Paltry interpretive frameworks for political fissures from cold war days.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Ronald Dworkin on John Roberts
Oct 4th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Unlikely Roberts would often hold that the law is contrary to what a conservative would wish it to be.… Read the rest
Mary Midgley on Not Getting a PhD
Oct 4th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Is it possible to teach and learn philosophy in an atmosphere that is dominated by competition?… Read the rest
Norm Geras and Eve Garrard on Joanna Bourke
Oct 4th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Bourke’s views deploy the very moral opposition she is complaining about.… Read the rest
Arguing Over Whose Victims Can Be Counted
Oct 4th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Historical simplifications have long provided a consensus about the ‘good war.’… Read the rest
Cooing is a Human Rights Violation
Oct 4th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Babies ‘are little people like you and me’ and don’t want to be bloody stared at ok so piss off!… Read the rest
Mental Blocking
Oct 3rd, 2005 9:24 pm | By Ophelia BensonIt’s outrageous. Something ought to be done about it. ‘College’ in the US apparently has the unmitigated gall to teach things that conflict with Christianity. Isn’t that illegal?
… Read the restSpend a couple of days at the workshop and it becomes clear that, for many of these students, college is fraught with peril. There is the pressure to party, to drink, to have sex. There is also the subtle pressure to conform to a non-Christian worldview. There are biology courses that ask students to accept evolution, which workshop organizers and most of the students reject as untrue and ungodly. There are literature courses that see any text, including the Bible, as open to multiple interpretations. And there are philosophy classes that
The Bennett of Bennetts
Oct 3rd, 2005 7:30 pm | By Ophelia BensonYou might as well know. I don’t usually spill these things, I don’t just blurt them out, I keep myself to myself. I don’t make everyone a present of my secrets. I don’t bore you with my passions and adorations. I don’t feel it necessary to go public with everything. I don’t ‘share’ my every emotion. But you might as well know – there are few people I like as much as I like Alan Bennett. Not that I know him or anything – but everything I’ve read and seen by him, everything I know about him, everything I’ve heard him say; his voice, his plays, his journals, his readings, his performances – well, I just like them intensely, that’s … Read the rest
John Carey Reviews Alan Bennett
Oct 3rd, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The modern jargons we invent to keep reality at bay arouse his scorn.… Read the rest
The Reactionary Left
Oct 3rd, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Left often seem the most conservative voices about everything from science to free speech.… Read the rest
Simon Schama Teases US Self-image
Oct 3rd, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
He has dared to mock America’s claim to have been founded on the idea of freedom. … Read the rest
Christianity Camp
Oct 3rd, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Where students are inoculated against rational thought.… Read the rest
What Colour Are Your Specs?
Oct 2nd, 2005 10:30 pm | By Ophelia BensonAt some point in the past day or two, while pondering the latest upsurge in the Freud debate, I was inspired to look up ‘hysteria’ in The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. I was a little surprised at what I found.
A form of neurosis for which no physical diagnosis can be found and in which the symptoms presented are expressive of an unconscious conflict. In conversion hysteria, the symptoms usually take a somatic form (hysterical paralysis, irritation of the throat, coughs)…Hysteria has been explained in many different ways over the centuries; the most influential aetiology or causal explanation to have been put forward in the twentieth century is that supplied by Freud’s psychoanalysis.
There’s a problem with that. … Read the rest
Prestige is as Prestige Does
Oct 2nd, 2005 7:41 pm | By Ophelia BensonPart two of this review of Simon Blackburn’s Truth says some peculiar and rather ill-natured things, and also some silly ones. Some of the things are all three at once.
In Truth, the hostility to the unnamed relativist so overflows at points as to make her sound more like a solipsist, a nihilist, or even a willful and demented child. I spent a number of years in and around English departments and certainly met plenty of nudniks and witnessed my share of bizarre seminar discussions. But never once did I meet the shameless knave that Blackburn describes.
Well – bully for you, one feels like saying. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist, does it. (Black swans! Dingdingding!) We … Read the rest
Slate on Simon Blackburn on Truth Part 2
Oct 2nd, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Reviewer plays amateur shrink, cites prestige, wounds to ego. Err…… Read the rest
Slate on Simon Blackburn on Truth
Oct 2nd, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Stephen Metcalf thinks Blackburn is inventing those postmodernists.… Read the rest
Feng Shui Called Fake Science in China
Oct 2nd, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Nanjing University withdraws plan to co-sponsor training in Feng shui after protests.… Read the rest
Pray for Secular Education
Oct 2nd, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Drill in unquestioned acceptance of ‘holy books’ also a problem.… Read the rest
Nick Cohen on Luck, the NHS, and Class
Oct 2nd, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘From the BBC to the British Museum, everyone in a position of cultural power is resolutely anti-elitist.’… Read the rest
Not of an Age, But for All Time
Oct 2nd, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
And not British, but international. The toast: Will Shakespeare.… Read the rest