Descartes (René) Archives

A Globe, Clothing Itself with Ears

Stories of speaking with animals are as old as human history

November 3, 2022 • by Karen Bakker

Human ambivalence about animal language persists and is linked with our uncertainty about human status: Are we one animal among others, or does something truly set us apart? Debates over animal language are a touchstone for human uncertainties about our role in the cosmos....

Feature

Hilary Putnam

March 14, 2016 • by Laura Nelson

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 ...

Uncategorized

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The search for authenticity in consumer culture

October 21, 2014 • by Jeremy Safran

Milan Kundera begins his novel Immortality with a description of a gesture made by a woman he is observing at a swimming pool. This woman, who we will come to know as Agnes in the story, smiles and waves at the lifeguard who has just been giving her ...

Theory & Practice

Heidegger’s Black Notebooks: Extreme Silencing

May 15, 2014 • by Thomas Meyer

The Black Notebooks (Die Schwarzen Hefte), containing Martin Heidegger’s assorted thoughts from the 1930s and 40s, throw new light on the self-aggrandizement into totalitarianism of the most German of all philosophers.

The Freiburg professor of philosophy was not yet 50 years old when, in 1937 and 1938, he retraced ...