Berfrois

The End of the Beginning by Douglas Penick

The End of the Beginning by Douglas Penick

This essay marks the ending of the lavish storehouse of riches known as Berfrois...

Read More

After Literacy

After Literacy

The idea that each of us has a singular voice, and that it places a stamp of authorship on our compositions, is of course corollary to the prohibition on plagiarism...

Read More

Douglas Penick Presents Kidder Smith Presenting Dogen Zenji

Douglas Penick Presents Kidder Smith Presenting Dogen Zenji

We speak dreams in dream from before all dreaming...

Read More

The serious amateur hopes for something more…

The serious amateur hopes for something more…

Many people who engage in some pursuit avidly yet non-professionally might not share Adorno’s condescending attitude towards hobbies...

Read More

Torments of Unclarity

Torments of Unclarity

Why did Husserl begin thinking about movement? What was it that inspired him to make what one might call “the movement turn”?

Read More

God, Justice, Love, Beauty: Remembering Jean-Luc Nancy

God, Justice, Love, Beauty: Remembering Jean-Luc Nancy

For Nancy, democracy is not a given form of government, with a fixed meaning, but a term whose meaning is in contestation...

Read More

A Spinozan Reading by Simon Calder

A Spinozan Reading by Simon Calder

Seventeenth-century Christian churches might have been better fortified against the challenges of modernity if they had embraced Spinozism...

Read More

Owen Flanagan thinks that metaphysics must be continuous with our best science…

Owen Flanagan thinks that metaphysics must be continuous with our best science…

This conception of meaning-seeking motivates his modern adaptation of Buddhism, his pluralistic ethics, and his cross-cultural approach...

Read More

Ludwig Wittgenstein arranges books

Ludwig Wittgenstein arranges books

The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know...

Read More

What’s Eating

What’s Eating

All life seems to be like wine, in that one always wants more; but unlike wine, in that one cannot quit it. Writing in particular seems to be a lot like wine. It’s good, it’s bad...

Read More

Call Back Yesterday

Call Back Yesterday

The eternalist understanding of time allows for time travel to be possible...

Read More

Karl Marx’s Confession

Karl Marx’s Confession

Marx's favourite colour was red...

Read More

The State of Human History

The State of Human History

Anthropology is fundamentally an anarchist project, as it zeroes in on levels of social reality where the state, even when it exists, is not the most salient factor in accounting for why human beings do what they do...

Read More

Our Purpose Is Preservation

Our Purpose Is Preservation

Twenty years ago a prophetic Onion article reported that the Dinty Moore soup company took a firm stand against terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11. Today this is no longer satire...

Read More

Berlin and the Volcanoes of Theory by Stuart Walton

Berlin and the Volcanoes of Theory by Stuart Walton

The principal shift in the transition from German to French theory is the abandonment of any ethical duty to the biggest picture of all, that of society...

Read More

Certainly Certain

Certainly Certain

Wittgenstein tends to merge certainty and knowledge a little...

Read More

The Perpetual Hygiene Regime and the STEMification of the Intellectuals

The Perpetual Hygiene Regime and the STEMification of the Intellectuals

It is the duty of intellectuals and artists to reject enforced glee, to carve out a preserve for the life of the soul as best they can, and to call madness by its name...

Read More

Jai Chakrabarti on Janusz Korczak

Jai Chakrabarti on Janusz Korczak

Korczak lived an extraordinary life through the worst of times. He was an educator and ran an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto...

Read More

Inhabiting Weil’s Philosophy by Aishwarya Iyer

Inhabiting Weil’s Philosophy by Aishwarya Iyer

Everything which is impersonal in man is sacred, and nothing else...

Read More

Hannes Schumacher: Now, Apocalypse

Hannes Schumacher: Now, Apocalypse

To say that the apocalypse is both utopian and dystopian is neither left nor right but baldly realist; it is to prolong the ultimate decision into all eternity...

Read More