Some philosophy links

Reinhold Niebuhr (a pdf of his NY Times obit). The Niebuhr family.

A series of Michael Sandel's podcasts at BBC4. And here's Sandel at the Boston Review with commentary by Richard Sennett, Debra Satz, etc.

At the Guardian, Benjamen Walker interviews Giles Fraser, Lesley Chamberlain, and Jennifer Ratner about Nietzsche's line that 'God is dead'. More recently, Walker spoke with Mark Kingwell, Mark Vernon, Julian Baggini, and Charlotte Higgins about Plato's just society.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Prof. Richard Dawkins and Sir Anthony Kenny discuss 'The Nature of Human Beings and the Question of their Ultimate Origin' (posted on an Oxford University site last Feb. 28). If the video doesn't play, click 'Get Video File' (just under the screen) and you'll get the QuickTime copy of the video.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'the work and influence of the eighteenth-century philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.'

George Pattison reviews Eric Ziolkowski's The Literary Kierkegaard: 'A sub-theme of The Literary Kierkegaard is that of the humorous and even the comic Kierkegaard, as we meet him directly in the chapters on Aristophanes, Carlyle, and perhaps more indirectly in the discussion of the holy fools Parzival and Don Quixote.'

From the blurb for Elizabeth R. Napier's book Falling into Matter: Problems of Embodiment in English Fictions: 'Drawing on six works of early English fiction — Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - Napier examines how authors grappled with technical and philosophical issues of the body, questioning its capacity for moral action, its relationship to individual freedom and dignity, and its role in the creation of art.'

Jim Holt: 'Is philosophy literature? ... I hope I have clinched my case for analytic philosophy as belles lettres.'

Ian Hacking on the 50th anniversary of Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

A review of Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents 1911-1951 (ed. Brian McGuinness).

New philosophy links and unrelated video

Erich Mühsam

Erich Mühsam

David Auerbach on Hans Blumenberg: 'It is rare for [Hans Blumenberg] to “take sides” explicitly because he is often preoccupied with showing that the sides are not what we think they are.'

From a review of Interpretation: Ways of Thinking about the Sciences and the Arts: 'If Machamer, Wolters and their contributors have their way, [the topic of interpretation] should also figure importantly in various areas of the philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and action, and practical aesthetics.' Some chapters of this book are on Google Books.

Michael Sandel is interviewed about his interest in political theory

Paul Feyerabend's critique of rationalist models of scientific method (ht Siris)

Here's a podcast of an interview with Robert Pasnau about his book Metaphysical Themes: 1247-1671

Robert Brandom's Munich Hegel Lectures are available on-line

Here are videos of the Frankfurt Lectures on normativity going back to 2008, including talks by Brandom, Robert Pippin, Sabina Lovibond, etc.

Pippin is interviewed about Hegel and art: 'With Hegel, the official answer to that question is that art is an intuitive, sensible mode of intelligibility of the Absolute.'

Jerome E. Copulsky reviews two books on Moses Mendelssohn

From an interview with David Cartwright, Schopenhauer's most recent English-language biographer: 'If you observe the behavior of a bulldog ant cut in two, you can understand some of Schopenhauer’s basic claims.'

Peter Thompson's series on Karl Marx in the Guardian



Richard Sennett on humanism: 'Here a contrast between Pico and Spinoza is all important. Spinoza emphasized unities transcending time—timeless unities in mental space—whereas Pico dwelt on the fact of shifting time, and shifting time in everyday experience.'

A 33-minute video of Francis Fukuyama on the origins of the political order

In the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, David M. Johnson reviews the Cambridge Companion to Socrates, and Eleni Kaklamanon reviews The Demands of Reason: an Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism.

Alan Saunders interviews Peter Adamson: 'Who was Plotinus?'

At Philosophy Bites, Peter Singer talks about Henry Sidgwick's ethics.

At Virtual Philosopher, Julian Savulescu discusses moral enhancement technologies.

Duncan Richter has a series of posts on Richard Joyce's Myth of Morality

In a blog post about the perils of using 'and/or' in legal writing, there is this quote from a 1942 case: 'The expression “and/or” is unfortunate. I do not think I have met it before in a will, and I hope I shall never meet it again.' And from a 1976 case: '[T]he commonly accepted meaning is that "and/or" means either "and" or "or," or both.'

I like Raymond Chandler, but never have I so desired to rip a cigarette out of someone's mouth as when I heard this 1958 interview of Chandler by Ian Fleming:


Ian Fleming Talks to Raymond Chandler 1958 from 33hirtz on Vimeo.

