A Pitch of Philosophy

Recent News

• Caitlin Rosenthal, author of Accounting for Slavery, explained to PRI’s Marketplace how now commonly-accepted modern business practices like depreciation, middle management, and workforce planning were used by plantation owners to maximize the productivity of their human subjects.
• On Bloomberg.com’s Daybreak Asia, Sulmaan Wasif Khan, author of Haunted by Chaos, explained factional strife in Chinese politics historically—and the challenges Xi Jinping faces today.
• As political controversy over the treatment of undocumented immigrants continues, Ana Raquel Minian talked to KPFA’s Against the Grain about Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration.
• NYR Daily’s Wajahat Ali spoke with Kathleen Belew, author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, during an exploration of how white supremacists could be deradicalized.

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July 16: Stanley Cavell, Philosopher Untamed

Why not use the word “star,” Stanley asked in his breakthrough book on movies, The World Viewed, why not “the more beautiful and more accurate word,” rather than actor or actress? In philosophy he was a Hepburn, a Brando, a Dean, a Bacall, stars into whose souls he gave us entryways. I always thought of him and Hilary Putnam as the “glimmer twins.” Time was on their side, for so many decades, thank the lord. And on ours, too! We know he was here, and, alas, we know he’s gone now. Stanley attended monthly meetings of the Harvard University Press Board of Syndics. He dressed beautifully to attend our meetings, and he did his homework for them carefully, and spoke articulately on behalf of the books we had asked him to report on. And he would join the Press staff for or…