Despite Nietzsche’s pointed, if sporadic, political commentary, there’s a debate among scholars about the political relevance of his thought. On the one side are those who think Nietzsche’s concerns were largely apolitical. If you comb through his texts, you don’t find much that speaks directly to traditional political concerns. And when he does touch the political, it’s never in any systematic way; there’s no unified theory. On the other side are those who see in Nietzsche a deeply political thinker. It’s true that much of his writing is about morality and the role of art in society. But if you believe, as I do, that ethics and culture are inseparable from politics, Nietzsche’s ideas are inescapably political.
Category: ideas
The Problem Of Thinking That Consciousness Is A Scientific Question
“The spectacular advances of modern science have generated a mindset that makes potential limits to scientific inquiry intuitively difficult to grasp. Again and again we are given examples of seemingly insurmountable problems that yield to previously unimaginable answers. Just as some physicists believe we will one day have a Theory of Everything, many cognitive scientists believe that consciousness, like any physical property, can be unraveled. Overlooked in this optimism is the ultimate barrier: The nature of consciousness is in the mind of the beholder, not in the eye of the observer.”
Having Power, Over Time, Can Look A Lot Like Having A Traumatic Brain Injury
Power is a drug, or it’s worse than a drug. A psychology professor found during two decades of work that people “under the influence of power” act like they have brain injuries, “becoming more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view.”
Art Doesn’t Have To Come From Tortured Genius, Despite Our Myths
Actually, art is better when the artists are organized, or so say these two artists who have written a book about creativity.
Looks Like Car Hitler And Car Stalin Existed In Pixar’s ‘Cars’ Universe
The theory runs: “The Cars-verse includes a World War II–era Jeep named Sarge, who explicitly references events like the Battle of the Bulge. In the direct-to-DVD film Planes (made by Disney but not Pixar), there is an actual WWII flashback in which the plane Skipper recalls losing his entire squadron in the Pacific Theater. Assuming that Car WWII occurred, and that it contains the same contours as the actual WWII, we can assume that there were Car Axis powers, and thus a Car Hitler.”
So, Do We Have Free Will Or Not?
We’re physical beings, so maybe we think our minds are more powerful than they are. “Is it possible that our experience of decision-making — the impression we have of making choices, indeed of having choices to make, sometimes hard ones — is entirely illusory? Is it possible that a chain of physical events in our bodies and brains must cause us to act in the way we do, whatever our experience of the process may be?”
Lies And Lying Liars, According To A Senator And An Actor
Senator Al Franken – author of “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” which is now 20 years old – and Olivia Wilde, about to star in “1984” on Broadway, talk lies, fake news, truth, and literature. Franken: “It’s adorable to think I made a living by pointing out that people were lying. And people seemed to care about it back then.”
Should The Wishes Of The Dead Outweigh The Needs Of The Living?
“Imagine that a legal structure were erected to execute the wishes of the dead, and that the law would side with the dead even when their wishes conflicted with the needs of the living, or with the wellbeing of future generations.”
City Planners Are Predicting Drastically Fewer Cars In Our Cities. So What Will Happen To All The Road (And Parking) Space?
“It is with relatively high confidence that I predict you’re going to see a boom in landscape architecture. You will see innovation and invention that has never been possible, because suddenly, everyone’s going to have all this excess space.”
How To Make Yourself Work When You Really Don’t Feel Like It
In just the article we need for a summer Friday at the office, Melissa Dahl offers three suggestions that generally work for her.