philosophical society.com

Excerpts & Passages Index
Erich Fromm: The aim of modern society
Lewis Lapham: The postmodern sensibility
Shelley's Poem, "Love's Philosophy"
Michael Shermer: The law of large numbers
Alan Watts: On the decay of belief

The psychology of political conservatism
Robert Nozick: "Why do intellectuals oppose capitalism?"
Henry David Thoreau: A lament against incessant business
A complaint against intellectuals
Tocqueville on America's "Fanatical Spiritualism"

Rethinking our techno-rich existence
Rock & Sell: pop music as pitchman's device
"Where have all the intellectuals gone?"
The appeal of literary dystopias
Why aren't our poets & artists more esteemed?

"Empires prefer a baby and the Cross to the adult Jesus"
"I wish I had kicked Susan Sontag."
Why the west is heading for a fall
A Conversation Between A Taoist & A Logician
The passing of Arthur Miller

Is there a crisis in filmmaking today?
"No one has a destiny anymore"
The relation of artists to their society
Einstein on God & the good life
The fear of thought

The listlessness of political life
Celebrity benevolence
"Sexuality as a sexually transmitted disease"
"The illusion of being together"
The "why" of learning

Huxley's insight
In praise of idleness
Defining beauty as a mask
In defense of vagueness
Waste land lives

What it takes for evil to flourish
Our fear of time
Life within a skein of words
The trouble with Richard Dawkins
Jung's observation about people

The plight of the artist today
The older you become
When once we have ceased to believe...
The state of our whole life
Rainer Maria Rilke: "Imaginary Life Journey"

Explaining aloneness
"Behavior has its own sources"
"The situation of the emancipated woman"
Life desacralized
The mission of writers and artists

Cosmological despair
A physicist's thoughts on the God question
"Darkening of the world"
"Put the mind out of business"
Worldliness of the majority

The revolution betrayed
Artificial paradises
The artist and Professor Chomsky
Anxiety reveals the nothing
The decline & fall of work

"I am what I am"
Modern human relations
On American politics
C. Wright Mills on American life
Bertrand Russell: On being modern-minded

The mirage of mathematical exactitude
Against the masses
“I don’t want to be a brand”
“There no longer exist human beings”
The necessity for the name “God”

Cratylus’ skepticism
The responsibility of intellectuals
Thomas Merton on secular culture
On not caring as much anymore
The psychedelic answer to the “I” question