Thursday
February 24, 2005 |
 Victor Hugo's Ninety-Three
by Cameron Pritchard
Victor Hugo is best known for Les Misérables and Notre Dame de Paris, two classics of Romantic literature. But Hugo's final novel, Ninety-Three, is a work of such power, scope and passion that it ranks with the most famous of his works. (Read more...)
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 Is "Political Correctness" an Anti-Concept?
by Cameron Pritchard
A dissenting view on the widespread use of the term "PC" by Objectivists and libertarians. (Read more...)
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 Of Brains, Vats and Stolen Concepts
by Cameron Pritchard
The whole brain in the vat argument is based on fallacious reasoning that refutes itself. With good philosophical tools in our hands, life is made so much easier. So long as we know how to use these tools, there are so many arguments we barely even have to refute because they do the job for us themselves. (Read more...)
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 Human nature--who needs it?
by Cameron Pritchard
What is human nature, anyway? Does the concept of human nature have any validity? (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 30, 2002 |
 Come Back, Karl: All Is Forgiven
by Cameron Pritchard
What would Karl Marx think of his vegan, tree-hugging, anti-industrial progeny? Not much... (Read more...)
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 Nourishing The Best Within
by Cameron Pritchard
As a seventeen-year-old observing the ways of the world it often saddens me to see the jaded view of life held by many older people. Any hot-headed and idealistic teenager will find his passionate convictions about the way the world should be dismissed as youthful naiveté. Apparently ideas are something you are supposed to just "grow out of" when you enter the "real" world. (Read more...)
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From Washington to Weasels
by Cameron Pritchard
Close your eyes and think of Thomas Jefferson. Open them and look at George W. Bush or any other weasel-worded, compromising, pragmatic, mainstream politician anywhere in the world. What has happened? What has gone wrong? Gone are the days when politicians were philosophers, with ideas of grand political scope. Gone are the days when concepts such as truth, justice and liberty were the political catchwords. Today, these terms have been replaced by such almost ridiculous notions as "consensus politics," "the third way" or "the knowledge economy" — not the sort of stuff that stirs the blood and starts revolutions. Can lovers of liberty do anything but despair? (Read more...)
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Why Conservatives Like to Keep it in the Family
by Cameron Pritchard
Throughout history would-be advocates of liberty have tried to base freedom on dangerous foundations. God, utilitarianism, the protestant ethic – you name it, it has been trumpeted as a would-be defence for capitalism. Whether capitalism is based on serving the Almighty, or being your ‘brother's keeper’ - or both - all too often its advocates fall over themselves to reassure the socialists that they too support altruism. It is unsurprising then that many conservatives (‘radical’ or otherwise) have a pet form of altruistic dogma to be used whenever they actually feel like trying to defend liberty. They base their support for capitalism on one particular kind of altruism - the notion of ‘family values’. (Read more...)
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In Praise of Egoism
by Cameron Pritchard
This is a tribute to the egoist. Since the birth of history he has been maligned and despised. Misrepresented as the epitome of immorality, he has been tortured, burnt at the stake, censored and regulated. For the crime of thinking and acting on his own, he has been thrown to the mercy of the very masses whose existence he made possible. He was judged by those who were envious of his mind and of his talent. He was judged by God, by the state, by the people. But although the names of his jurors changed, their verdict never altered. Guilty. Guilty of the sin of facing the universe alone. Guilty of possessing a confidence in his own judgment as absolute as his love of truth and beauty. (Read more...)
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The Fouling of Philosophy
by Cameron Pritchard
Two millennia ago the Ancient Greeks established the discipline of philosophy and began man's ascent to the stars. Today, their legacy lies all but forgotten, a twisted, disintegrating remnant of what it once was, a meaningless game at the very time humanity seeks wisdom and direction for its uncertain future. Philosophy's contemporary practitioners are in the process of destroying the very purpose of their discipline, tearing it down by declaring that certainty can never be attained, and offering nothing but an array of absurd word games in its place. On some campuses in this country, these academics are expunging from philosophy curricula any mention of philosophic history, in an attempt to make philosophy appear isolated from any relevancy to life, mankind's past, or its future. Worse, at a time when my generation is directionless for lack of an uplifting view of life, professional philosophers are stealing philosophy - and ethics - from those who are in dire need of it. (Read more...)
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Of Wright and Renaissance
by Cameron Pritchard
Upon entering Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York one is immediately struck with awe. This is a building like no other, an organic entity rising from the ground and taking you on its spiral ascent to the heavens - the heavens that only a man of Wright's brilliance could reach. The spirit of Wright's heroic vision and the material substance of the building are thrust together to create an experience at once intellectual and emotional. The Guggenheim boasts an "extended, expansive, well-proportioned floor space from bottom to top … no stops anywhere … gloriously lit from above." The building is a temple to life on earth - and yet one feels as if one is truly in the presence of a god. The god is Wright - whose gigantic presence haunts the building and makes one realize what we Objectivists might call "the total passion for the total height." (Read more...)
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