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Category Archives: topical
The Dalai Lama on Obama
There has been much hand-wringing about Obama’s lack of results in China. As Stephen Walt explained, this was the fruits of years of folly. Yet despite delivering on the one issue that really really mattered (and the one could be realistically advanced)–a shared approach to sustaining the global environment–the New York Times, while demonstrating it [...]
Posted in topical Tagged Buddhism, Dalai Lama, diplomacy, ethics, global warming, patience, philosophy, politics, rationalism Leave a comment
Blogging Notes
1. The tone and content of my previous Fisking Sullivan post might lead people to believe that the whole was an attack on Sullivan.
[Fisk] might well be hated by the war-mongering, empire-addicted elements of the right because his skilful and widely recognised reporting of the ‘reality’ that they despise so much.
But yesterday Sullivan in a [...]
Fisking Sullivan
I have been watching the Palin obsession on Andrew Sullivan’s blog with a kind of fascinated horror. The blog was suspended to digest the almost content-free Palin book, but from the resumption notice it is clear that others have been raising their concerns.
No doubt It is part of the theatre, one of the many reasons, [...]
Posted in topical Tagged Afghanistan, blogging, ethics, peace, philosophy, Robert Fisk, war 1 Comment
What Price Philosophy?
A further issue that came out of the Calvin and Servetus thread was what value should we put on the public understanding of Right Religion and Philosophy in any of its various manifestations. Can we put a price on it or should we try?
For the sake of this discussion I am assuming that various long-standing [...]
Posted in topical Tagged Calvin, climate change, Enlightenment, ethics, philosophy, public understanding, rationalism, religion, secularism Leave a comment
Moral Relativism
In one of the comments to my post on Calvin and Servetus the spectre of moral relativism was raised. Maybe some people might get offended at this, but I was pleased. I not pleased because I had merely provoked a reaction but because I was pushing a pretty contrarian position so that I could see [...]
Posted in topical Tagged Calvin, ethics, moral relativism, philosophy, rationalism, religious pluralism, tolerance 1 Comment
Our Great Passion for War
The confluence of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the taking down of the Berlin Wall, Obama’s ongoing deliberations on whether or not to escalate in Afghanistan and Remembrance Day, with the passing of the last of the Great War veterans, has made for an unusually rich reflection on the value and/or futility or [...]
Posted in topical Tagged Afghanistan, foreign policy realism, Karl Eikenberry, military spending, rationalism, Robert Fisk, Scott Ritter, sentimentalism, war 2 Comments
Realistic Optimists and That David Brooks Column
Tyler Cowen has a great TEDxMidAtlantic talk on the seductive power of stories to distort our view of the world. We compulsive structure our understanding with narratives–there is no point in fighting this–but we can take a light, sceptical approach to these narratives, continually probing them for weaknesses. (Does anyone else see common thread with [...]
Posted in topical Tagged David Brooks, ethics, Islam, Jane Austen, Matthew Yglesias, peace, philosophy, radicalism, terrorism, Tyler Cowen Leave a comment
Calvin and Servetus
Paul helm has been running a old and erudite series on Calvin at The Guardian. This week he looks at Calvin’s part in the Geneva authorities’ execution of Michael Servetus, concluding with an ambivalent defence that doesn’t seem quite right to me.
The plain fact is that the civil authorities in Geneva, with the support of [...]
Posted in topical Tagged Calvin, Calvinism, capital punishment, Christianity, cultural relativism, ethics, irrationalism, pacifism, philosophy, rationalism, sentimentalism, theology 5 Comments
The Horror
The opening of the New York Times editorial on Saturday made little sense.
It is always a shock — and a cause for deep sadness — when a gunman fires malevolently at crowds of innocent people. We have seen it far too often: at Columbine High School in Colorado a decade ago; on the campus of [...]
Posted in topical Tagged Afganistan, ethics, massacre, New York Times, peace, philosophy, war Leave a comment
Wallace and Gromit
Bringing up Google’s home page I was greeted by Wallace and Gromit. I have a slightly elevated interest in these Aardman creations, being like the studio, a Bristolian, and my father working in broadcasting and knowing the founders from long before they hit the big time.
The Aardman website is, as you would expect, outstanding. (Quiz: [...]
The Values of Science
Aidan has responded to my Nihilism post with another thoughtful comment, which I recommend everyone read. Obviously I read a fair amount, and some pretty good stuff, but this is right up there. If the true quality of a blog were reflected in the quality of the responses I am being truly flattered. (And, of [...]
Nihilism
Aidan has written a splendid and thoughtful comment on the Blog News post that is really a whole article in itself. I recommend everyone read it. I am particularly grateful for it because while there is much in it I agree with it also essays a very interesting criticism, that goes to the heart of [...]
