John Lysaker

It is in large part according to the sound people make that we judge them sane or insane, male or female, good, evil, trustworthy, depressive, marriageable, moribund, likely or unlikely to make war on us, little better than animals, inspired by God. These judgments happen fast and can be brutal.The orator must ever stand with forward foot, in the attitude of advancing. His speech must be just ahead of the assembly,—ahead of the whole human race,—or it is superfluous. His speech is not to be distinguished from action. It is the electricity of action.Philosophy has never settled upon a genre. One finds provocative dialogues such as Plato’s Crito. Performatively rich, the dialogue shows Socrates offering Crito, one ..

American life storms about us daily, and is slow to find a tongue.Early in his Meditations, Descartes suggests that, at least once, one should set one's epistemic bushel in order, as if beliefs were apples to be sorted. But that is not quite right, even though he uses the image in his replies to the seventh set of objections. Descartes's principal concern is not each and every belief but the ways in which he justifies them. It is thus not a stretch to find a kind of ethics of belief in the Meditations, at least with regard to scientia. (Regarding the epistemic challenges of everyday life, Descartes is quite clear in his synopsis that "no sane person ever seriously doubted these things," i.e., "that there really is ..