Philosophy Now Forum

Heraldo Muñoz, in his book on the subject, takes a really balanced and thoughtful take on Pinochet –especially coming from a guy that embraced the dictator’s worst and most hated enemy: Marxism. He was lucky to survive. Still, Muñoz shows the humility to argue that he believed that Pinochet authenti...

Dear Diary Moment 2/19/2021: “We believe the government and its co-conspirators are hiding all sorts of monstrous truths from us— concerning assassinations, extraterrestrials, the genesis of AIDS, the 9/ 11 attacks, the dangers of vaccines, and so much more. We stockpile guns because we fantasize ab...

Dear Diary Moment 2/14/2021: Just started reading the new issue of Philosophy Now today on Time, Identity, and Free Will. And I’m a little surprised that they’re still speaking in terms of “free will” which I think outdated, that is since the term “participation” (that is since Ken Taylor of Philoso...

“The crowd is untruth. Therefore was Christ crucified, although he addressed himself to all, He would have no dealings with the crowd, because He would not permit the crowd to aid him in any way, because in this regard He repelled people He repelled people absolutely, would not found a party, did no...

“’Ha, ha, ha! You will be finding in toothache next,” you cry, with a laugh. “’Well? Even in toothache there is enjoyment,” I answer. I had toothache for a whole month and I know there is. In that case, of course, people are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not candid moans, they are ...

Dear Diary Moment 2/5/2021: Presently, in my process, I find myself going back to Walter Kaufman’s Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, a book I haven’t read since the 90’s. And in this particular run (what, having been a wannabe artist, could be called a layer), I find it appropriate that Kauf...

Dear Diary Moment 1/31/2021: I have, as of late, been listening to the audio book for Kurt Anderson’s Evil Geniuses: a book I highly recommend: and came up against a concept I had encountered in a previous audio book I cannot recall the name of: the Overton Window. As it was explained in the previou...

I really do like theory –the depth of understanding it brings me- especially as concerns social and economic justice. I really do. Still, the pragmatist in me (the old school bourgeoisie liberal that still believes in the institutions we have as Rorty use to joke (is a little hesitant about taking i...

Dear Diary Moment 1/22/2021: Reading Ronald Bogue’s Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts, I’m feeling more confident in my sense that Deleuze’s Plane of Immanence is similar to what I call that dynamic background flux of knowledge. I experienced it back in the early 90’s when I took a job at a l...

Dear Diary Moment 1/17/2021: One of the cool things about this reading of Donald Bogue’s Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts is that it is really crystallizing a lot of often vague understandings I have arrived at from my extensive library of books by and about Deleuze -w/ and w/out Guatarri. T...

Dear Diary Moment 1/16/2021: One of the main things that is coming out of this second approach to Donald Bogue’s Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts is the connection Deleuze saw (especially in his work with Guatarri (between the human creative act and nature in general. And, here again, we ret...

It seems to me that there have been three primary mythologies (that which lead to an emphasis on a loose fancy as compared to a more involved imagination (that have haunted America since the beginning and played a major role in what we’ve experienced for the last four years: 1. The truthful outburst...

Dear Diary Moment 12/20/2020: “Certain Chinese philosophers writing in, perhaps, the -5th and -4th centuries explained ideas and a way of life that have come to be known as Taoism –the way of man’s cooperation with the course or trend of the natural world, whose principles we discover in the flow pa...

Dear Diary Moment 12/14/2020: Just finished Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of the Mind: 513 pages of reading pleasure. And while about 90% of what I read slipped by my filters, the about 10% that did catch was enough to pique my interest. I found things I could use. But that behind me for now (I will...

“It is logically possible that in one cultural environment A will be dominant and exhibitionist, while B is submissive and spectator, while in another culture X may be dominant and spectator, while Y is submissive and exhibitionist.” –from Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind This comes fro...