Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Introduction I recently reread Sigmund Freud’s brilliant essay “The Uncanny” (1919) and I came across a fascinating claim which I failed to adequately process in the past. It has to do with his psychoanalytic analysis of one… Read more ›
Juneteenth (officially Juneteenth National Independence Day since 2021) is celebrated on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. “The holiday’s name, first used in the 1890s, is a portmanteau of the words “June” and “nineteenth”, referring to June 19, 1865,… Read more ›
The great Sylvester Stewart, Sly Stone, passed away yesterday at 82 (March 15, 1943 – June 9, 2025). I have loved his music since I first saw Sly and Family Stone perform “Music Lover/Higher” and “I Want to Take You… Read more ›
Thomas Hobbes In chapter 15 of his book Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes wrote: “No man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own… Read more ›
Introduction In part one of this three-post series (go here) I presented Agnes Heller’s account of the modern and postmodern worldviews and how she thinks postmodernism leaves us with “life on the railway station” or the state of being radically… Read more ›
Introduction In part one of this three-post series (go here) I presented Agnes Heller’s account of the modern and postmodern worldviews and how she thinks postmodernism leaves us with “life on the railway station” or the state of being radically… Read more ›
Introduction Agnes Heller (1929-2019) was a Hungarian philosopher who, among many other things (see a bio here), was Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research for 25 years. I took four incredible… Read more ›
When he was young the Danish philosopher and father of existentialism Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) wrote this sentence in his journal: “I have just returned from a party of which I was the life and soul; wit poured from my lips,… Read more ›
In this post I want to shed some light on the ultimate principle of explanation in Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) systematic worldview, the thing without which nothing can move and develop: God. To approach his theology we need to take a… Read more ›
One of my students was asked by one of his professors to interview another professor about social norms. So he reached out to me with four questions and I responded. I am no expert in social norms which is quite… Read more ›
“Nothing is true, everything is permitted” is the famous maxim of the novel Alamut (1938) by Vladmir Bartol which tells the story of the assassin Hassan-i Sabbah and the Order of Assassins he founded (the Hashshashin that existed in Nizari… Read more ›
One of the ongoing puzzles for humanity is, paradoxically, something that accompanies us all our waking lives: consciousness. Consciousness seems to be so obvious and yet so perplexing. Here are a few very basic ideas and strategies that might be… Read more ›
When I teach the abortion issue in ethics class I usually establish a threefold theoretical structure that is well-received by philosophers and presented clearly in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s (IEP) entry “Abortion“. It goes like this: (1) There is… Read more ›
One of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) most enduring contributions is his analysis of eudaimonia, a word that can be variously translated as happiness, fulfillment, flourishing, or well-being. His analysis appears to have lost none of its power… Read more ›
Nietzsche In section 117 of his book Daybreak Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote: “In prison. My eyes, however strong or weak they may be, can see only a certain distance, and it is within the space encompassed by this distance that… Read more ›