He may have been human, after all: "We are reliably informed ... that Descartes owned a little dog - Monsieur Grat - upon whom he lavished much affection, and who used to accompany him on his walks." - P. Harrison, "Descartes on Animals", The Philosophical Quarterly 42 (1992), 219-27, here 220
Author: David Lloyd Dusenbury
David Lloyd Dusenbury is a philosopher, historian of ideas, Times Literary Supplement contributor and senior fellow at Budapest's Danube Institute. The author of I Judge No One and The Innocence of Pontius Pilate (published by Hurst and Oxford University Press), he is also Chair for Jewish-Christian Relations at the University of Antwerp.
A title I envy
Petrarch has a title I envy: "On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others" (De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia).
Premodern postmodern
The first known occurrence of the lexeme "postmodern" is in a fifth-century letter by an African pope, Gelasius I: "... post modernum, quod tantorum pontificum collectione ..." - J. Moorhead, “The Word modernus”, Latomus 65, 2 (2006), 425–33, here 426
“A commerce of light”
A book I wish I had on hand during lock-down is Leibniz and China, A Commerce of Light (Cambridge, 2004).
Three indescribable things
Three indescribable things - black-green pine, foam-white cloud, cobalt sky - have never been more beautiful..... The sky over French Hill, Jerusalem, 19 April 2020
“I am changed by philosophers into all the beasts …”
"The philosophers differ about the soul ... At one time I am immortal and rejoice; at another time again I become mortal and weep. Now I am dissolved into atoms: I become water, and I become air: I become fire, and then after a little, neither air, nor fire: the philosopher makes me a beast,… Continue reading “I am changed by philosophers into all the beasts …”
New TLS essay, “A world like a Russian novel”
My new essay on Nietzsche, Socrates and Jesus - with a glance at Dostoevsky - is up at the TLS.
“In next week’s TLS”
3 April 2020
Bukowski & Bukowski on reincarnation
I'm reading Bukowski today - not Charles, like back in the day, but Louis Bukowski, "La réincarnation selon les Pères de l'Eglise", Gregorianum 9 (1928). Here's the younger Bukowski on reincarnation: "I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next… Continue reading Bukowski & Bukowski on reincarnation
“The answer to so many of our questions”
Terribly funny. Rereading Martin Amis's late-modernist "revenge comedy" - The Information. "The information is nothing. Nothing: the answer to so many of our questions."
D. L. Dusenbury 