Philosophy & Ideas
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A population with a large proportion of people dependent on welfare payments, easily cowed by forceful authority, heavily influenced by social media, insufficiently sceptical of the 24-hour news cycle and partly fuddled by alcohol and drugs will not suddenly express prudent values. Those who seek to shape and control know this
August 25, 2024
21 mins
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What he presents as a philosophical argument is actually just the expression of Heidegger’s Völkisch longings -- a nostalgic yearning for a pre-industrial, pre-urban, pre-democratic, and specifically German pastoralism, coupled with a deeply reactionary hatred of every aspect of modernity, personified above all by 'the Jews'
June 11, 2024
19 mins
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So now I have your attention, let me clarify: I do not propose to defend extremism of the kind we hear about daily -- the violent, law-breaking, society-upending kind. I am thinking more of extremism in Aristotle’s theory of the virtues, which can tell us something important about economics and even social change
June 7, 2024
15 mins
The latest
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The Black Notebooks confirm that Heidegger supported National Socialism not […]
May 28, 2024
19 mins
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The ideological view blames individualism for society’s perceived problems, accusing modern life of promoting selfishness and neglecting the common good. Kenneth Minogue’s conservative individualism emphasises the uniqueness of Western civilisation and its balanced relationship with authority as the source of vitality, diversity and prosperity
May 10, 2024
15 mins
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So now I have your attention, let me clarify. I […]
April 29, 2024
15 mins
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It is extraordinary that Freud’s derivative and scientifically wrong ideas permeated entire halls of academe and indeed societies, and it will take some psychoanalysis to explain how this pervaded and prevailed for nearly a century. How do intellectual cultures, societies and civilisations become enthralled by such erroneous views, which go against the observations of common sense? For highlighting that question we owe Rudolf Allers a great debt
February 6, 2024
17 mins
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Simone de Beauvoir hovered on the edge of greatness as a young philosopher capable of penetrating the ultimate questions of existence. But then she shrank from the challenge, sinking instead into a preoccupation with the melodramatic and often sordid concerns of herself, lovers, friends and peers
February 3, 2024
30 mins
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Churchill asked his guest what he felt was the most important thing he had ever written. 'White Christmas,' was the reply. Churchill, perplexed, gave up and turned to someone else. It was only later that he was told that through a mix-up it was the composer Irving Berlin who had been invited to enjoy lunch and the wartime Prime Minister's company
November 28, 2023
27 mins
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Was there truly 'no exit' from humanity’s existential predicament, as Sartre posits in Huis-Close? Was the meaning of life a hellish nihilism? Such questions confronted intellectuals amidst the crisis of the Cold War that defined both the era of Existentialism. the decline of a front-rank philosopher to the status of a hired-gun propagandist for the communist bloc
November 5, 2023
27 mins
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Is the Absurd the key to the meaning of life? […]
August 30, 2023
24 mins
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Philosophically, Sir Alfred Ayer was in a very awkward position: it was 1988, he was seventy-seven, and he was dead. Indeed, he’d 'passed to the other side', as he later put it. It was awkward because, as a very prominent and militant atheist, he shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t be anywhere. Indeed, he shouldn’t be at all
August 14, 2023
22 mins