Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  I've been reading Diogenes Laertius' LIVES AND OPINIONS.  Considered as a piece of writing, it is a terrible job. It is just one thing after another. "Another story told about X is that Q1 happened to him.  But according to some sources, it was Q2 that really happened.  And according to others, Q1 really happened to Y instead. Yet another thing said about X is... Here are three brief poems attributed to X." Considered as a source on events of ancient times, that anti-stylistic formlessness is presumably its value. Laertius isn't inserting his own grand design into his account of lives and opinions of classical Greek philosophers. He is just passing along what he has heard. As to Socrates, [and yes that is the cliched image of Socrates above, the David painting], Laertius has heard at least two things that I hadn't encountered in any other source, and that seem intriguing: Socrates was taught by a philosopher named Archelaus, who was a philosopher of nature i...

  As of this moment, I have NOT been able to give this answer to this question at Quora.  For some reason, my interface with the site for this purpose has been unsuccessful.  I will post here then, to lessen the sense of frustration. Both question and answer.   Hello: To the people who read philosophy, can you explain to me its benefits and why I should read a book by a philosopher and then read a book by another philosopher who responded to him 200 years later, for example? Those are two very different requests, but since you have used only one question mark I suspect you think you have asked only one question. First you asked whether I, someone who reads philosophy, can explain its benefits. Presumably this means its benefits to me, whatever keeps me reading such books and articles. You could probably have put a question mark after the word “benefit”. Thereafter you ask a very different question: whether I can tell you why you should read at least two books by phi...

  Something I saw in my preferred post-twitter social media site. https://newsie.social/@Motorod@mastodon.social/114325784714367605   Cian Westmoreland is a US veteran and a whistle blower.  Brief bio: he was born in 1988, enlisted in the US Air Force at 18, and in time became Air Force Technician with the 73rd Expeditionary Squadron in Kandahar, Afghanistan. In that capacity he helped create a data-relay system for the operation of killer drones. He is now out of the service and trying to warn attentive audiences of what he was involved in. "Quite a few civilians died because of what I was working on," he now says.   But what I can't get over is his name.  Cian Westmoreland.   Westmoreland, of course, is the surname of the general, William Westmoreland, who held the title Commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, or just "head of MACV," through most of the administration of President Lyndon Johnson.  He was Time Man of the Year...

Last weekend was, for Christians, Easter Weekend. I let it pass unnoticed here.  I come so tardy to the fair because I started work on a Good Friday post on related subject matter, but it got out of hand.  I went with some thoughts on Auden and love, instead. Today, though, I would like to talk a bit about  The Mystery of the Kingdom of God, a 'golden age' book by Albert Schweitzer, 1914, precisely about the life, ministry and death of Jesus.  Consider this my effort at a fair paraphrase of Schweitzer's deep and complicated book.  Schweitzer, best remembered as the medical missionary of his later years after he had put his academic career behind him, was intellectually a remarkable figure who both was and was not a believing Christian. He understanding of the mission of Jesus, Jesus' own self-understanding, is one on which people of entirely secular turns of mind could agree without sacrifice of that secularism.  Indeed, Jesus comes off as a compelling...

When I hear the name of the poet W.H. Auden, I think instantly of the poem September 1, 1939. This poem is named for the day on which Germany launched its Lightning-war on Poland.  Auden understood the significance of the date, and the poem contains some of the most memorable and so the most commonly quoted verse lines of the 20th century, including his lament about the proud German culture and to what it had come. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz What huge imago made A psychopathic god.... Recognizing all of that, I am happy to report my own discovery and delight -- that Auden has other less heavily freighted sides.  Here is a love poem of his that consists of an extended rif on two loves -- the love many humans have for the sight of a cloudless starry night sky, and the love we have, at our best, for one another.  The More Loving One Looking up at the stars, I know quite we...

Trump's tariffs are imbecilic.  If they ever go into effect as designed they stand to do the whole world economy an enormous amount of harm. Even if they are reversed quickly by one route or another, -- not just put off for 90 day intervals but reversed -- they stand to do harm, because these things are not simply a switch easy to turn on and off and on again.   But let us think about a simple bilateral example of this stupidity for a moment. Trump proposes to create a "reciprocal" tariff of 47% on imports from Madagascar, to go into effect when the latest "pause" comes to an end. Why? On some level (the one that justifies the word "reciprocal") he seems to want us to believe that Madagascar at present has a 47% tariff, or greater, on the US, so it is the least we can do on behalf of fairness.  You will likely not be surprised to learn that that is not the case.  About 40% of imports to Madagascar require payment of a 20% customs duty.  Not 47%. Not ev...