Westciv

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Enlightenment

This review is from Dissent a journal that represents democratic socialism and therefore regards itself as an heir to the Enlightenment. The reviewer is Richard Wolin who has written on Heidegger, Hannah Arendt and others. One of the books he reviews has a segment on Kant's essay on Enlightenment where he reminds us that Kant wrote during a period when humans were "subjects" not "citizens

Friday, February 20, 2009

Religion and Bill Maher

I saw this film. It was very funny. It is more problematic than this article admits. Basically it is freak show starring a number of amusing cranks.There are serious people,as Maher points out,but they don't seem very dangerous. The film ends with horrific scenes of destruction that religion will bring about, as though all of the people that have been interviewed are subspecies of Bin Laden. But we don't experience them as such

Ideology

One of the self definitions of the 1950's is that it was an age that had grow up, gotten past the destructive ideologies of fascism and bolshevism. The defining essay of that period was Daniel Bell's "The End of ideology" Since the sixties, however "ideologies"keep popping back. In the sixties it was Marxism and now according to this article a new batch