Outside of the obvious, 9/11 is also the day when I lost my friend and mentor, Marshall Berman (1940-2013). Maybe another time I’ll share some more personal thoughts about Marshall, but for now, I thought I’d share a book chapter that I wrote about his work. It’s in Jennifer Corby’s excellent volume, Adventures in Modernism: Thinking with Marshall Berman, and in many ways, it’s the piece of writing of which I’m most fond. And I’m fond of it because I know that my writing style isn’t like Marshall’s style, but this piece is probably as close as I’ve ever come. His spirit was not only in the content but the style foo, and I think he’d really have loved that.
Read MoreIf numerology were acceptable evidence in academic circles, today would be the day that proves my work right, because it was on May 5 that both Søren Kierkegaard (1813) and Karl Marx (1818) were born. Two of my most important intellectual forebears, I’ve long thought that they were really two sides of the same coin, and that together they provide a comprehensive account of freedom and selfhood. But if numerology isn’t convincing, I thought I’d share a short excerpt from my book, exploring the idea of revolutionary subjectivity.
Read MoreIn these times of quarantine boredom, I thought I’d share a sample chapter from my recent book, The Dialectical Self: Kierkegaard, Marx, and the Making of the Modern Subject (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). Penn Press is currently having a 40% off Spring sale with promo code SPRING20-FM.
Read MoreThere is a meme circulating on the interweb within boomer and conservative circles that claims that the "survival rate" of the coronavirus is 98.2% but that you don't see this "good news" anywhere in the mainstream media. In fact, in a New York magazine article with a Waffle House employee who had survived an extreme case of coronavirus that had required hospitalization, he mentioned these same figures as part of his argument that the lock down might be worse than the disease. And this from someone who almost died from coronavirus, but who now just wants to go out to grab a beer.
In the case of the person who shared this meme on my Facebook page, I pointed out that simple math indicates that this death rate translates into 6 million American deaths. (As a comparison, this dwarfs the number of American deaths from all American military conflicts combined, beginning with the Revolutionary War and including all present conflicts).
Read MoreWhenever anyone makes a connection between climate change and a particular weather event, there is inevitably a pedant who finds a different example that seemingly disproves it. Heatwave in Europe? But it was a colder than usual winter in Canada. Flooding in the Midwest? But it was drier than usual in California. Drought in the Southwest? But there was higher than average rainfall in the Northeast. And so on and so on and so on.
To anyone who even slightly follows climate change science, all of these events are actually symptomatic of the underlying process of human caused climate change. Climate change not only means that global average temperatures are increasing, but also that weather is becoming more erratic and intense. However, this is true at the global level, and not necessarily true for every particular location at every particular time. Consequently, some places might sometimes experience normal weather or even more pleasant weather, even if, when we aggregate all the data at the global level, this isn’t at all the case.
As for the pedant, they generally rely on a different type of evidence than do climate scientists. Rather than the global data on which climate scientists rely, the pedant draws on local anecdotal evidence instead, and then uses these anecdote about particular locations in order to deny patterns that we see in the broader data. In other words, they find the exception to the rule (the place it happened to be colder this year), and then argue that the exception disproves the rule (that average global temperatures increased). It’s a faulty form of argument, but a common one nonetheless.
However, if we examine these two forms of argument in this way, I think we miss the point.
Read MoreI was recently interviewed on the New Books Network about my recent book, The Dialectical Self: Kierkegaard, Marx, and the Making of the Modern Subject. If you’re interesting in Kierkegaard and Marx (and Hegel), or about how personal and political freedom are deeply intertwined, (or if you're just looking to pass some time), give it a listen!!!
Read MoreAs a philosopher, Marx is a particularly interesting figure. While philosophers tend to offer their philosophical claims directly, with Marx, we often receive them tangentially. The reason for this is that Marx’s concern often lies in the world of political economy, so that much of what he actually writes takes the form of an analysis of that world. That is, he often writes about economics and politics. However, Marx’s real philosophical contribution lies in the method of his analysis. That is, his philosophical genius doesn’t necessary lie in the specific claims he makes about economics and politics, many of which do happen to be quite brilliant, but rather, it lies in the method that he uses to make these claims. It is this method that illuminated the world in a fundamentally new way, and it is this method that continues to do so. And while Marx does sometimes explain his method, oftentimes we only see it indirectly, when we reflect on how Marx managed to see what he reveals to us.
However, at times, Marx’s philosophical brilliance hits you in the face. And recently, this happened to me. The other day, I was reading Marx’s Capital, Vol. 1, and I came across a short passage that blew me away. Located in Chapter 1, a chapter whose main purpose lies in the realm of economic analysis (Marx is explaining the nature of a “commodity”), Marx breaks from the main narrative in order to offer a brief digression about Aristotle. And as brilliant as is Chapter 1 of Capital, it was this digression that bowled me over. And I thought some people might enjoy reading an analysis of this passage, because I think it really shows Marx at his best. No knowledge of Marx, Aristotle, economics, or philosophy required!!!
Read MoreA few days ago, my wife and I went for a walk on the Venice Canals, which is a Los Angeles neighborhood next to Venice Beach. You can tell that this must have once been a sleepy beach town, with cute little bungalows lining a few acres of crisscrossing canals. But over time, they've mostly been bought up and replaced with mansions. And while the conspicuous wealth of LA can be pretty depressing, this neighborhood was quite beautiful, as everyone clearly spent a lot of time (or money) on landscaping. So, we had a really enjoyable stroll through the canals, with my wife indulging my desire to photograph every last tree, flower, and plant.
But we began noticing these very political looking lawn signs. No dummies, we were both very suspicious of their message to "Stop the Monster." And we were right. The "monster" these people wanted to stop was a very modest public housing development.
Read MoreHaving lived in NYC for what is now the majority of my adult life, catching a glimpse of the skyline still doesn't disappoint. Whether I'm taking a far-off look from my bedroom window, catching a glimpse on the subway as it crosses the bridge, or most dramatically, during nighttime plane landings when the cloud cover is punctuated with cavernous peeks of rainbow skyscrapers, this city really doesn't disappoint. But there's been a lot of new construction in recent years, changing the outline of our horizon, and I wasn't sure what to make of the general aesthetic. But it occurred to me that what might be governing the aesthetic is actually the horizon itself. However, I don’t mean that developers are developing with an eye for how our shared horizon will change, but that I think they are developing from the point of view of those who live on the horizon—those who live among the clouds.
Read MoreSome very smart people have written some very smart things about Trump's national emergency, and I'm sure more will be forthcoming. But I think that the most insightful thing I have to say is this: who cares?
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