Hannah Arendt knew that being human in inhuman times is hard, occasionally impossible work. She is a thinker of the difficult, a thinker for now buff.ly/2Y5RT8i
Arts & Letters Daily
11.2K posts
- Peanuts, the philosophy: Life is hard. People are difficult. Happiness can and probably will vaporize. The best response: Laugh and keep moving buff.ly/2L8N75s
- For writers, who thrive on isolation, fame is an odd goal. Elusive, too... aldai.ly/1BpbxYI
- Francis Fukuyama's dalliance with deconstruction. He studied with de Man, Derrida, and Barthes. Any memories? "I decided it was total bullshit" buff.ly/2Nuq0Bc
- J.S. Bach, bad boy. We remember him as a saint, but he downed beer by the gallon, got mixed up in knife fights, and consorted with women in the organ loft buff.ly/2IYxeNB
- On cultural appropriation buff.ly/2KJfBkc
- How to be an intellectual. Find three uninterrupted hours per day; overcome boredom; mind the distinction between intellectuals and academics. buff.ly/2IOHmG8
- The best scientific minds have been driven by curiosity and intellectual challenge, not practical applications aldai.ly/2mX3wM8
- When Umberto Eco died, obituarists struggled to explain his project. It was to explode the line dividing high and popular culture buff.ly/2KyVTcH
- It is no secret that John Keats was intensely fascinated with death. But was he a grave robber? buff.ly/2MgxlXi
- Darwin worked a few hours a day. Trollope wrote only between 5 to 8 a.m. — and published 47 novels. aldai.ly/2nILcHq
- How did Germans see Nazism? Not as we see it. Habituation, confusion, distraction, self-interest, fear, rationalization, and a sense of personal powerlessness made terrible things possible. buff.ly/2LL03Mi
- When did disagreeing with someone become akin to oppression? When we conflated our opinions and our identities aldai.ly/2htFBp0
- The anti-Habermas. Peter Sloterdijk made his career sparring with the Frankfurt School and predicting the demise of liberal democracy. The times have caught up to him. aldai.ly/2GwyYd5