Footnotes to Plato?
Alfred North Whitehead is often (mis-) quoted as saying that all philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. I was asked the other day...
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Richard Farr
May 22, 2020
Optimism - and my new favorite news site
Doing some research on iconic speeches in times of crisis, I am struck by the common thread: all of them - Lincoln's Second Inaugural,...
Richard Farr
Mar 17, 2020
Testing, testing ... coronavirus and a dangerous drug called Fiction
A lot of people are being tested for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. (Not enough in my neck of the planet, thanks to our...
Richard Farr
Feb 18, 2020
Kafka's progress
Today's quote of the day from The Browser - which I recommend to everyone - struck a cord for me. It's a commonplace in our culture to...
Richard Farr
Jan 31, 2020
American politics: the mistake of the Moderatists
My old friend Aristotle is well known for the claim that moderation is a virtue - indeed, that we can locate virtue at the point of...
Richard Farr
Jun 3, 2019
Trump v Mueller in Plato’s footnotes
Two pictures tell a thousand words. In his recent public appearance, Robert Mueller thought he’d been clear, or as clear as the peculiar...
Richard Farr
May 29, 2019
Understanding the Con
Absurd and repulsive though he is, the vandal Boris Johnson (Pants-on-Fire, Con), who has perhaps done his country more harm than any...
Richard Farr
May 16, 2019
The time traveler’s dilemma and techno-cultural prejudice
What if you had to move – not to another city or country but to either the future or the past? I ran across this Rawlesian thought...
Richard Farr
Oct 18, 2018
R.I.P Mary Midgley, 1919-2018
The excellent and hugely underrated philosopher Mary Midgley has died at the age of 99, shortly after completing yet another book. (She...
Richard Farr
Oct 8, 2018
Authoritarianism and its antidote
After so many headlines about the men who want to turn the world into kindling and warm their hands over the flames (in just this...
Richard Farr
Aug 24, 2018
Speaking as a human being; on identity (politics) and intersectionality.
Excellent Op-Ed in the New York Times from a couple of weeks ago by (my once-upon-a-time teacher) Kwame Anthony Appiah, applying his...
Richard Farr
Aug 20, 2018
Needing Hume
Like many other philosophers, I’ve always had a soft spot for him: a 12-cylinder genius, and yet a wonderfully plain writer with the...
Richard Farr
May 29, 2018
Progress about ‘progress in philosophy’
Philosophers are still reading Aristotle, and still arguing about whether there is free will: ergo, philosophy is useless. It has always...
Richard Farr
Jul 10, 2017
An eighteenth-century Scottish Buddhist?
Catching up with my favorite podcast, Philosophy Bites, I was fascinated to learn that the eerie connections between one of my favorite...
Richard Farr
Jan 12, 2017
“What does the Babel Trilogy have to do with the ‘Hard Problem’?”
Quite a bit of The Babel Trilogy is about consciousness: what is it, and where does it come from, and how is it possible—that’s what...
Richard Farr
Nov 16, 2016
“Not I”: An Open Letter to American Conservatives on the Eve of the Election
The most frightening book I’ve read in the past ten years is not a novel by Stephen King, but a childhood memoir by the German historian...
Richard Farr
Sep 7, 2016
Big numbers, immortality, and Jimbo Joyce’s hell
Graham’s Number, folksily abbreviated to “g64,” was long famous as the largest number ever used in a serious mathematical proof. I quote...
Richard Farr
Sep 7, 2016
“Did someone really write a whole book on the meaning of the term ‘bulls**t’?”
Yes! One of the characters in Ghosts in the Machine mentions this, and it’s true! Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit is...
Richard Farr
Sep 7, 2016
“You teach philosophy. What IS philosophy?”
In my first philosophy class, the professor began by saying something I've been repeating ever since: “Philosophy asks just two...
Richard Farr
Jun 16, 2016
Happy 200th, Frankenstein!
Today, June 16th 2016, is the 200th anniversary of the stormy night in Geneva when Byron told his houseguests they should all try their...
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