Another week, another 15 Minute Insight video; this time on modernism and postmodernism. Today’s topic is the first of four related videos I’ll be doing: following this, in two weeks, I’ll be posting a video on the meaning of “truth”; the week after, on the meaning of “objective”, and finally, the week after that, a …
Thinking Beyond Academia
This phrase--"thinking beyond academia"--was written by a friend and colleague of mine in the context of working on a joint (forthcoming) project of ours, and specifically in reference to what I am attempting to do professionally. I have since taken it up as a kind of tagline: Continuum Philosophical Insight is thinking beyond academia. With rare …
Semantic Activism in the Service of Ideology
A review of Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford University Press: New York, 2018). “So maybe the thing to say,” to the apathetic, indifferent masses perniciously ignorant about the misogyny prevailing in our culture, Manne writes near the end of her book (page 290, to be precise), “somewhat reluctantly is—fuck ‘em, in …
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Thoughts on Being Human [3] – Signs of Our Times
What are the signs of our times? That is: what signifies our here-and-now moment? Screaming politicians? Angry mobs? Memes? The ubiquity of networked technologies? It is always hard to tell, from within a moment, what signifies the intelligibility of that moment; understanding precisely where we are requires spending time to find points of reference. Every …
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Our Illusion of Normal Life
In the wake of the divisive political hatred exhibited in increasingly-shrill tones since 2008, I have some news that many might consider bad: namely, things are not going to go back to normal. Undoubtedly, there will be an ebbing away from the public focus on this hatred seen in response to the Kavanaugh hearings, which …
Human Smallness and the Magnanimous
The word "small" is a relative word: that is, something is small only in comparison to something larger. If everywhere were precisely the same size, nothing would be small, just as nothing would be large. Without variation in size, nothing would even be average. Consequently, when we think of things being small, we tend …