Schopenhauer's Lightning Eliminator Method

Need some philosophical rejuvenation? Do this:

1. Go to the beginning of the philosophy section of a large university library (or the largest you can get to).
2. Open the first book.
3. Read the first 2 pages of either the introduction or of the first chapter if there's no introduction.
4. Go to the next book.
5. Return to step 3.
6. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you've worked through the entire philosophy section.

Needless to say, your mind will be blown.

And the more you do it, the smaller percentage of books you'll want to read more of, as your taste and judgment refines itself over time.

The scope of philosophy will narrow as you realize just how few heavy hitters are doing most of the philosophical work.

May take a number of sessions, depending on how much time you have and how large the library's selection is.

You can also do this online using Amazon's preview feature, but it's not available for a number of important (and usually older) philosophy books.

Anyway, you'll find this activity encouraging, since like with anything else---there's a lot of crap out there that you don't yet realize is crap. This procedure will quickly give you a real direct sampling of all those books, thereby weeding out the one's that can't compel further reading more than two pages. Make a list of the ones you want to read more of, and you're done!  Works for journals too, but only one page should do for each article. Next library!

A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization

Just ran across Overman's A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization, and will probably get the hardcover. Check it out here. Added to bibliography.

Self-Referential Analyzer In Stores Now

Actually, naturalism, materialism, and mechanism are all teleological parasites (among many other parasitic behaviors shrouded in never-mentioned self-referential slights of cognitive hand). So next time you're at the pharmacy, look for the Self-Referential Analyzer, to permanently eliminate common philosophical parasites from your intellectual life, and that of your friends and family.

Self-Referential Analyzer: Get one. Be one.

Naturalism as Teleological Parasite

What modern biology reveals to us is the existence of a physical structure that points to or aims at something beyond itself and yet is entirely unconscious. Where have we heard that before? Why, in Aristotle, of course. Moreover, as a blueprint, what this structure points to or aims at specifically is the realization in an individual organism of a certain kind of structure or pattern definitive of the species---that is to say, the realization of a form or essence. "Modern" biology isn't so modern after all; the riffs are different, but underlying the jazzy hipster talk of "information and "software" is the same old squaresville melody of Aristotelian final-formal causality. Modern science, like all rebellious adolescents, has morphed into the father figure it once reviled.

--Slightly redacted from Edward Feser, The Last Superstition, page 255.

Another Magic Talisman

The moderns didn't reject belief in God for resting on blind faith. They falsely accused belief in God of resting on blind faith so that they could justify their rejection of God, and cooked up a new conception of what should count as rational, hoping that the accusation would stick.

--Highly redacted from Edward Feser, The Last Superstition, page 221

Sociopaths are Epistemologically Equal Too

It's very hard for liberals to maintain their smug pose of moral and rational superiority over traditional religious believers and other non-liberals if they admit that their own ideals are merely one more set of ungrounded prejudices among others.

--Redacted from Edward Feser, The Last Superstition, page 216

Prophetic Criminology

The legislative response is always---always---to crack down on the law-abiding. "

--Commenter john_ell over at the Washington Times