Prophets of Irony: a Discussion with Richard J. Bernstein

Richard J. Bernstein, Ironic Life (Cambridge UK: Polity Press, 2016), pp. 184, $64.95 hardcover, $22.95 paperback.   There is a certain irony about contemporary attitudes toward irony.  According to the late novelist David Foster Wallace, our culture is steeped in the ironic reluctance to commit to ideals and thus embrace moral seriousness. ...
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Prophets of Irony:  a Discussion with Richard J. Bernstein

Category Anxiety: Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize

It’s been a weird year (the weirdest I can remember at least), and Thursday morning’s announcement that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature made it weirder still. But, overall, it is weird in a welcome way.

Pre-announcement speculation centered on the possibility that the prize might be awarded to an ...

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Category Anxiety: Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize

Patriotism, Nationalism, Exceptionalism

Over the past fortnight, two very different versions of patriotism were put on display. One of them was xenophobic, hostile, and downright plug-ugly. The other was hopeful, inclusive, and cheerful. Even though the media-saturated presentations of each were designed to “sell” a prepackaged vision of the political community known as ...
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Patriotism, Nationalism, Exceptionalism

The Thelma-and-Louise-Gambit

Your car is not working. In fact it is falling apart: it eats up gas, burns oil, grinds the transmission, and wobbles its wheels. You have been taking the car to a mechanic whom you have known for years. He charges a small fortune, and typically, within a week or ...
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The Thelma-and-Louise-Gambit

Eleven Theses on American Democracy

1 The main defect of actually-existing democracy in America is that it does not actually exist. Or, rather, it exists in a stage-managed way: economic, military, and policy elites jockey for power, bypassing the citizenry, through the ubiquity of money and the subtle and not-so-subtle influence of the mainstream media, which ...
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Eleven Theses on American Democracy

Hilary Putnam

The Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam passed away on Sunday, March 13 2016, at the age of 89. It’s safe to say that while he was alive, Putnam was remembered not so much for a persistent theme or doctrine (such as: Quine’s rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, or Gadamer’s notion of ...
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Hilary Putnam

Voting with your Middle Finger

I almost think that the phenomenon of the “sensible conservative” might be coming back: one whom liberals, social democrats, democratic socialists et. al. can rationally engage in debate and dialogue, and who occasions genuine and mutual respect. There have always been a few around – Andrew Sullivan comes to mind ...
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Pragmatism’s Promise

One of the many definitions of “dialectic” is “a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to discover the truth”; another is “discussion and reasoning by dialogue as a method of intellectual investigation.”  On either definition, Richard J. Bernstein is indisputably the most proficient and prolific ...

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Pragmatism’s Promise