Human Rights and Cosmopolitanism

Below the fold, extracts from Judith Butler's review of Hannah Arendt's The Jewish Writings, Gary J. Bass' review of Lynn Hunt's Inventing Human Rights: A History, and Michael Blake's review of Seyla Benhabib (et al)'s Another Cosmopolitanism: Hospitality, Sovereignty and Democratic Iterations.

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reality

Nominalist, I and a few others have been rehearsing arguments about the mind's ability to understand or construct reality in the post that started with Heidegger below. The discussion had dwindled down, but this morning I saw this review of The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe by Michael Frayne. Colin McGinn is the reviewer. Introducing the book, he writes:

[Frayn's] question, central to philosophy, is to what degree, and in what ways, is the world dependent on the mind? Do we construct the world, or is it thrust upon us? He contends that reality has neither substance nor form without the constructive activities of the knowing subject, that space, time, causality and matter are all mental products, the results of our "traffic" with the world, not antecedent realities. He admits that the universe must exist independently of us in some way, but only as a kind of "undifferentiated mass." This is, he thinks, the basic paradox of philosophy: that we both create and are created by the world.

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rev tim haggard: music saturday

A song I listened to recently put me in mind of Reverend Tim Haggard's situation.

The song is by the band 'Garbage.'

The title of the song is "Sex is not the enemy"

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Serious students need fear not (at least not yet)

Michael Bérubé has published his review [PDF] of Theory's Empire, for those who may be interested.  It is blessedly short, lucid, responsible and well-aimed, including (but hardly limited to) the jibes at Baudrillard, IMHO.  It is to be compared, if you like, with that of the conservative Peter Berkowitz, who seems to spend most of his time bloviating rather mundanely, and proving––at least to himself or to some imagined choir––and beyond any reasonable shred of doubt, that he has neither a sense of humor about Nietzsche nor any familiarity with Derrida's oeuvre.  In any event, an occasion to update that Theory's Empire page yet again, I suppose.  [Hello, that's odd.  The page--and that page only--seems to have been lined-out, at least under Firefox and Netscape, though it's still clear in IE.  I wonder why that is...any ideas anyone?]