Up@dawn 2.0

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Mapping philosophy

"Here is an intriguing map of philosophical space... The raw data was culled from the “influenced by” section for the pages of all the philosophers listed in Wikipedia... " Delight Springs

Monday, June 25, 2012

What is Philosophy?

"Kant famously considered philosophy the “queen of the sciences” — whether or not that is true, philosophy seems even more elusive than science to define.

From Philosophy Bites, the book based on the wonderful podcast of the same name, comes an omnibus of definitions, bound by a most fascinating disclaimer — for, as Nigel Warburton keenly observes in the book’s introduction, “philosophy is an unusual subject in that its practitioners don’t agree what it’s about.”"

What is Philosophy? An Omnibus of Definitions from Prominent Philosophers | Brain Pickings

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Five years without Rorty

...and I feel fine.
"There has not been another American philosopher since John Dewey who managed to transform so many philosophical problems and attract so many readers as Richard Rorty (1931-2007).
When he passed away five years ago philosophers (Jürgen Habermas, Martha Nussbaum and Gianni Vattimo) and newspapers (The Guardian, Tehran Times, and Le Monde) from around the world praised him as one of the most influential thinkers of the second part of the twentieth century.
Although Rorty was a committed academic who taught in a number of distinguished universities and was awarded several institutional prizes, he always remained an independent thinker capable of critiquing not only these establishments but also his own nation when necessary. When he heard the news about the Twin Towers, his first concern was that George W Bush and the Republican Party would use this "the way Hitler used the Reichstag fire" to "keep us in a state of perpetual war from now on - under the guise of the War on Terrorism"...
Five years without Rorty - Opinion - Al Jazeera English