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Thursday, April 07, 2022

What is necessary truth?

Hello darkness, my old friend

I’ve come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence

Simon & Garfunkel


"We all know that funny feeling of filthiness, of contagious ickiness. It's a feeling we call the prick of conscience when we make a compromise that we have doubts about. So we think about it again and again, and... we even worry about it somewhat, even though the compromise may have made life easier, compared to what would have happened had we not made it. But for myself...I see that my bravery comes out of cowardice, because I am afraid of feeling that ickiness of feeling that I've done something wrong, that I've made an undesirable compromise, that I've side-stepped; and conversely when I do something that I know is right, I can even have a feeling of euphoria."
Vaclav Havel


Jordan Shanks, the Parliament prayer room, a police raid and the sounds of silence


Raft of former Liberal politicians, staffers included in government appointments


From Christian Porter to Crown, new casino watchdog boss is prepared to ruffle feathers

What is necessary truth?


It’s an astounding fact that someone would devote their life to the question “What is necessary truth?” or that they would write, in code, on one side of a notebook, “Much anxiety! I was close to tears!!!!” and on the facing page, “A question: can we manage without simple objects in logic?” The content of one’s metaphysics, like the content of one’s character, is a way of seeing the world. And the connection between them is a philosophical matter.

“The Way Philosophy Is Personal”

Wittgenstein’s early private notebooks have just been published in English, translated by Marjorie Perloff (Stanford). Towards the end of an essay about them, Kieran Setiya (MIT) draws attention to “the way philosophy is personal.” (more…)


In a classic case of “do as I say, not as I do”, the Murdoch family has tapped into a US$100 million loan from a Chinese government bank, at the same time as its global media empire is going to war with the Chinese Communist Party.
Murdoch empire borrows US$100m from state-owned Bank of China



Slow Horses Series Premiere Review - "Failure's Contagious" and "Work Drinks"


  1. Jean-Paul Sartre by Jack Reynolds and Pierre-Jean Renaudie.
  2. Iris Murdoch by Lawrence Blum.

Revised: 

  1. Géraud de Cordemoy by Fred Ablondi.
  2. Conceptual Art by Elisabeth Schellekens.
  3. Formal Learning Theory by Oliver Schulte.
  4. Philosophical Issues in Quantum Theory by Wayne Myrvold.
  5. Atheism and Agnosticism by Paul Draper.
  6. Śāntarakṣita by James Blumenthal and James Apple.
  7. Beauty by Crispin Sartwell.
  8. Loyalty by John Kleinig.
  9. Questions by Charles Cross and Floris Roelofsen.
  10. Hope by Claudia Bloeser and Titus Stahl

IEP     ∅        

NDPR     ∅          

1000-Word Philosophy     ∅       

Project Vox    

  1. Tullia d’Argona by Meredith Graham.

Recent Philosophy Book Reviews in Non-Academic Media     

  1. The Critical Writings of Ingeborg Bachmann, edited and translated from the German by Karen R. Achberger and Karl Ivan Solibakke, is reviewed by Peter Filkins at Boston Review.
  2. Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman, and The Women are up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics by Benjamin J B Lipscomb, are reviewed by Cathy Mason at Literary Review.
  3. Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman is reviewed at Publishers’ Weekly.

Compiled by Michael Glawson