The French Connection: combining Camus and Bourdieu to explain “alternative facts”

"Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" The internet widely attributes this quote to Groucho Marx, but the gist of the joke is that the line was spoken by Chico Marx, while dressed as Groucho. In a movie (Duck Soup, 1933). In other words, you cannot trust what you see or...

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25 January 2017 “Good morning, Ted. I missed you yesterday.” “Yeah, I got here late, around 11:00. I had a bad night. Do you want to hear something funny? Friday night a guy came by and asked me if I wanted a flat screen TV. I said, ‘Sure!’ He said, ‘Are you going to… via TRUMP...

Bernie Sanders at Liberty University

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE NOW DEFUNCT BERNIEBLOG.ORG.  On Monday, September 14, 2015, Senator Bernie Sanders spoke to the students of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, a stalwart conservative Republican soapbox since Reagan’s speech in October, 1980. Make no mistake: this is a monumental event and one that exemplifies the "Bernie brand" for the...

Fire of Norea Novel Excerpt: The Undying Man

In this excerpt of Fire of Norea, from "1992", a young man named Clint unfortunately got lost in the woods of West Virginia and, more unfortunately, has been found by a witch and her kin:  Clint dangled from the rafters of the barn, a thick length of woven hemp twine wrapped around his wrists and shoulders....

The Exegesis of PKD

   I bought this as soon as it came out and finally started reading it this weekend. Although PKD was autodidactic and suffering from any number of possible ailments (including straight up revelations), I'm glad I finished my degree before I started reading it. It makes the task a little less daunting (the book is...

REVIEW: Sean McCloud, “American Possessions”

McCloud, Sean. American Possessions: Fighting Demons in the Contemporary United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. A tome with the ritualistic repetition of a grimoire, Dr. McCloud's American Possessions is haunted by a singular truth, the barest mystery of which possesses the reader until the final moment, when the specter of "neoliberalism" reveals its...

Gershom Scholem: Conclusion, Ineffable God: The Jewish (rather than Platonic) Roots of Gnosticism

This is a series on the relationship between Greek philosophy and gnostic literature. To start with the first post, please go here. Here are my concluding thoughts on the extent to which Platonism influenced gnosticism and, secondarily, whether Judaism is actually the more likely origin. Famed Jewish historian Gershom Scholem argued for a link between early...

Philo, Part IV of Ineffable God: The Jewish (rather than Platonic) Roots of Gnosticism

Philo's work is somewhat enigmatic. For instance, he uses Plato's theory of Ideas in De specialibus legibus I.329 to explain how the Hebrew God made the cosmos: "God created the universe, but without being personally involved in this task, because he, being perfectly blessed, could not enter into contract with indefinite and confused matter. He made use of...

Plato: Part III of Ineffable God: The Jewish (rather than Platonic) Roots of Gnosticism

This is a series on the relationship between Greek philosophy and gnostic literature. To start with the first post, please go here. This post looks at Plato, Middle Platonism and the influence of other Greek philosophies on Middle Platonism regarding negative theology and the concept of an ineffable deity, drawing largely from Deirdre Carabine's book on...

Apocryphon of John, Part II of Ineffable God: The Jewish (rather than Platonic) Roots of Gnosticism

In the previous post, I provided an overview of this series, in which I will look at Platonic thought, Philo of Alexandria and the gnostic text Apocryphon of John in order to argue that gnostic thought, although it may have utilized philosophical terms to explain its concepts, was not a philosophical system based on Greek philosophy. In this...