Disembodied... Never Disengaged!
Philosophy, Politics and Society, all in one place.
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Book Review: Civilization from Alfred North Whitehead’s The Adventure of Ideas
Posted on October 13th, 2009 No commentsIn Whitehead’s discussion of civilization in the book The Adventure of Ideas he argues that “[t]he most un-Greek thing that we can do, is to copy the Greeks. (353)” This argument comes from the historical look at all civilizations looking towards perfection by trying to copy the past. For Whitehead, this is a great perversion of the real point of civilization, which is not a static system that is called perfect but rather a system constantly in flux that is perfection. Whitehead explains that a civilized society exhibits five basic qualities and then goes on to explain these qualities, although he does so in an awkwardly ordered fashion – explaining three before he even talks about civilization. The five qualities are Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art and Peace.
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Liberty versus Democracy: A Review of The Future of Freedom
Posted on February 17th, 2009 No commentsPerhaps in the age of globalization where the domestic agriculture policies of the United States can totally alter the stock market of Thailand the answer to the question of how should governments respond to the eroding sovereignty isn’t to give more power back to the people but give more power to the elites. This is, at least in part, the argument of Fareed Zakaria in his addition to the globalization literature happily titled The Future of Freedom. In his examination of political systems throughout the world and in the United States he argues for a few main issues, some widely agreed upon and others quite controversial.