We've bashed NY Times columnist David Brooks before on this blog for his attempts at philosophy, and I absolutely feel for the guy from a logistical perspective: he's not an academic that can take a sabbatical and hole up to write and revise. He's more or less a blogger who has to fumble around every few days to figure out something that he's read about to spit back in an Continue Reading …
Amateur Philosophy at it Worst: How to Write a David Brooks Column
Here's how you write a David Brooks column: Take a common conservative meme: some easy complaint or claim that has been beaten to death -- in its usual form -- in political opinion pieces far and wide. Dress it up and soften it significantly -- avuncular-ize it -- by replacing the usual objects of axe-grinding with less direct symbols taken from your vaguely-remembered Continue Reading …
David Brooks Reviews Hubert Dreyfus/Sean Kelley
In a recent New York Times Op-Ed, conservative columnist David Brooks discusses the bookAll Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age, Read the review. As a review, it's basically just a fancied up version of one of these blog posts (meaning he gets paid a lot of money to write it and so actually puts some energy into it): he sets out a Continue Reading …
Christian Realism and Holy War
"Christian Realism" -- even Christians ought to struggle with David Brook's latest invention. How delightful to juxtapose other-worldliness and practicality! But to really understand it, replace "Christian" with "love" and "Realism" with "War." Meaning, "I love war, but I wage it only out of love." It's almost a self-parodying confirmation of Nietzsche's critique of the human Continue Reading …