Leopardi is quite possibly my favourite poet, this despite my reading him in English and being aware that quite a bit must be getting lost. Anyway, David Bentley Hart reviews Zibaldone published a few years back pointing out in his review Leopardi’s paradoxical cast of mind as does the always insightful John Gray (second and third quotes) He had a particular…
Another great N.O. luminary’s birthday to commemorate. a confederacy of duncesJohn Kennedy Toolenew orleansphilosophical literature
Today marks the birth of James Booker. Quite recently while looking for a fresh image of Booker I stumbled across the work of Cheryl Anne Grace. What’s particularly appealing about her work is that it doesn’t suffer from that Jackson Square/Pirate’s Alley schlock (Confederacy of Dunces) look. Cheryl’s work is palpably affectionate and the stylish iconography adds a very…
Nick Spencer’s The Evolution of the West: How Christianity Has Shaped Our Values warmly reviewed in The Economist. This theme was one that Walker Percy repeatedly returned to. Lurking everywhere in the secularised West is what he calls a “disenchantment with disenchantment”. People still want more than just freedom and choice. They want to belong, they want community rooted in…
Jerry Coyne’s latest on his blog Why Evolution is True. To claim that there are no evolutionary differences in behavior and psychology between men and women is fatuous. anti-sciencecultural evolutionevolutionary biologyEvolutionary Psychologyideologuesideologyjerry coyneregressive left
The deliciously scathing Susan Haack on the “vanity of cleverness“ At dinner the night before I was to give a talk in her department, a young professor solemnly told me that there’s no place for humor in serious philosophy. The serious philosopher must indeed work in earnest–but not in grim earnest. Charles Sanders Peircehumourphilosophical humorPhilosophysusan haack
Obituary and NYT profile William Christenberry’s work is a poetic evocation of a haunted countryside. . . . [that it] really says it all, because it [his work] deals not only with the Southern landscape of beauty and wonderment, but also the side of it that is haunted with memory and sadness. AlabamapaintingphotographyWalker PercyWilliam Christenberry
“Thus, these word signs have been evacuated, deprived of meaning something real. Real persons. Not so with Jews.” ***** “Since the Jews were the original chosen people of God, a tribe of people who are still here, they are a sign of God’s presence which cannot be evacuated. Try to find a hole in that…
H/T to Steve Horwitz who has provided the introduction to FEE’s newly released ebook of Kirzner lectures/essays from various FEE events and publications. For Kirzner and the Austrians, however, the assumption of perfect knowledge heads economists off on a trail that is an intellectual dead-end. The real world of the market is one in which knowledge…
Robert Wright in The New York Times on the late great William Hamilton “I’m also quite open to the view that there is some kind of ultimate good which is of a religious nature — that we just have to look beyond what the evolutionary theory tells us and accept promptings of what ultimate good is, coming…
manwithoutqualities 