Blog Stats
- 2,921,109 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- Sheilah V Madrid on In 1935, Were Cary Grant and Randolf Scott Sex Partners? No, But These Images Look Rather Camp
- DOG WHISTLES Illustrated Guide on A List Of Republican Dog Whistles That No Longer Seem To Work
- ANSWER THE QUESTIONS » Uswritingconsultants on Feminism for Beginners
- Diego on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- 'The Heart Wants What It Wants': You Season 4 Opens With an Icky on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- You S4 Episode 1 Quote Explained: Heart Wants What It Wants Meaning on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- 'The Heart Wants What It Wants': You Season 4 Opens With an Icky (and Misinterpreted) Quote - Blogs Hub on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- 'The Heart Wants What It Wants': You Season 4 Opens With an Icky (and Misinterpreted) Quote - UsTechCrunch - Tech Solution Guide on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- 'The Heart Needs What It Needs': You Season 4 Opens With an Icky (and Misinterpreted) Quote - TS PUBLISHING on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- 'The Heart Wants What It Wants': You Season 4 Opens With an Icky (and Misinterpreted) Quote - Welcome on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- ‘The Heart Desires What It Desires’: You Season 4 Opens With an Icky (and Misinterpreted) Quote – Latest Health News, Tips, Nutrition, Diet and Fitness. on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- ‘The Coronary heart Needs What It Needs’: You Season 4 Opens With an Icky (and Misinterpreted) Quote – Latest Health News, Tips, Nutrition, Diet and Fitness. on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- 'The Coronary heart Wants What It Wants': You Season 4 Opens With an Icky (and Misinterpreted) Quote - News today updates on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- 'The Heart Wants What It Wants': You Season 4 Opens With an Icky (and Misinterpreted) Quote - NetWorthyNews on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- 'The Heart Wants What It Wants': You Season 4 Opens With an Icky (and Misinterpreted) Quote - My Blog on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
Top Posts
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- "Courtly Love, Or, Woman As Thing": How To Do Lacanian Analysis Like Slavoj Zizek (Or, At Least Understand What He's Getting At When He Does)
- World Literature's First Existentialist Musings: Before Ecclestiastes, Hamlet, Dostoevsky, and Camus, There was The Epic of Gilgamesh
- UFOs, Aliens, and Religious Art
- Josh Timonen: Richard Dawkins's Judas Iscariot?
- Lord Byron's pro-war poem?
- Two Interesting UFO Documents: The "Smith Memo" (1950) and Physicist Robert Sarbacher's 1983 Letter
- A God Delusion: Josh Timonen v. Richard Dawkins
-
Recent Posts
Recent Haiku Tweets
Tweets by SantiTafarella-
Tag Archives: Dostoevsky
Absent Good Reasons and Evidence, Trust No One
I don’t like this t-shirt. It cheer-leads obfuscation, mystification, authority. A better statement would be, “I’m a professor. If I make a claim, doubt it and ask for the reasons and evidence I have in support of the claim. I … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, college, critical thinking, Dostoevsky, psychology, reason, The Grand Inquisitor
1 Comment
Why was Socrates Put to Death?
At Slate, David Auerbach summarizes philosopher Rebecca Goldstein’s take on why Socrates died: Goldstein [in her new book, Plato at the Googleplex] argues that Socrates was ultimately executed because he deferred to no one’s authority and tore down Athens’ idealized … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged authority, Dostoevsky, mystification, philosophy, Socrates
5 Comments
Burger King in Russia, Circa 2011
Thought experiment. Imagine resurrecting the following figures from the Russian and Soviet past: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Czar Nicholas, and Lenin. Show them the ad below. Tell them this is what is being promoted to Russian youth as desirable in the year … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged burger king, capitalism, Communism, Dostoevsky, globalism, hamburgers, lenin, life, Russia, Soviet Union, Tolstoy
Leave a comment
I Plank, Therefore I Am
. If you don’t know what planking is, it’s where you have somebody take a picture of you lying, typically face down, rigid as a board, in an unexpected place. You then post it on the Internet. In the above photo, for … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Albert Camus, atheism, atheist, Dostoevsky, Jesus, life, philosophy, plank, planking, the absurd, underground man, yoga
Leave a comment
Checkmate: Death and Determinism are the Two Absolute Truths of Atheism
It’s sometimes asserted that atheism admits of no ultimate or absolute truths, but in the “D Girl” episode of the Sopranos (Season 2) is a rather nice exchange between Tony Soprano and his therapist, Dr. Jennifer Malfi, that suggests otherwise. The exchange concerns … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, determinism, Dostoevsky, existentialism, francis crick, freedom, naturalism, nihilism, science, tony soprano
17 Comments
Top Secret America: An Alien Has Landed?
