New Venture

For any followers unaware, I have started a new venture: personal philosophical consulting and education.  As the opportunities of the job market shrink during my search--not only the quantity of available jobs, but the strictures, and the worries about an unconventional candidate--it became increasingly clear that the traditional academic path was not one that I …

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The Narrowness of Academic Journals

Today, I received a rejection notice from a journal to which I had recently submitted.  In itself, this does not bother me--frankly, after a few years on the job market, I am almost numb to rejection.  Unlike the job market, however, journals tend to give at least some justification, however slight, for rejecting a submission. …

Interpretation and Traditions: Some Audio

My colloquium given 27 April 2018 at the University of St. Thomas has been uploaded as an audio file in a variety of formats, available here. Or you can just listen to the soundcloud version:

Interpretation & Traditions: A Sample

The below are introductory remarks to a presentation given on Friday, 27 April 2018, for Center for Thomistic Studies Colloquium at the University of St. Thomas, Houston TX.  An audio recording will be posted in the near future.  I also intend revisions, at some point, for publication. --- Preface [For those of you who don’t …

In Protest of Scientism

Late last night, I saw this article on Quillette.com (a locus for generally "centrist" thought--which tends to mean "Enlightenment-thinking Liberal"--in the current rhetorical revolutionary war), "In Defence of Scientism".   My initial reaction--the article being one that is haughty in the extreme, and full of polysyllabic words used incorrectly in painfully contorted syntax--was one of …

The Allure and the Danger of Interdisciplinary Study

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. -Alexander Pope A word that has been thrown about in academia for as long as I've been involved is "interdisciplinary".  On the Thomist side of my experience, the …

Together but Disunited: On Intellectual Culture

Over at Quillette.com yesterday, the site's founder and editor-in-chief, Claire Lehmann, posted an article asking readers to "help build a third culture"--that is, a culture which does not hold humanities and science education in opposition, but which bridges the gap between the two, or somehow otherwise allows them to coexist in harmony.  Her inspiration was …

A Short: What is Philosophy?

In yesterday morning's reads, I came across this piece by Charlie Huenemann, "Why philosophers should hang out at the humanists' parties" at Aeon Magazine, but delayed it until today.  It is quite bad, altogether misconstrues the nature of philosophical reasoning, and demonstrates that having a PhD in philosophy does not mean you know what "philosophy" …

On the Art of Annotation, etc.

I often wonder, when reading, how much work the author put into writing the work.  I know that, in my own book-and-article-writing endeavors, what ends up on the page amounts to less than 1/10th of what I do elsewhere in the process (including all of the editing and revising, which is never less than 2/3rds …

Languages, Translation, and Philosophy

Oftentimes, I go on book-purchasing sprees.  Sometimes this is due to visiting used bookstores in great academic cities.  Others, its due to an influx of cash and dropped prices from my extensive book wishlist on Amazon.  But this week, I spent a painful amount of money (for a po' un[der]employed academic like myself, at least) …