Sentimental artworks, and the people who indulge in them, are disappointingly incurious about the emotions involved. If the emotions are rational, and if they inform our thinking and deliberation, they warrant critical scrutiny every bit as much as thought does.
The idea that your life as a whole can feel wrong is a particular kind of suffering. This blog post offers some reflections on this kind of suffering.
Starting with Plato, philosophy has systematically marginalized both literature and animals as beneath the dignity that philosophy has established for humankind.
I want to make a case for Shakespeare’s “great heart.” Then I’ll try to explain why Wittgenstein doesn’t see it.
If you want to be a better person, the subject you should study is mathematics.
It’s as if Plato were proposing a wholesale ban on Hollywood, Netflix, the publishing industry, and pop music—and that’s just for starters.
In technical terms, pretty much any PhD graduate leaves Plato in the dust. On the other hand, the Republic is a book I actually want to read.
How can you learn anything from a book full of events that, by the author’s own admission, are completely made up?