Nassim Nicholas Taleb gives the Platonic rationalist “elites” a mega bitch slap (Original source here). Supplemented by the recent lunacy as per below, I suspect that though philosophers (rightly so) got their knickers in a twist a couple of years ago when deGrasse Tyson slammed the value of philosophy, they’d be well on board with this…
John Gray reviews Dominic Johnson’s God Is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human. Though I haven’t read this book, based upon this review the title and the subtitle “How the Fear of God Makes Us Human” seem to be the wrong way round. Indeed, the main title seems superfluous. But first,…
Gray assesses Hayek’s life and work. For those interested in the Encounter piece “My Cousin, Ludwig Wittgenstein” here it is. Equally, and perhaps also happily, Thatcher had no understanding of Hayek’s ideas. Austrian EconomicsConservatismdispersed knowledgedistributed knowledgeFree marketFriedrich Hayekjohn graykeynesLiberalismLibertyLudwig WittgensteinMargaret Thatchersocialism
Article by John Gray from a few weeks back (and surprisingly in The Guardian). It’s a reassuringly simple equation. In fact there are no reliable connections – whether in logic or history – between atheism, science and liberal values. When organised as a movement and backed by the power of the state, atheist ideologies have…
John Gray looks at Oakeshott’s Notebooks. Unlike many academics he did not crave respectability, intellectual or otherwise; even by today’s standards, his private life might be thought a bit rackety. But the life Oakeshott lived was not an unexamined one; it expressed an idea of individuality he found in the philosophers he most admired. It is…
manwithoutqualities 