Piano Tide
Piano Tides – Environmental ethics in a small southwest Alaskan community down on its luck? Piano Tides — Kathleen Dean Moore’s cast of misfit residents, all strong-willed characters who often surprised their creator decide the direction they should take on behalf of their beloved Good River Harbor. Kathleen Dean Moore, a philosophy professor by trade […]
Vox
Vox, Christina Dalcher’s novel makes use of Atwood’s template for modern feminist dystopian novels, placing it squarely in the United States. Not quite dystopian, eh? Margaret Atwood, writing The Handmaid’s Tale, created a template for modern feminist dystopian fiction. Current political optics have spawned a host of subsequent novels, including Christina Dalcher’s Vox, which imagines […]
Agnostic, A Spirited Manifesto
Agnostic, A Spirited Manifesto. Something to believe in, or not. Can there be an agnostic Christian, agnostic Buddhist, agnostic Jew, or an agnostic Catholic? (Yes, I know Catholics are Christians, I just wanted to emphasize that Christianity is a faith of many rooms.) Exactly what is an agnostic? Is questioning one’s religion a death knell […]
On The First Day of Holiday Giving – Neal’s Books For The Guys in Your Life
ON THE FIRST DAY OF HOLIDAY GIVING NEAL’S BOOKS FOR THE GUYS IN YOUR LIFE What follows is a list, in no particular order, of twelve books I’ve read or re-read in the past year that I recommend to others, particularly those of the male persuasion. You might want to give one as a gift. […]
On Love, A Novel
ON LOVE, A NOVEL How many novels are written by philosophers? More than you might think: Voltaire, Camus, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Huxley, it’s a lengthy list. Sean McGrady, in an essay in The Guardian, writes “The philosophical novel is the continuation of philosophical reflection by other means.” Now I better understand why such novels found on […]
The Faraway Nearby
THE FARAWAY NEARBY Rebecca Solnit’s collection of nature essays The Faraway Nearby has a distinctive, graceful prose style that in some passages leaves this reader giddy with its effervescence. It is constructed of an assemblage of memories, meditation, ideas, and analyses—often painful, vexing, or merely fascinating. The chapter headings are a palindrome of sorts, the ones in […]
The Consolations of Philosophy
THE CONSOLATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY, A PRIMER FOR THOSE WHO DID NOT STUDY PHILOSOPHY I think, therefore, I am. Descartes, right? And if wrong, it shows my education lacks rudimentary philosophy. If, however, I’m right, it goes to show that when necessary, I can drop at least one philosophical plum. For those of us who did […]
Nein, A Manifesto
Nein, A Manifesto Home alone, reading Eric Jarosinski’s Nein. A Manifesto, and I’m laughing so hard that tears are running down my cheeks! I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve discovered anything this funny! Moreover, the humor is cumulative, so what was making me smile on the first few pages becomes ear-splitting by […]
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke, The First Conservative In Edmund Burke, Jesse Norman resuscitates this eighteenth-century philosopher’s relevance for twenty-first century readers, thinkers, and perhaps politicians. Norman, who holds a Ph.D. from the University College London, teaches philosophy and political theory to college students. He also is a Member of Parliament for Hereford and South Herefordshire. Thus astride […]