Crack open for a hard boiled think
Few works of economic and political analysis are worth reading 60 years after publication. The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955), by French intellectual Raymond Aron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Aron) is one of them. The author shows how noble ideas can slide into the tyranny of secular religion and emphasizes how political thought has the profound responsibility of telling the […]
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One of my favourite contemporary philosophers is Simon Blackburn (http://www2.phil.cam.ac.uk/~swb24/). A lot of this is to do with his willingness to address his books to a popular audience. He is never less than lucid and informative. I feel a wry but honest smile behind much of his commentary. His is a cool, powerful, analytical mind.
Mirror, Mirror by Simon Blackburn Read More »
It’s hard to imagine a cockroach being bored. It simply gets on with what a cockroach does and then dies. Boredom seems only to be a possibility for organisms capable of reflective consciousness. Schopenhauer treated boredom as worthy of philosophical consideration. He thought it was lethal and that it proved the vanity of human existence. Heidegger,
Boredom: A lively history by Peter Toohey Read More »
In this widely acclaimed work from 1983, Benedict Anderson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Anderson and http://postcolonialstudies.emory.edu/benedict-anderson/) examines the creation and global spread of the ‘imagined communities’ of nationality. He explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialization of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time.
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Ian Frazier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Frazier and http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111023952) trains his perceptive, generous eye on Siberia, the expanse of Asiatic Russia with a grim renown. In Travels in Siberia (2010), Frazier reveals Siberia’s role in history – its science, economics, and politics – with great passion and enthusiasm, ensuring that we’ll never think about it in the same way again. He tells the stories
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E. B. White (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._B._White and http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4155/the-art-of-the-essay-no-1-e-b-white ) conjures up clear and beautiful images in this collection of essays (1977). With detailed descriptions of sights, sounds, and transitory moments he brings his experiences vividly to life. You will find yourself immersed in technicolour New England, New York, or Florida. His crystalline depictions of all the moods and colours of
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Mythologies (1957) shows Roland Barthes’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes) interest in the meaning of practically everything around him, not only the books and paintings of high art, but also the slogans, trivia, toys, food, and popular rituals (cruises, striptease, eating, wrestling matches) of contemporary life. For Barthes, words and objects have in common the organized capacity to say something; at
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By looking at the brilliant minds of mathematician Kurt Godel, graphic artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, computer-science and cognitive-science professor Douglas Hofstadter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_hofstadter) ties together the aesthetic gift of pattern recognition and manipulation with theories on artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and the essence of self-awareness. Godel, Escher, Bach (1979) is not a
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While many readers are familiar with John McPhee’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_mcphee) masterful pieces on a large scale (the geological history of North America, or the nature of Alaska), McPhee is equally remarkable when he considers the seemingly inconsequential. Oranges (1967) was conceived as a short magazine piece, but thanks to his unparalleled investigative skills, became a slim, fact-filled book.
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