Tag: double truth
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God Has Died Before
I only just now realized that today the Guardian published a piece I did for them on the “death of God” theological controversy in the 1960s. It is geared, especially, as a reflection on the New Atheist debates that have been going on lately: Unlike some of the prominent atheists of today, these thinkers knew…
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The Shooting Gallery
Once again in the New York Times Happy Days blog, I’m testing myself. Last time, I was testing my faith. This time, it’s my trigger finger: I’ve always really liked guns. Growing up, I fantasized about them endlessly, though my parents discouraged it every way they could. I came to agree with them in principle…
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Science & Religion: Still Not Settled
A psychologist, an astrophysicist, and, um, a “neurotheologist” take the stage in a Brooklyn art gallery, alongside donation-priced beer, to talk about science and religion. That should about cover the bases, right? Time for some good, scientific answers for a change? Last night, Brooklyn’s second-favorite online magazine it has never heard of (look out for…
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The Diaries of the Late God
Last week a dear friend blessed me with a 1968 first edition paperback copy of a sleeping classic: Excerpts from the Diaries of the Late God by Anthony Towne. I love this. The dedication page sends a tingle down my spine. The poet Anthony Towne was, if you didn’t know, the extraordinary partner of the…
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Resources for Compassion
Last night the distinguished (and remarkably cheerful) legal philosopher Martha Nussbaum spoke in New York at the William Alanson White Institute to a crowd of graying analysts and a handful of rambunctious kids in the back from Brown’s class of ’06. Guess which I was. The title of the talk was “Compassion: Human and Animal.”…
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The Origins of Knowledge
In book XII of Metaphysics, Aristotle is on a roll. He has already figured out the causes and workings of the earthly world and, by book’s end, will have mounted the summit of God—the prime mover, for the love of whom all things move. The final step before this, however, lies with the stars. At…
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Giving Bad Directions
Last night, while waiting for a friend at the corner of Lafayette and Bleeker, I learned that to stand at a busy corner near a Manhattan subway entrance means becoming a directions machine. In the course of half an hour, maybe eight people asked me for directions. I’m a guy with a pretty good sense…
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Are Ideas Serious? (Zizek in Jonestown)
Perhaps philosophy today has taken its cue from a world that believes ideas need not be taken seriously. They can be replaced, the policy goes, with stuff like enjoyment, the market, and values. Or else, ideas are simply a subset of those. I myself have argued at times that philosophy might simply be reducible to…
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Empathy in Action
In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been an ongoing back-and-forth over in the comments at a recent post, which have forced me to explain more fully some earlier statements about empathy as a political virtue and skepticism as an intellectual habit. Joel, who has been patient enough to draw me out on these things, has…
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Fame, Sainthood, Personhood, Failure
I’ll begin with a commentary on a commentary on a commentator of texts. Last night over noodles in a food court in Flushing, Queens, a friend told me about an Egyptian poet who probed the connections between commentary and silence. In the September 29 New Yorker, Louis Menand has a piece on the literary critic…