Posted in topical Tagged economic growth, ethics, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, materialism, philosophy, physicalism, Romanticism 1 Comment
Ritter on Obama
In the earlier article on Afghanistan I quoted Ritter’s ‘fierce’ analysis of the situation facing President Obama. It is also remarkable for a fierce judgement of Obama (quoted below) should he ignore his Vice President and escalate the US commitment by agreeing to McChrytal’s request for 40,000 extra soldiers. Such clarity in ethical matters [...]
Posted in topical Tagged Afghanistan, ethics, Jane Austen, philosophy, rationalism, Scott Ritter, war Leave a comment
Afghanistan
I have been meaning to write on Afghanistan for a while and today’s column by David Brooks has finally prompted me to write it. Brooks’ argument is simple. All the military experts are sure we can do this, but they are not sure that President Obama has the the resolve to do it.
They do not [...]
President Blair?
The principles of international community apply also to international security.
We now have a decade of experience since the end of the Cold War. It has certainly been a less easy time than many hoped in the euphoria that followed the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Our armed forces have been busier than ever – delivering [...]
Posted in topical Tagged ethics, irrationalism, Nuremberg, rationalism, sentimentalism, Tony Blair, war crimes Leave a comment
Twain on Austen
“I haven’t any right to criticize books, but I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader, and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read “Pride and [...]
Posted in topical Tagged Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, literary criticism, Mark Twain, philosophy, rationalism, realism, Romanticism Leave a comment
The Paradox of Choice
Katja notes that Barry Scwartz’s Paradox of Choice is the TED talk (see below) she hears praised most often, in which Schwartz summarizes, with great force and clarity, the argument he advanced in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, and goes on to muse:
Why should we fail to adapt? Even if [...]
Posted in topical Tagged Buddhism, ethics, happiness, materialism, modernity, philosophy, physicalism, poverty, rationalism Leave a comment
Fiction and Reality
Frank Rich had a great piece on the balloon-boy fiasco in Sunday’s Times.
Richard Heene is the inevitable product of this reigning culture, where “news,” “reality” television and reality itself are hopelessly scrambled and the warp-speed imperatives of cable-Internet competition allow no time for fact checking. Norman Lear, about the only prominent American to express [...]
Obama and Expectations
I finished the previous post on the rather optimistic thought that Obama’s aspiration to be a president of the United States, to connect with conservatives as well as liberals, is what the times call for. This is worth looking at more closely.
Firstly, there is this from Yglesias on that prize.
But in semi-defense of the Nobel [...]
Posted in topical Tagged ethics, global warming, idealism, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama, philosophy, politics, rationalism, realism, Tibetan autonomy Leave a comment
The Growth Illusion
Although I have gone to some effort to try and get folks to address the wider picture of the Levitt & Dubner attack on efforts to curb carbon emissions, I have only just received the first comment on it or any of the follow-up posts. Thanks to NelC for engaging–it is supposed to be the [...]
Being Freakonomical with the Heart
[ (i) This is a tribute to, and perhaps fulfilment of, Daniel Davies's post Being Freakonomical With The Truth. (ii) I see that I made a major error in last night's post: Michael Sandel doesn't belong to an academic philosophy department, but is of course in the Harvard Department of Government, with a manifest passion [...]
Posted in topical Tagged altruism, Chicago School, climate science, ethics, Freakonomics, geo-engineering, global warming, Michael Sandel, philosophy Leave a comment
The Age of Cynicism
Madeleine Bunting is in a quiet way one of my favourite journalists writing today. She invariably tackles important questions and I often find myself grappling with them immediately and then reflecting on on months later. Her latest column, Our speechless outrage demands a new language of the common good, I think will fall comfortably into [...]
Posted in topical Tagged altruism, Aristotle, economics, ethics, markets, Michael Sandel, patience, philosophy, virtues Leave a comment
The Silence of the Lambs
l read with fascinated horror the write-up in TPM of Hannibal Rising, the latest in the Silence of the Lambs/Hanibal Lecter franchise. I am not going to name the author because I can’t emphasise enough that what I am saying is not at all personal but simply reflects in the starkest terms a general contemporary [...]
Posted in topical Tagged compassion, empathy, Enlightenment, ethics, Nietzsche, philosophy, pity, Romanticism, sentimentalism, sympathy 1 Comment
A True-Born Englishman
—
A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction.
Daniel Defoe (1703, h/t Sullivan who has the rest)
Pat Buchanan’s rant on the passing of WASP-supremacy has attracted no soul-searching whatsoever as far as I can tell. As Serwer say, ‘good riddance’, and very well said too, but Robert Farley’s response I thought was [...]
They Just Don’t Get It