Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Nicolai Hartmann, Hume, and moksha


Nicolai Hartmann (who now has an entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia)

Russell Stannard: 'The job of science is to describe the world we find ourselves in -- what it consists of, and how it operates. But it appears to fall short of explaining why we are presented with this kind of world rather than some other -- or why there should be a world at all.' Shades of Hume ('The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer, as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it.')

Nicholas Basbanes interviewed by Pradeep Sebastian: 'A new, updated edition of Nicholas Basbanes' A Gentle Madness — that modern classic on bibliomania and book collecting — is just out from Fine Books Press.'

Julian Barnes on his life-long bibliomania and his belief that bookshops will survive.

Geist ran one of my favourite articles from last year. It's about a rare-book dealer in Vancouver named Don Stewart.

'Many of [Patrick] White’s preoccupations, for example, his concern with “nothingness” and the destruction of the Self, are likely to find acceptance with an Indian audience familiar with the concept of moksha. The belief he projects, that there is no difference between the human and the divine essence, is common to all faiths.'

A recording of Flannery O’Connor reading from ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ in 1959.

Here are a couple of pieces on the new rock autobiography by Mike Scott (of Waterboys fame). What follows is high ART!

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