Author: manwithoutqualities

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Zionism

Gertrude Himmelfarb’s The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot

The book’s webpage at Encounter Books. Below is Edward Alexander’s review of said book in Society March 2010, Volume 47, Issue 2, pp. 167–169. And yes, Gertrude is 96 not out! “How,” asks Himmelfarb, “did the translator of Strauss, Feuerbach, and Spinoza come to write so sympathetic a novel about Judaism and so prophetic a vision of…

michael oakeshott

Oakeshott on Civil Association

In “Oakeshott on Civil Association,” Noël O’Sullivan offers a magisterial account of Oakeshott’s ideal of civil association, showing that it is addressed above all to the moral problem of reconciling authority with freedom in the highly pluralistic circumstances of modern Europe. Hobbes made significant progress in this normative endeavor to find a shared sense of…

black sabbath

Free Thinkers Lost in Vegas

So-called “reaction” videos are big on YouTube and I suspect these guys are the most popular: I can see why. They have a great disposition, a palpable love of music whatever the genre, they offer good insights and don’t take themselves too seriously — they, like me, look for the funk-groove in any genre. If academia…

James Booker

Booker Mural

Check out WWOZ’s A Closer Walk website. Whatever your preferred style of piano music, if you don’t know who Booker is, you really should delve into this amazing talent and one-off character. Bayou Maharajah: The Tragic Genius of James BookerJames Bookermusicnew orleanspianoWWOZ

michael oakeshott

Oakeshott as Conservative

The topic of Oakeshott’s conservatism is a contentious one, as Robert Devigne shows in his essay “Oakeshott as Conservative.” Using Burke as a touchstone, Devigne demonstrates that Oakeshott’s conservatism is complex and shifts over time. In his essays from the late 1940s and early 1950s, Oakeshott displays a Burkean antipathy toward rationalism and appreciation for…

cosmos & taxis

Symposium on Roger Koppl’s Expert Failure

In Press Preface to a Symposium on Roger Koppl’s Expert Failure — WILLIAM N. BUTOS An Introduction to Expert Failure: Lessons in Socioeconomic Epistemics from a Deeply Embedded Method of Analysis — GIAMPAOLO GARZARELLI and LORENZO INFANTINO Expert Failure and The Intellectual Crisis of American Public Administration: How The “Fatal Conceit” Continues to Threaten Liberal…