From Chapter 11, “There is Money. Spend it”: America Since 1945: “There IS money. Spend it, spend it; spend more.” —Ford in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II, Scene 2 Q. Mr. President, I would like to ask you a question about what people should do to make the recession recede. THE PRESIDENT: Buy.…
Read MoreT. S. Eliot in 1923. Photography by Lady Ottoline Morrell From Poetry: In the summer of 1918, T.S. Eliot was alarmed by the news that the American armed forces in Europe, then engaged in the final campaign against Germany, would begin to conscript American citizens living in England. Eliot had arrived in England at the…
Read Moreby Nico Slate On Thursday November 17, a few days after Occupy Wall Street protesters were evicted from Zuccotti Park, a poster emerged declaring “mass non-violent direct action” to “shut down wall street,” “occupy the subways,” and “take the square.” While the reference to “non-violent direct action” reminded me of Martin Luther King and Mahatma…
Read MoreIf evil is inevitable for human beings, then God is held responsible for it and theodicy is doomed to fail…
Read MorePhoenix Park, Dublin. Photograph part of the Clarke Collection, Irish National Library by James Joyce Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged…
Read Moreby John Beverley Let me begin by recalling a famous passage in his lectures on The Philosophy of History, where Hegel, writing in 1822, anticipates the future of the United States: Had the forests of Germany still been in existence, the French Revolution would not have occurred. North America will be comparable with Europe only after…
Read MoreRon Paul speaking to supporters at a “victory rally” following the 2012 Iowa Republican Caucuses in Ankeny, Iowa. Photograph by Gage Skidmore by A. Staley Groves What the republican candidatura conceals in its paradoxical movement is the questionable duration of the American State. This question is concealed by the incessant focus on the figure of…
Read MoreWhat is work? Why do we work? How is work valued? These questions are fundamental to any human society…
Read MoreVase by Janet Leach, c. 1980 by Peter Betjemann Consider what comes first to mind when one thinks about handcrafted ceramics. I myself would venture that many people’s initial vision of a handmade vase would involve some aspect of irregularity: perhaps a bold one-of-a-kind design, an imperfectly round rim, a slight asymmetry in the body,…
Read MoreIf one subtracts the beliefs in karma, rebirth and nirvana from Buddhism, what remains is a philosophy that should be attractive to contemporary analytic philosophers…
Read MoreHarem scene, from Memorie Turche, Museo Civico Correr, Cicogna, 1971 by Eric Dursteler In 1559, a ship sailed from Venice to the Dalmatian coast. On board were a mother and her four children, including her young daughter, Beatrice Michiel. As they crossed the Adriatic, corsairs waylaid the ship and took the family captive. The mother…
Read Moreby Emanuela Scarpellini The press has various ways of describing the current crisis afflicting many countries, including Italy. The first is usually to call it a finance crisis and blame the banks and financial intermediaries; there is talk of problems in the real economy, industry producing less and exports dwindling, thus causing unemployment; or of…
Read Moreby Serkan Gorkemli In 2007, Kaos GL, a bimonthly publication of the Kaos Gay and Lesbian Cultural Research and Solidarity Association in Ankara, Turkey, devoted its November/December issue to “Turkiye’nin Gay Ikonlari” (Turkey’s Gay Icons). The magazine surveyed readers and published a list of the ten most popular gay icons in Turkey. Various well-known celebrities…
Read MoreMetamorphosen 04, Atelier Olschinsky The following is an interview with Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala, authors of Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx. The interview took place in January, 2011. Questioner How does one manage to write a book with another author? Zabala It’s all about collaboration. Over the past several years,…
Read MoreThe Slaying of the Bull of Ishtar, from Myths of Babylonia and Assyria, illustrated by Ernest Wallcousins, 1915 by Theodore Ziolkowski Any ten minute search on the internet turns up hundreds of hits for Gilgamesh in recent years. Apart from novels, plays, poems, operas, and paintings, the ancient Babylonian hero shows up in children’s books,…
Read More180 Stanton Street by Jonathan Boyarin The fast-approaching secular year 2013 will mark the centennial of a modest building at 180 Stanton Street, on New York City’s Lower East Side, that houses Congregation Bnai Jacob Anshei Brzezan. I first entered its doors and re-learned how to place tefillin on my arms and head in order…
Read MoreFemale factory workers in Shenzhen, China, Douglas Johnson From Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: In 1923, the British House of Commons had what was termed “a great debate”: “Socialism or Capitalism: Which?” Not so long ago, books were regularly published on this thorny topic; but now, even on the left, enthusiasm for raising the issue has…
Read MoreDignity and Impudence, Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, 1839 by Donna Hicks Nobody wants to be treated badly or to feel inferior. Yet, it is not uncommon for everyone to experience a violation of that dignity on a daily basis. It happens everywhere humans come in contact with one another: dignity violations abound, with our intimate…
Read MoreGuy Aldred, c.1912 by Ruth Kinna Guy Aldred is an obscure but important figure in the history of socialist thought. He sometimes crops up in histories of British socialism, syndicalist and labour organisation, but rarely in discussions of socialist theory. His uncompromising commitment to activism perhaps explains this neglect: as Aldred himself argued in a…
Read MoreHugh Dancy as Mortimer Granville and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Charlotte Dalrymple in Hysteria, Informant Media, 2011 From The New Yorker: If the popular perception remains that Victorians were hopelessly mired in repression and prudery, Lutz seeks to capture the shuddering underbelly of Victorian society—what Steven Marcus’s classic 1974 study, “The Other Victorians,” described as “a world…
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