There is a type of knowledge that presents itself as entirely neutral—as if it merely records reality exactly as it is, free from self-interest, ideology, or history. Medicine claims to describe the body. Psychiatry claims to describe the mind. Jurisprudence claims to describe justice. Modernism, that massive intellectual climate that defined the 19th and 20th […]
When Power Becomes a Burden: Cyclic Patterns of Crisis, Delegitimation, and Elite Exodus Introduction In the history of major social crises—wars, economic collapses, and political breakdowns—a recurring pattern emerges: the search for a “culprit” to swiftly diffuse systemic tension. This “scapegoating” mechanism does not explain the root causes of a crisis; instead, it […]
There is a type of thought that cannot be expressed linearly. It demands a detour through analogy and a form that speaks for itself before we even utter a word. Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is precisely such a thought — a book that is simultaneously the object and the very interpretation of consciousness and time. It […]
Late in his illuminating and useful examination of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Benjamin Ware quotes Wittgenstein’s assessment of the Viennese house the philosopher designed and built for his sister in 1940, by many lights a modernist masterpiece that Wittgenstein himself deems “the product of a decidedly sensitive ear and good manners, an expression of great understanding […]
What makes me the same person throughout my life, and a different person from you? And what is the importance of these facts? I believe that most of us have false beliefs about our own nature, and our identity over time, and that, when we see the truth, we ought to change some of our […]
Metaphysical debates in quantum physics don’t get at ‘truth’ – they’re nothing but a form of ritual, activity and culture. I first learnt about Plato’s allegory of the cave when I was in senior high school. A mathematics and English nerd – a strange combination – I played cello and wrote short stories in my […]
The French novelist and philosopher Albert Camus was a terrifically good-looking guy whom women fell for helplessly—the Don Draper of existentialism. This may seem a trivial thing to harp on, except that it is almost always the first thing that comes up when people who knew Camus talk about what he was like. When Elizabeth […]
Visiting Wittgenstein’s home evokes the philosopher’s serious, ascetic mind (no doubt he would disapprove its restoration) Westerners who see ancestor worship as something only other cultures do should look around: signs of its devout practice are everywhere. We have park benches in memory of those who once sat there, plaques to the famous inhabitants of […]