Tag: David Hume

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

2,012 words

He [Rousseau] had nothing new, but he set everything on fire. — Madame de Staël

Starting from unlimited freedom I arrive at unlimited despotism. — Shigalev, in Dostoevsky’s The Devils

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, not Karl Marx is the real father and inspiration for the theater of the absurd that is today’s Left. Rousseau’s “Man is born free, everywhere he is in chains” is the original formulation of the adolescent anarchist rally-cry, “Rage against the machine!” (more…)

Portrait by Joshua Reynolds

5,714 words

How fares the Truth now? — Ill?
— Do pens but slily further her advance?
May one not speed her but in phrase askance?
Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?
— Thomas Hardy, “Lausanne, In Gibbon’s Old Garden: 11-12 p.m.”
The 110th anniversary of the completion of the Decline and Fall at the same hour and place

Edward Gibbon was born in Putney, England on May 8, 1737. He was the sole survivor of a family with seven children; he had five brothers and one sister who all died in infancy. (more…)

Gustave Doré, The Fall of Lucifer

3,236 words

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? — Jeremiah 17:9

Unde malum? Where does evil come from? I first pondered that question as a child, a childhood of full immersion in a fundamentalist, Baptist Weltanschauung. Evil’s origin and its persistence in the world was the central motif in the narrative of the Great Rebellion, the failure of Angel Lucifer’s insurrection against God. The origin of evil came from a titanic battle of supernatural beings. (more…)

7,156 words

1. Introduction

The thesis of this essay is that it is wise to be superstitious. To put it differently, I will argue that my readers should be superstitious — or that they should embrace the superstitious nature they already have (for most of us have it), rather than try to disown superstition. (more…)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, left, and David Hume.

3,901 words

“No good deed goes unpunished,” as the old saw goes. It puts a cynical, waggish twist on the perspicacious observation that acts of genuine generosity and kindness too often come to grief. Benefactors beware! Shades of Thomas Hobbes: “Man to man is a wolf.” (more…)

Allan Ramsey, David Hume, 1766.

5,513 words

A Very Bad Year

2020 was a bad year for David Hume (1711-1776). Leftists in the United Kingdom, eager to get in on the feast of outrage that followed the drug overdose of George Floyd, complained that David Hume was a racist and should therefore not be revered. And then things went more or less as you would expect. (more…)

1974 West German Bundespost stamp, commemorating Kant’s 250th birthday

5,568 words

Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here

1. Introduction

In the previous essay in this series, we saw Heidegger claiming that Leibniz “prepares” the completion of the metaphysical tradition, but that it is Nietzsche who actually brings it about. I will devote a future essay to Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche, but we may note here that the completion of metaphysics would have been impossible without Kant, who answers Leibniz and inadvertently prepares the way for Nietzsche. (more…)

Mr. Gurdjieff

7,589 words

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was born on this day in 1866, 1872, or 1877 — depending on whom you ask. [1] Much else about his biography is equally uncertain. We do know that his father was Greek, his mother Armenian, and that he was born in Alexandropol which was then part of the Russian Empire (it is now in Armenia and is called Gyumri). (more…)

2,530 words

Lorraine Daston 
Against Nature 
Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019

Loraine Daston’s Against Nature has two qualities that make it a good book. First, it is physically a good book: slim but well-bound, it fits comfortably in the hand and slides easily into the pocket. And there is more than tactile pleasure to be had. (more…)

Gerrit van Honthorst, Croesus y Solon, 1624

2,271 words

English original here

Los dos ensayos de Carl Schmitt sobre “La Tiranía de los Valores” (1959 y 1967) son típicos de su trabajo. Contienen simples e iluminadoras ideas las cuales, sin embargo, son complicadas de poner en conjunto porque Schmitt las presenta sólo a través de conversaciones complejas con otros pensadores y escuelas de pensamiento. (more…)

Gerrit van Honthorst, Croesus and Solon, 1624

2,108 words

Spanish translation here

Carl Schmitt’s two essays on “The Tyranny of Values” (1959 and 1967) are typical of his work. They contain simple and illuminating ideas which are nevertheless quite difficult to piece together because Schmitt presents them only through complex conversations with other thinkers and schools of thought. (more…)

51:13 / 139 words

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Beginning in August of 1999, I gave a series of eight lectures on “The Pursuit of Happiness: (more…)