–So, what can I do for you today? –I would like this pain to go away. –Well, you know, external, physical pain is often but an indication of some inner cause, a problem inside, underneath the surface, underneath the pain, that’s causing it . . . –Can you fix it? –(Chuckle) I can make the…
Monthly Archives: November 2007
[Alexander at the Battle of Issos; from a mosaic in Pompeii] Antonio Gramsci (as is apparent in this collection of his writings) makes more nuanced and dynamic the base-superstructure model described by Karl Marx (and Friedrich Engels) in The German Ideology and the Preface to A Critique of Political Economy. In doing this, he turns…
[Image from Cartoonstock] In the preface (the “Attempt at Self-Criticism”) to The Birth of Tragedy, written more than ten years after the main text, Friedrich Nietzsche recapitulates the question he had broached in the work of his youth. He asks, “Is pessimism necessarily a sign of decline, decay, malformation, of tired and debilitated instincts [.…
This is certainly one of the most interesting electoral seasons in America. After the dominance of aggressive foreign interventionism (that got us into Iraq and is embroiling us now in Iran) (not to mention its threat to expand the power of the executive) (whose efforts are now being turned to us, simple tax-paying citizens!), a…
