Monday, September 25, 2006

Philosophywatch, week of Sept. 18-24

Welcome to the 3d edition of Philosophywatch.

On Tuesday, writing in The Financial Times (London), management editor Tony Jackson exhumed Hegel in order to explain the (lamentable) return of economic nationalism to the EU:

After the death of communism, the American free-trade view of the world achieved the kind of dominance that was bound to produce a reaction. As the German philosopher Hegel would have put it, thesis begets antithesis.

Also on Tuesday, The Mideast Mirror quotes Israeli journalist and columnist Dan Margalit, who appears to have recently dragged Beckett into the middle of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

Make no mistake about it: if there were some serious, responsible and reliable proposals... I would be willing to negotiate with [the Palestinian Authority] and make painful sacrifices. But Israel is doomed to wait in vain for that moment - just like Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" -- and that moment will never arrive if the government is now unable to stick up for what it believes.

And once more on Tuesday, Dan Di Sciullo, NFL Contributing Editor to The Sports Network, pulled the old "If X were alive" stunt in a story about Kansas City Chiefs coach Herm Edwards and the Chiefs' lousy season so far:

If T.S. Eliot were alive and a Kansas City Chiefs fan, he might say that the Herm Edwards' era has begun, "Not with a bang but a whimper."

Then, on Wednesday, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez dropped the A-bomb on the UN General Assembly. By which I mean that while waving a Noam Chomsky book, Chavez name-dropped Aristotle. According to the CNN transcript, this is what he said:

As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination.... They say they want to impose a democratic model.... What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy. What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?

And on Thursday, the college football correspondent to The Sherbrooke Record (Quebec) got his hands on the same Nietzsche quotebook everyone else seems to have discovered recently (see last two Philosophywatches). Undismayed that, in their most recent game, the Bishop University Gaiters let a 15-9 lead turn into a 38-18 loss, our man in Quebec had this to say:

The German philosopher Frederich Nietzsche once stated "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." Nietzsche may not have been a football fan but his quote is apropos for the 2006 Bishop's football team. They will get stronger, a lot stronger.

Give me strength!

Previous installments: 1 | 2

Posted by Joshua Glenn at 11:54 AM

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