Tag Archives: Oedipus

Howard Kurtz is My Hero

Journalist Howard Kurtz has been goofing up lately, but the way he addressed it this past weekend is incredibly impressive (as can be seen in the below video). It’s rare, almost unheard of in any context, for someone to so … Continue reading

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Thinking and Apocalypse: Heuristic (Shorthand) Thinking vs. Critical Thinking. Should We Be Optimistic About Our Future?

Given the paucity of sustained critical thinking in our culture, science writer K. C. Cole reflects on our prospects for collective survival in a recent (and I think important) review at the Los Angeles Review of Books: No one in … Continue reading

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Christopher Hitchens’s Opiate: Not Religion, But Alcohol

Marx was right. Religion is an opiate. But Sophocles was right as well. In the furnace of this world, it’s understandable if, Oedipus-like, a person avoids too naked and persistent a confrontation with the world by plucking out her eyes. … Continue reading

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What Would Oedipus Say?

Freud’s Totem and Taboo in a nutshell (and with nuts). Amusing, but perhaps a minute too long.

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A Sign from Zeus: Andre Glucksmann on Textual Interpretation and Emphasis

A quote doesn’t get more profound than this, so I’ll post it twice (so that you’ll read it twice). It comes from the French philosopher, Andre Glucksmann: Socrates’s uncertainty revealed a rupture that gave birth to philosophy. The divine word is … Continue reading

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The Two Confidences of Atheism vs. The Four Confidences of Theism

When it comes right down to it, what are atheists confident about and what are theists confident about? It occurs to me that, to be an atheist, your life ultimately rests on just two rather naked confidences: God does not … Continue reading

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Why I’m an Agnostic, But Not an Atheist

What is it, really, that separates the atheist from the agnostic? I would argue that the ultimate dividing line between the atheist and the agnostic is over the issue of mystery. For the atheist, the ontological mystery—the mystery of being—is merely an … Continue reading

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The Eight Ways of Being in the World

It’s hard to live in the world. Suffering happens. Then more suffering happens. Then you die. In the face of these facts, Albert Camus wrote that the first question of philosophy is suicide. But if you’re not going to do … Continue reading

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AC Grayling: For University Students, Stop the Hand-Holding?

In today’s Guardian, philosopher AC Grayling offers his view of the role of a university education: University is emphatically not about spoon-feeding and hand-holding through courses, but the very opposite. It is not about maximising contact hours, but about autonomy … Continue reading

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