I state a thesis: Dostoevsky is a polyphonic hedgehog. The subthesis is that Tolstoy is a monologic fox.The second part of that comparison comes from Isaiah Berlin’s The Hedgehog and the Fox. Berlin cites the Greek poet Archilochus’s dictum, “A fox knows many things; a . . . . Continue Reading »
One of the most amusing contributions to the early modern debate on the origins of language came from Francis Mercury van Helmont. Like many others, he insisted that Noah spoke Hebrew, but his way of defending and explication that was uniquely his own.In his 1667 Very Short delination of the Natural . . . . Continue Reading »
You wouldn’t know as you slogged through his impenetrable prose, but Husserl’s turn to phenomenology was, Jonathan Ree argues, a “belated return to plain healthy common sense” (I See A Voice, 343).All knowledge comes initially through the senses, the scholastics had said, and . . . . Continue Reading »
Last week at Slate, Mike Pesca assured us that, Montgomery Burns notwithstanding, steeplers aren’t necessarily evil. Steepling is what you do when you form a tent with your fingers. Touching fingers in succession while steepling is optional.Pesca cites the Definitive Book of . . . . Continue Reading »
Historically, “aesthetics” has had an accidental relationship to art. Aesthetics, from aesthesis, referred to perception through senses. In this sense, an “aesthetic” theory of art is a theory with a particular focus on the sensory experience of art.If we put aside the . . . . Continue Reading »
John is so subtle that we nearly miss it. Jesus says, “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:4), implying that at some time he might not be in the world. Then he heals a blind man with clay and tells him to go wash (9:5). When the blind man comes back seeing, . . . . Continue Reading »
Belief in God is natural, argues Justin Barrett in Born Believers. His is not a theological or philosophical argument about natural knowledge, but a conclusion from interviews, surveys, and other psycho-sociological evidence.Which makes atheism rather an anomaly, Barrett things, and a . . . . Continue Reading »
Jonathan Ree’s delightful I See A Voiceglances at Enlightenment-era efforts to work out analogies between color and musical harmonies.Newton’s Optics was key. He argued that “just as all different tones can be located on a single scale running from the highest to the lowest . . . . Continue Reading »
We don’t hear sounds, Heidegger said. That’s an abstraction. What we hear are things making sounds - “the creaking wagon, or the motor cycle . . . the column on the mark, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the fire crackling” (quoted in Jonathan Ree, I See A Voice, . . . . Continue Reading »
Voice has often been seen as expression, as the coming into public space of something within. Given its reliance on breath, it was easy to conclude that voice is the expression of the soul.According to Ree (I See A Voice), it was Herder who broke through this illusion bt arguing that voice . . . . Continue Reading »
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