A.K. Coomaraswamy's What is Civilization? and Other Essays

Paul Bishop's Reading Goethe at Midlife: Ancient Wisdom, German Classicism, and Jung

Experimental Metaphysics

David Rose, Jonathan Schaffer

Kappa by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (芥川 龍之介)

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primative Accumulation by Silvia Federici

40% off Verso books until May 16th

May readings

• Metaphysical Animals, C.M. Cumhaill & R. Wiseman
• An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme, Kwame Gyekye
• The Book of Tea, Okakura Kakuzō
• There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness: And Other Thoughts on Physics, Philosophy and the World, Carlo Rovelli
• Death and the Afterlife, Samuel Scheffler

still reading:

• Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, Max Scheler

rereading:

• HUMANS: A Brief History of How We Fucked It All Up, Tom Phillips

Catching up on a bunch of Deleuze readings, and other things:

Craig Lundy - History and Becoming: Deleuze's Philosophy of Creativity
Jay Lampert - Deleuze and Guattari's Philosophy of History
Claire Colebrook - Deleuze and the Meaning of Life
Peter Hallward - Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation
Daniel Barber - Deleuze and the Naming of God: Post-Secularism and the Future of Immanence
Roland Barthes - S/Z
Edmund Husserl - Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology
Michael Parenti - The Face of Imperialism
Michael Parenti - Against Empire

What did you think of Smith and Suwandi?

Metaphysical Animals, C.M. Cumhaill & R. Wiseman — 180 Proof

I have heard good things about this.

What did you think of Smith and Suwandi? — Streetlight

I enjoyed them both very much, thanks for the recommendation. I found Smith's work very informative, albeit highly technical and dense at times, as you mention in your short review. Suwandi painted a clearer picture (she's a better writer too) that offered a more material understanding of some of the more abstract concepts Smith provided, e.g. concrete examples of global labor arbitrage, or labor flexibility, and the interviews she conducted with Indonesian factory managers, etc..

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James McPherson

The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa by Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成)

The Case against Death, Ingemar Patrick Linden

The Creation of Patriarchy, Gerda Lerner.

Still making my way through The Second Sex.

Interesting...you might like Lifespan by David Sinclair, similar topic.

Thanks, but not really similiar. Linden's book is a bioethical examination of 'anti-aging' whereas Sinclair's concerns the cell biology of 'life extension' (from what I've gathered from reviews). I'm not nearly as interested in the technology as I am in the philosophy.

Taking a brief *pandemic break* from Piketty's latest tome ...

re-reading:

• The Plague, Albert Camus
• Wittgenstein's Mistress, David Markson
• The Road, Cormac McCarthy
— 180 Proof

... making it a "Doomsday Dozen" with 9 more novels (and no effin' vampires, zombies, etc):

• Clay's Ark, Octavia Butler
• The Pesthouse, Jim Crace
• The Dog Stars, Peter Heller
• The White Plague, Frank Herbert
• Wool, Hugh Howey
• The Children of Men, P. D. James
• The Trial, Franz Kafka
• Year Zero, Jeff Long
• Blindness, José Saramago

:death: :flower: — 180 Proof

2022 spring / summer addendum

• Brian Aldiss, Greybeard
• Justin Cronin, The Passage
• Michel Faber, The Book of Strange New Things
• Hanna Jameson, The Last: A Novel
• Ling Ma, Severance
• Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death
• Mary Shelley, The Last Man
• Peng Shepherd, The Book of M
• Waubgeshig Rice, Moon of the Crusted Snow
• Wilson Tucker, The Long Loud Silence
• Colson Whitehead, Zone One
• Lidia Yuknavitch, The Book of Joan

The Immortal Mind: Science and the Continuity of Consciousness beyond the Brain
by Ervin Laszlo and Anthony Peake

Gotcha, yeah Sinclair's book has a couple chapters dedicated to the philosophical ideas surrounding death (he claims that "death from old age" isn't real and is just a label for untreated illnesses) and the social implications of radical life extension, but you're right in that it's focused mostly on the science behind aging. The philosophical arguments themselves I felt were generally weak and naive; IIRC at one point he even hopes that in the future everyone will have microchips installed in their bodies that would monitor their vitals and inform the authorities if something is wrong :brow:

I made a post about this book (and the philosophical issues surrounding aging/death) here, in case you wanted to contribute.

:cool: Thanks.

edit: It's an old thread from last summer to which I've posted once. I read your OP again and if I find something which interests me I'll respond. I've participated in several other threads on "life extension" "immorbidity" "immortality" "transhumanism" "bio/ethics" etc.

Current
Graham Joyce, Indigo

Recently read
Robert Silverberg, The World Inside :up:
Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr Ripley :up:
Richard Matheson, I Am Legend :down:

Soon to read
Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book
Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
Robert Silverberg, The Book Of Skulls
Christopher Priest, The Glamour
Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees
Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Continental Divide: Heidegger and Cassirer at Davos
by Peter E. Gordon

I was going to pile Rawls' Political Liberalism on top of his Theory of Justice (which I just finished) but the material is just too dense. Saving that one up.

The Making of Bourgeois Europe: Absolutism, Revolution and the Rise of Capitalism in England, France and Germany by Colin Mooers

:up:. Appreciate your thoughts on Smith and Suwandi too.

Currently Reading:

Joshua Kates - Essential History: Jacques Derrida and the Development of Deconstruction
Drucilla Cornell - The Philosophy of the Limit
Gillian Rose - Hegel Contra Sociology
Leo Strauss - The City and Man
Adrian Johnston - A New German Idealism: Hegel, Žižek, and Dialectical Materialism

Did you enjoy Losurdo's Liberalism?

Currently reading:

Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant (finally and damn, it really is hard-going even knowing the main ideas before reading it).

The Kimono Tattoo by Rebecca Copeland

I'm surprised your PhD program didn't have this as a requirement. But, like math, there are many paths to follow.

Parts of it were discussed, not the whole book. There was more emphasis on obscure phenomenologists and the Ancient Greeks. Maybe related tot he fact that it is a Catholic university, I think.

To force people to read the entire Critique, would be cruel. Several distinguished philosophers, like William James or Bertrand Russell, got very little to nothing out of him.

But I'm rectifying that mistake :halo:

o force people to read the entire Critique, would be cruel. Several distinguished philosophers, like William James or Bertrand Russell, got very little to nothing out of him. — Manuel

Kant is very popular today.

He sure is, as he should be.

All I'm saying is that people vary wildly in what they get from him - either a great deal, something or very little and everything else in between.

He sure is, as he should be. — Manuel

Why should Kant be popular in philosophy departments?

Are you arguing for the sake of it?

He should be popular because he made important contributions in epistemology, metaphysics, morals and aesthetics, among several other topics.

Modern philosophy developed in part as a reaction to his thought.

Nevertheless, I think there are classical philosophers that are more interesting than him and anticipated his thought. And I also think Kant exaggerates his own importance.

But that he should be popular, is evident.

Are you arguing for the sake of it? — Manuel

Never.