Posts

Quán Chùa ở Paris: Khói, Sex, và Hiện Sinh

Image
  Culture | Existentialism Smokey and the bandits Fun and philosophy in Paris Save Share Mar 23rd 2016 | 3 min read At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails. By Sarah Bakewell. Other Press; 439 pages; $25. Chatto & Windus; £16.99. EXISTENTIALISM is the only philosophy that anyone would even think of calling sexy. Black clothes, “free love”, late nights of smoky jazz—these were a few of intellectuals’ favourite things in Paris after the city’s liberation in 1944. Simone de Beauvoir was “the prettiest Existentialist you ever saw”, according to the New Yorker in 1947. Her companion, Jean-Paul Sartre (pictured) was no looker, but he smoked a mean Gauloise. Life magazine billed their friend, Albert Camus, the “action-packed intellectual”. Certainly there was action. One evening in Paris, a restaurant punch-up involving Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir and Arthur Koestler spilled out on to the streets. In New York another novelist, Norman Mailer, drunkenly stabb...
Post a Comment
Read more

You Only Need To Be Alive

Image
  Conrad Melville Ethics & Culture Borges Conversations Đạo Hạnh & Văn Hóa FERRARI. Borges, in your serenity, you can possibly enlighten me, given that we have talked about ethics and culture, about the importance of an ethical attitude to culture. BORGES. I do not believe that culture can be understood without ethics. It seems to me that an educated person has to be ethical. For example, it's commonly supposed that good people are fools and intelligent ones are wicked. But I do not believe that-indeed, I believe the opposite. Wicked people are usually also naive. Someone acts in an evil way because he cannot imagine how his behaviour might affect another. So I think that there's some innocence in evil and some intelligence in goodness. Further, goodness, to be perfect-though I do not believe that anyone attains perfect goodness- has to be intelligent. For example, a good and not-too-intelligent person can say disagreeable things to others because he realizes that they ...
Post a Comment
Read more
Image
Culture | Nobel prize for literature The Swedish poet you will soon be reading No one is surprised by Tomas Tranströmer's win in Sweden Save Share Oct 6th 2011 By E.H. | LONDON AMID the flurry of last-minute bets for Bob Dylan (once rated by bookies at 100/1), a relatively unknown Swedish poet, Tomas Tranströmer, has won the Nobel prize for literature. “He is a poet but has never really been a full-time writer,” explained Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which decides the award. Though Mr Tranströmer has not written much lately, since suffering from a stroke in 1990 that left him partly paralysed, he is beloved in Sweden, where his name has been mentioned for the Nobel for years. One newspaper photographer has been standing outside his door on the day of the announcement for the last decade, anticipating this moment. Born in 1931, Mr Tranströmer began publishing poems when he was in his early 20s. He has been translated into 60 different languages sin...
Post a Comment
Read more