Metahistory
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Premodern/Modern/Postmodern
American politics used to be primarily about people choosing candidates based on their positions on issues—taxes, deregulation, the environment, jobs, health care, energy policy, welfare, social security, national security, and so on. But elections have become more about making a statement about your identity; and national elections are about whoe we say we are to
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Quarreling with Liberalism
My loathing for what the GOP has come to represent is about as intense as it could possibly be, but my criticism does not come from the standpoint of Liberalism. I came across this quote from Louis Menand's essay "Christopher Lasch's Quarrel with Liberalism", and it serves as an introduction to what I want to
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Cultural Drift
Or is it metaphysical drift? Or is it a kind of spiritual decay that leads to cultural decadence? Drift is what the cultural right is revolting against, and that drift is a problem that the cultural left just doesn't get or care about? Should it? How far can the culture go in de-linking itself from
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The Master and His Emissary
This is the title of Iain McGilchrist's important new book. It's subtitle is "The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World". The video below summarizes very succinctly and broadly the argument he's making, but it's based on a story by Nietzsche: There was once a wise spiritual master, who was the ruler of a
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Competing Tribal Narratives
From Jonathan Haidt, "Forget the Money, Follow the Sacredness" in Saturday's NYT" A good way to follow the sacredness is to listen to the stories that each tribe tells about itself and the larger nation. The Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith once summarized the moral narrative told by the American left like this: “Once upon
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Beginning Middle End
I want to continue to develop some of the ideas I was exploring in the recent piece I posted about styles of thinking. I think there's probably too much going on in diagram I used to begin the piece–and too much remains unexplained. So in the next several posts I'm going to break it down
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Garry Wills NYRB piece on ‘All Things Shining’
I came across Garry Wills New York Review of Books review of ATS last night. He pretty much hated it. "It is written by well-regarded professors," he says "(one of them the chairman of the Harvard philosophy department). This made me rub my eyes with astonishment as I read the book itself, so inept and
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More Thoughts on “All Things Shining”
I’ve been thinking more about All Things Shining and why I am drawn to it and why I have problems with it. I think the easiest way for me explain my thinking about the book is by reference to the diagram above. ATS is Quadrant 1 thinking, and it’s very interesting and helpful within
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Thoughts on ‘All Things Shining’
I've been spending some time with Dreyfus and Kelly the last two weeks. I like what they're up to in their book, All Things Shining, and also in their respective courses based on the themes in the book, which you can find on podcast here for Kelly's Harvard seminar or at iTunes U for Dreyfus's
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History & Meaning
Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?–Blaise Pascal The growing rush and the disappearance of contemplation and simplicity from modern life [are] the symptoms of a complete uprooting of culture. The waters of religion retreat and leave behind pools and bogs. The sciences . . . atomize old beliefs.