Maybe I’m making something out of nothing, but I am fascinating by the heavy lifting done today at least in English and German by the word “thing.” It’s not just that we overuse the word. What is really interesting is that we rely on it to produce a certain je ne sais quoi. When someone…
I am often fascinated by the ebb and flow of traffic. Specifically, it’s amazing how often a heavy traffic jam simply ends without any visible cause in the vicinity. In most cases some accident or obstruction jammed the road and caused a slowdown which then grew as other cars responded. This slowdown then lasted for…
Whitehead and others have argued that traditional metaphysics fails precisely because of its obsession with language. Since it assumes the subject-verb-object mold of language, so also does it conform philosophical thought to this same mold. The attempt by Heidegger and others to escape into the poetry of the pre-Socratics is another essay at escape from…
OK, so older English sometimes gives us pause. What in the world does Holden Caulfield mean by this? Women kill me. They really do. I don’t mean I’m oversexed or anything like that—although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They’re always leaving their goddam bags out in the middle of the…