StephenKMackSD's Blog

Kirk Garcia, Sandy Anderson, 'Kit' Anderson, Taylor Anderson, Mali Miller, Denise BeCotte, Steve Stark, Jimee Esposito, Ann Marie Johansen, Fernando, Paula Flees, Matthaeus, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzales,Russ Feingold,Glen Greenwald,Robert Scheer,Paul Krugman, Frank Rich,Emma Rothschild,Dieter Henrich, Pierre Hadot, Immanuel Kant, Jacques Brunschwig, Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/opinion/31brooks.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss 

Cockeyed Platonist (CP) in his December 30, 2010 column titled ‘The Arena Culture’ reviews a new book by Herbert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly titled All Things Shining. ‘They take a smart, sweeping run through the history of Western philosophy.’ Sound like the trivializing tone of Cosmo magazine, circa 1970? Continue reading →

“G. Edward White, as a prominent biographer, Supreme Court historian, and legal scholar, is uniquely qualified to cut through the clouds of incense which have so long obscured the figure of Justice Holmes. His analysis and revaluation of the man, the warrior, the judge, the ‘liberal’ philosopher, and even the lover reveal a Holmes who is much more human, more fallible, more interesting, and even in some ways more admirable than the superman usually depicted.” Thus opined the great American novelist Louis Auchincloss on the dust jacket of Professor White’s biography of  Justice Holmes. Continue reading →

Name for my new site: SanDiegoSpleen, for when I'm cranky!

The Noble Lie is the cornerstone of the Neo-Conservative thought array; to call it a philosophy is too complimentary, an inflation of the actuality, of its mere serviceability, to the practice of its particular politics. And from the practice of its  politics, one is un-astonished at the fact of lying, in its many varieties, that infects the opinionators of the Conservative ethos.Plato's concept in the Republic was paternalistic in fact totalitarian! Perfectly congruent with Conservatism's romance with the jackboot. Lying as a necessity. One need only consult the appropriate web sites, to engage with the thought merchants of maladroitly cobbled together propaganda, that passes for Conservative Thought. And rationalized as urgently necessary, to negate the triumph of the pseudo-New Deal; confected by New Democrats infatuated with a romantic attachment to a,now, amorphous but still plangent political nostalgia.