Category: Thinkers

  • The Best of All Possible Worlds: Modal Metaphysics and Possibilia, by James Shapiro

    A brilliant intellectual whose work spanned many fields—mathematics, geometry, physics, etc., in addition to his philosophical contributions—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz remains best known for his rather unique version of “theodicy.” This term refers to an argument defending the benevolence of God and His methods, despite the worldly suffering and injustice that has and always will occur.

  • On the trail of Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek in the American Desert

    OBJECTS IN THIS MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. We understand Baudrillard to be a unique thinker – perhaps one of the half-dozen greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. America is a milestone work of social commentary about the USA by a French author, in the same tradition as Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

  • Authentic Existence in Heidegger’s “Being and Time”

    In his excellent essay on Heidegger’s Being and Time, my nephew James Shapiro argues (among other things) that Heidegger gives little content to or explanation of what he means by authentic being. Jamie said that he was influenced in formulating this view by one of his philosophy professors at Boston University, Daniel Dahlstrom.

  • On Heidegger’s “Being and Time”, by James Shapiro

    Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time is a work primarily concerned with the explication and understanding of the specific brand of existence and consciousness that is unique to man—or perhaps stated more succinctly, what it means to be a human being. This unique human existence Heidegger calls Dasein.

  • Sartre and Derrida: The Promises of the Subject, by Christina Howells

    Sartre and Derrida: The Promises of the Subject Chaque fois unique, la fin du monde by Christina Howells Christina Howells is Professor of French at Wadham College, Oxford University. She has published books on Sartre, on Derrida, and on French women philosophers. She teaches literary theory, French literature, and recent French thought.

  • Claude Lefort, Political Philosopher, by Alan N. Shapiro

    Politics as it is practiced in America is obsolete. It is a simulation of democracy. It seems to have very little to do with democracy any more. How do we get back to (or, more accurately, move forward to) being a real democracy? Here’s my answer: By understanding the lifework of Claude Lefort.