New philosophy links

Hannah Arendt

On Philosophy Talk, Seyla Benhabib discusses Hannah Arendt. Here's a conference from last April called 'Reading Hannah Arendt for the 21st Century', with contributions by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Richard Bernstein & Susannah Gottlieb. If you can't get the audio at that last link, try this one. (h/t Omnivore)

Alexander Kissler on Heidegger's 'notorious seminar'

Boyd Tonkin looks at new books by Eagleton and Scruton

Martha Nussbaum on C-Span, and Nussbaum on Mill and the reasons for a liberal arts education

A. N. Wilson on Cornwell's new book about Newman

Andrew Pessin on balancing conviction and intellectual modesty. Siris elucidates Pessin's point, with reference to the Preface paradox. The paradox itself is nicely elucidated by DEQ in the comments thread for this B&W post

Du Plessix Gray on the new translation of de Beauvoir's Second Sex

A tribute to Sartre & Camus, 'philosophic duellists'

Michael Sandel's TED talk on the lost art of democratic debate

G. A. Cohen, 'the thinking man's Marxist' (h/t Evolving Thoughts)

Iris Murdoch's correspondence

Mathew Iredale on Lévy-Strauss

Jeremy Waldron's Holmes Lectures on hate-speech laws

Melvyn Bragg interviews Grayling, Bate & Natarajan about Hazlitt

Bragg's podcast on Burke

A new book on Spinoza and 'the hidden Enlightenment'

Are we close to explaining consciousness? (inc. a video of David Chalmers)

David Sloan Wilson interviewed

'Darwinists and Divinity' -- a review of Michael Ruse's latest book

Obituaries for Richard Gregory in the Times of London, the Guardian, the Scotsman, the Herald and the Telegraph. Here's more in the Guardian, by Sue Blackmore

Philosophy bits

A new biography of R. G. Collingwood (pictured) is reviewed here & here; and this article on Collingwood by Dale Jacquette is -- for now -- available

The Archbishop of Canterbury on Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Boyd Tonkin on the same book

Michael Walzer interviewed in the Tehran Times (ht Pol Theory)

Amitai Etzioni's review of Michael Sandel's book

David Rieff holds forth on Bernard Williams & Martha Nussbaum

Robert Pippin on how to make sense of people

Alan Saunders interviews Elliot Sober on arguments from design
('intelligent design')

Philosophy Bites interviews Ned Block on consciousness

The WSJ on Leibniz and this, the best of all possible worlds, a view that was pilloried by Voltaire, about whom there's a new biography (also reviewed here), and whose Candide inspired the Random House logo

A review of the new translation of Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex

The latest on the James Dean of philosophy: Peter Beaumont on why Camus still divides opinion in Algeria; and Justin Clemens and Jamie Bollenbacher review Robert Zaretsky's new book on Camus' life

Loads o'links on theology, philosophy & lit

At Bloggingheads, Daniel Schultz and Peter Beinart discuss Reinhold Niebuhr. Elsewhere, Schultz chides David Brooks for misinterpreting Niebuhr (one of President Obama's favourite philosophers). Here's Mike Wallace interviewing Niebuhr in 1958. And here's a discussion of Niebuhr by Gary Dorrien and Kevin Mattson from last November on Minnesota Public Radio

Ernst Cassirer -- Emily Grosholz on his humanism (with a quick survey of the neo-Kantians)

Heidegger makes it into Wired 's science blog

Vivian Gornick reviews Michael Sandel's book on justice, which is also reviewed by Richard Reeves (along with Sen's book on justice). Sen devoted his Demos Annual Lecture to the topic 'Power and Capability'

And here's a justice free-for-all (with Sandel, Walzer, Nussbaum, Pollitt, etc.)

David Harvey's guide to Marx's Capital

Judith Butler interviewed (ht Silliman's Blog)

Alan Saunders interviews Alan Hájek on probability on Aussie radio

On Bernard Baars' 'global workspace' theory of consciousness
A. J. Ayer's doctor has spoken about Ayer's near-death experience
A review of the Archbishop of Canterbury's book on Dostoevsky

Speaking of stimulating Anglicans, John Polkinghorne was interviewed (ht Books, Inq.)

A. N. Wilson wrote an introduction to the Gospel According to Matthew (ht 3:AM)

Baudelaire & the Beats (several neat YouTube clips of pop depictions of beats)

A biography of Dr. Seuss

Will Self on Bulgakov's White Guard

The English trans. of Michael Maar's book Speak, Nabokov received a couple of good reviews

On the Hungarian lit front, Deborah Eisenberg likes Dezso Kosztolanyi's Skylark

And the Neglected Books site has a piece on Miklos Bánffy's Transylvanian trilogy, about which the Telegraph raved in 2007 (and again in 2010)

Reading Uwe Johnson in NY

Vertigo digs up an early review of Sebald's Emigrants by Gabriel Josipovici
I hope Patrick White wins the 'lost' Man Booker Prize -- it'll serve him right

Denis Donoghue on Yeats, Pound and Eliot

I linked to reviews of these two books in my last load o'links: Germania is reviewed in the WSJ and John Gray reviews World That Never Was

The Economist on Moses Montefiore: "He joined forces with middle-class religious dissenters and evangelicals to help end the slave trade, underwriting along with Rothschild a £15m loan to finance abolition in the West Indies."

Elaine Showalter reviews Hilary Spurling's book on Pearl Buck. Here's Claudia FitzHerbert's review

Someone's started a reading group for At Swim--Two Birds
When I read something by Theodore Dalrymple, I want either to stand up and cheer or to punch my pillow. He's interviewed here

On-line discussion forum for the Chicago Manual of Style. (This marks me as deviant, but I really fell in love with this manual while writing my dissertation.)

China Miéville on J. G. Ballard's Complete Stories

Patti Smith interviewed on KCRW. (ht 3:AM)

Three reviews of a new book on Irving Thalberg, Sr., along with an interview with the author of an older book on him. Thalberg's son, Irving Thalberg, Jr., was a philosophy professor in Chicago