Studies in a Dying Culture

Why I didn’t publish this draft on August 12, 2008 when I wrote it, I do not know. At least there are links to follow. Free issue online: Contemporary Chinese Thought, Volume 37, Number 4, Summer 2006. Theme issue: Globalization. I see that things have not improved since I last reviewed this journal on this [...]

A draft from March 5, 2009. I don’t recall what I planned to write, but here are the references: Nizan, Paul. “The End of a Philosophic Parry: Bergsonism,” Les Revues, 1929, reprinted in Paul Nizan, Intellectuel Communiste Maspero (Paris, 1967). Nizan exposes Bergson’s empty pseudoconcreteness, which reminds me of Adorno’s later evisceration of Heidegger. My [...]

Originally titled “Ethnoepistemology, my ass!”, written 2 August 2008. Excuse all the cuss words. I’ve cut out a few of the epithets, but I’m preserving the flavor of my diatribe. * * * * * Ethnoepistemology (James Maffie), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. There are often lapses and biases in reference works in the humanities [...]

In initiating a close reading of the Daoist (Taoist) classic the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching) on the part of my discussion group the Washington Philosophy Circle, I discovered this new translation by Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, who, as it turns out, are major peddlers of ancient Chinese philosophy retooled for [...]

Cohen, Avner; Dascal, Marcelo; eds. The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989. Joseph Margolis, “Radical Philosophy and Radical History,” pp. 249-270. Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Derrida may have wanted to put an end to traditional philosophy, but at most they provided self-corrective measures, not the therapies they though they [...]

Cohen, Avner; Dascal, Marcelo; eds. The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989. Hilary Putnam, “Why Is a Philosopher?”, pp. 61-75. Putnam expresses his distemper with positivism and postmodernism, discusses the problem of language and the beloved philosopher’s problem of the brain-in-a-vat, and proposes his philosophy of internal realism. [...]

Cohen, Avner; Dascal, Marcelo; eds. The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989. Much of this book is a portrait of bankruptcy, permeated by the stench of Richard Rorty. Here are a few stool specimens. Hector-Neri Castaneda, “Philosophy as a Science and as a Worldview,” pp. 35-60. Castaneda is [...]

Cohen, Avner; Dascal, Marcelo; eds. The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989. When I first surveyed this anthology four years ago, the name Marcelo Dascal, whose work is currently under review, was unknown to me. My assessment of this book was . . . er . . . [...]

Dascal, Marcello. How rational can a polemic across the analytic-continental ‘divide’ be?, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 9(3): 313-339, 2001. In order to specify controversy’s position within the large family of polemical dialogues, I propose to distinguish between three members of the subfamily to which controversies belong. I will call them ‘discussion’, ‘dispute’, and ‘controversy’. [...]

Mid-April through the first week of May proved to be a fertile Esperanto period. I translated Blake’s "The Birds" into Esperanto and put several other author’s pieces on my web site. I revisited one of my favorite Esperanto short-story volumes, Vitralo, by John I. Francis, and put "La Klera Despoto" [The Cultured Despot] online. I [...]