Background Stanley Cavell, the American philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Harvard University, died recently at the age of 91. Coming to philosophy by way of music and film, he authored a diverse assortment of philosophical texts including The Claim of Reason, Must We Mean What We Say?, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of... Continue Reading →
Out of This World Music
End of Life Songs Suppositions about dying educe meanings for living. Death opposes life. Likewise, life addresses death. Death is for life a grand question and master teacher. What? When? Where? How? Why? Then? Meanings granted to death both enhance and diminish living. I first explored the interrogative quality of death sixty-two years ago in... Continue Reading →
Glimpses of Our Civil War Today
The Civil War is, for the American imagination, the great single event of our history. Without too much wrenching, it may, in fact, be said to be American history. Before the Civil War we had no history in the deepest and most inward sense. Robert Penn Warren, The Legacy of the Civil War, 1961 Introduction... Continue Reading →
Trumpster University Learning Lab 2
In Trumpster University Learning Lab 1, ten days ago, we found that no amount of disqualifications could be amassed sufficient to dissuade followers from voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election. Today’s report on Trumpster University Lab 2 builds upon the first. It convened a select group of Trump voters dedicated to critical thinking... Continue Reading →
Gotcha Emails: Give Her a Break
How many reasons do you need to give Hillary Clinton a break on the hacked email dumps that regularly befall her? The second dump happened last week; it showed questionable connections between State Department staff and The Clinton Foundation when Hillary Clinton was SOSOTUS. The first release at the start of the Democratic National Convention cost... Continue Reading →
Vote to Break Political Gridlock
As I write this morning, August 1, 2016, Donald J. Trump, the Republican Party Nominee for President of the United States, is mired in a demeaning spat with both parents of a Gold Star family, and is accused of unknowingly advancing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interests in the Ukraine and the Baltic states through ignorance... Continue Reading →
Selfie and Self
Introduction This is the second of two essays on Daniel Boorstin’s The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, first published over a half-century ago, in 1962. The first piece, published last month, explained the pseudo-event concept and pointed to its ongoing relevance in a world where Boorstin’s observations have proved prescient. This second article... Continue Reading →
The Reality of Pseudo-Events
Introduction Daniel J. Boorstin, American historian and twelfth Librarian of the Congress of the United States, authored a book in 1961 entitled The Image: Or, What Happened to the American Dream. I read the book in 1992 when the 25th year anniversary edition came out, with the addition of an Afterword by George F. Will,... Continue Reading →