Thinking sometimes seems like conversing and borrowing and remembering. A colleague or friend says something that starts one off on a path that is half conversational response and half remembering. One remembers having traveled sometime past the conversational thought-paths that are now emerging. When one writes down one’s thinking it is then borrowing from one’s friends and one’s past conversations and not only responding to an idea that blossoms spontaneously, or is planted by a seed from the gods. A […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: philosophy

A colleague has written a nice review of The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West. The book pursues the thesis that the role of fatherhood is a central trope in Western Political Philosophy. The author of The Tragedy of Fatherhood, Silke-Maria Weineck, traces that theme through all the greats: Biblical fathers and prophets, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Lessing, Kleist, Freud. Yet the reviewer of this book on fatherhood ends on a quizzical note. […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: philosophy