Gertrude Himmelfarb 1922 – 2019
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Philo goes “mainstream”
A couple of months ago I took to task the Philo entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I have just noticed that in the interim a more nuanced entry of Philo has recently appeared in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — and one that actually cites and acknowledges Runia. Oddly enough, Lévy does not mention E.…
Forgetfulness: Making the Modern Culture of Amnesia
John Gray very warmly reviews Francis O’Gorman’s Forgetfulness: Making the Modern Culture of Amnesia. Trying to control culture from a rationalistic perspective is bound to frustrate: the upshot is that cultural marxists have to double down, manifest as even more authoritarian. Their whole project is akin to “pissing in the wind” but we pay a grim price…
What is a Nation in Nationalism?
The very excellent Efriam Podoksik has a timely paper published in The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 25, Number 3, 2017, pp. 303–323. Challenging this dichotomy I suggested a tripartite scheme where nation as a self-sufficient high-culture community is the centre, whereas civic community and ethnic group are its peripheral mutations. Contrary to the common…
What Fascism Is Not: Thoughts on the Deflation of a Concept
Some 30 years ago I first read Gilbert Allardyce’s article in The American Historical Review, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Apr., 1979), pp. 367-388. With the interim years the piece has come to be regarded as somewhat of a classic: it was most useful then and even more so now. It certainly seems that even then…
The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans
Review of Lawrence Powell’s masterful history of New Orleans in Cosmos + Taxis. The palpable sense of cultural vibrancy and of place, so essential to New Orleans’ identity, makes absolute nonsense of the currently fashionable phrase “cultural appropriation”, a conceptually illiterate term of abuse, a newfangled fundamentalism, espoused by the authoritarian “regressive” left. cosmos &…
Michael Oakeshott
Thinking of this great subtle humane thinker — his birth and death dates are close together (December 11, 1901 — December 19, 1990) — whose work stands as one of the greatest challenges to salvation peddlers. For a freebie overview check out Terry Nardin’s SEP entry and two collections — Paul and my Penn State volume and…
Giacomo Leopardi
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…
Conceptions of Reinhart Koselleck’s Theory of Historical Time in the Thinking of Michael Oakeshott
New article in the History of European Ideas Alexander Blake Ewinghistory of ideasideologiesMichael OakeshottPhilosophy of historyPoliticsReinhart Kosellecktime
Bernard Williams: Why Philosophy Needs History
Bernard Williams’ piece originally from the LRB and reprinted in Essays and Reviews: 1959-2002 along with Colin Koopman’s commentary. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ‘Lack of a historical sense is the hereditary defect of philosophers . . . So what is needed from now on is historical philosophising, and with it the virtue of modesty.’ Nietzsche wrote this in 1878, but it…
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