I just read Part 1 of the Washington Post’s investigative report on “Top Secret America.” Below is my brief digest of Part 1, accompanied by what I regard as the article’s key quotes. The full piece is here. The Washington Post calls the Fort Meade cluster of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, CIA, Dick Cheney, Dostoevsky, national security state, notes from underground, pentagon, secrecy, spies, top secret america, UFOs, underground man
6 Comments
Existential Flungness in a Twilight Zone Episode
The first ten minutes of this Twilight Zone episode is Rod Serling channeling Beckett, Kafka, and Sartre. It’s very cool. Unfortunately, the rest of the episode is not on YouTube. I know the ending, though, and will tell you what it … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Camus, Dostoevsky, existentialism, God, Kafka, life, philosophy, rapture, Sartre, truth, twilight zone, waiting for godot
4 Comments
An atheist’s despair at the universe’s apparent lack of purpose—and a plea for meaning?
Some of the lyrics: Give me something to believe. Cause I am living just to breath. And I need something more to keep on breathing for. So give me something to believe. Is atheism a dead end that leads to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, Camus, Dostoevsky, existentialism, God, Nietzsche, Sartre, The Brothers Karamazov, theism
5 Comments
Structural Demolition and the Religious Psyche
Hmm. I understand the metaphor, but there’s also something vaguely disturbing about mixing a spiritual message with the primitive glee of tearing down a real building:
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 9-11, death, demolition, destruction, Dostoevsky, God, Jesus, life, underground men
Leave a comment
Adam Kirsch Reviews Zeev Sternhell’s New Book on the Enlightenment v. Romanticism
Are you an Enlightenment universalist, a brooding Romantic, or a Rorty-like Pragmatist trying to split the difference? Regardless of your answer, a new book has just come out with a very definite point of view on the question (the author … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Dostoevsky, isaiah berlin, philosophy, pragmatism, richard rorty, romanticism, the Enlightenment, thomas carlyle, Wordsworth
2 Comments
Can an Authoritarian Tree Produce Good Fruit? Thinking about John Calvin’s Geneva
After Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth? Here’s the historian Will Durant, from his book The Reformation (1957, pp. 473-474), on what John Calvin’s Geneva was like in the 16th century: Calvin himself, austere and severe, dreamed of a community … Continue reading
Meat Eating Combined with Running Makes You Smarter?
Well, not exactly. But according to Harvard scientist Dan Lieberman, it was a big factor in making you smart in the first place. Here’s his syllogism: Starting about two million years ago, our ancestors’s ever increasing ability to run long distances … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged anthropology, biology, contingency, Dostoevsky, evolution, fitness, health, Kant, running, science, vegetarian, vegetarianism
Leave a comment
Notes from Underground
Who will speak from the insistent vantage of the ontological mystery? Against the best efforts of our contemporary advocates of scientism, positivism, and reductionism, below is a succinct explanation for why religion, poetry, Dostoevsky’s “underground man,” and Camus’s “Sisyphian hero” cannot just cede the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Albert Camus, Camus, Dostoevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, philosophy, poetry, Politics, reductionism, religion, science, the ontological mystery
4 Comments
Irony, Contingency, Solidarity: It’s Not Easy Being Green—Especially in Iran
Perhaps you’ve noticed that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was opposed in the recent election by a man with rather bold and outspoken followers who had a particular fondness for green. In fact, you may have observed that there’s a lot of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Buddhism, Christianity, contingency, Dostoevsky, Hitler, Islam, Israel, Jesus, Kant, Mohammad, philosophy, Susan Neiman
9 Comments
“What is called resignation is confirmed desperation” (Henry David Thoreau)
Escaping from freedom into the ecstasy of resignation and submission (1967): Or another way to look at it: “Atheism is a ferocious system, that leaves nothing above us to excite awe, nor around us to awaken tenderness” (R. Hall).
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 1960s, 1967, Buddhism, Charisma, confirmed desperation, Dostoevsky, evangelicalism, Henry David Thoreau, Hinduism, krishna, yoga, Zen
Leave a comment
This Hans Holbein Painting of Christ after Crucifixion Sparked Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Imagination
While living in Bern, Germany, Fyodor Dostoevsky was mesmerized by the Hans Holbein painting below. Dostoevsky saw what the painting depicted as the pivot on which faith or unbelief must rest. One must either believe that God raised Jesus’s body from … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, atheist, Dostoevsky, faith, Fyodor Dostoevsky, hans holbein, Jesus, nature, nihilism, religion, resurrection, science
10 Comments
Quote of the Day
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote this arresting passage in his short story, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”: [P]eople appeared who began devising ways of bringing men together again, so that each individual, without ceasing to prize himself above all others, might not … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Communism, Dostoevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hegel, life, literature, psychology, Socialism, totalitarianism, utopia, utopianism, war
Leave a comment
Prometheus Unbound 