4,969 words

Jeffrey: I’m seeing something that was always hidden. I’m involved in a mystery. And it’s all secret.

Sandy: You like mysteries that much?

Jeffrey: Yeah. You’re a mystery. I like you. Very much.

(more…)

Jonathan Haidt

4,946 words

Part 2 of 2; part 1 here

Jonathan Haidt
The Righteous Mind: How Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
New York: Pantheon Books, 2012

In Part One of this review I discussed Jonathan Haidt’s argument that morality has evolved in response to a number of “adaptive challenges.” (more…)

4,101 words

Part 1 of 2

Jonathan Haidt
The Righteous Mind: How Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
New York: Pantheon Books, 2012

Jonathan Haidt is a former liberal who is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. (more…)

2,344 words

Thomas Sowell
A Conflict of Visions
New York: W. Morrow, 1987

An individual’s stance on one particular political issue doesn’t necessarily indicate anything else about them, but it’s a reasonably reliable predictor of their stances on other issues, in other words their overall ideology. (more…)

Man as microcosm

4,063 words

Part 6 of 7 (other parts here)

6. All and Nothing

In my account of ekstasis, I have drawn principally on two philosophers: Heidegger and Schopenhauer. And Hegel has been peeping out at certain points in my discussion (he will have a much bigger role to play very soon). But the truth is that the ideas I have been expounding in this essay have deep roots in the Western tradition, and are much older even than Hegel.

(more…)