campus center I saw a flyer advertising an event tonight having something to do with...
Jun 22, 20166 min read
Notes on Theodor Adorno
[Old notes.] Reading Adorno: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Alex Thomson. I’m not very impressed with Adorno. Continental thinkers...
Jun 21, 20164 min read
"Sunbelt capitalism"
[Random journal notes.] Reading Elizabeth Tandy Shermer’s Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics (2013)....
Jun 15, 20163 min read
"The West's" derivativeness
I’ve always suspected that people give too much credit to ancient Greeks. They couldn’t have been as divinely original as we’re taught....
Jun 2, 20163 min read
Random notes on Hannah Arendt, Max Weber, economics, and traditional China
Years ago I read and took some notes on various works by Hannah Arendt. In particular her classic Origins of Totalitarianism. It's a...
May 31, 20161 min read
Various notes and excerpts
Over the years I've taken copious notes on various topics of philosophy. In case anyone is interested, I'll link to several sets of such...
May 26, 20161 min read
Far-left, i.e., rational and open-minded
[Old notes from my journal.] A lot of mainstream people would criticize me for immersing myself in leftist scholarship and journalism,...
May 23, 20163 min read
Historians and existentialism
In a sense, writing history is an intrinsically moral activity—although different kinds of history embody different degrees of morality....
May 21, 20161 min read
Old notes on the Enlightenment
In Margaret Jacob's The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents (2001), the selections from Locke’s Thoughts Concerning Education...
May 21, 20163 min read
Bertrand Russell, and David Hume, on philosophy
[Old notes.] Reading The Problems of Philosophy (1912) by Bertrand Russell. I’m inclined to agree with most of it. (In a lot of ways I’m...
May 19, 201612 min read
More thoughts on the French Revolution
Marxism and the French Revolution.— Let’s grant that, as non-Marxists like to remind us, the French Revolution was precipitated more by...
May 16, 20166 min read
On the French Revolution
It’s interesting that the French Revolution’s liberalism in some ways helped make possible its illiberalism, its nationalism and...
May 6, 20163 min read
Catholicism, an anachronism
In the Piazza of San Marco in Florence is a church in which lies the dried-out corpse of Saint Antonino from the fifteenth century, his...
May 5, 20162 min read
Intellectual origins of American radicalism
Staughton Lynd's Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism (1968) is a fantastic exploration of the ideological offshoots and effects...
Jan 29, 201613 min read
The U.S. in Central America
Notes on a classic. (See also these notes.)— In Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (1993), Walter LaFeber...
Jan 25, 20169 min read
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