Having just finished another rendition of my course on “Philosophy of Language and Interpretation,” this time around I found myself more and more fascinated by Wittgenstein (and a later disciple, Robert Brandom). In particular, I was struck by how fruitful Wittgenstein’s account of meaning as “use” could be for thinking about literature and poetry. While…
A couple of weeks ago my home institution announced the latest way the economic downturn would affect us: they canceled the annual Christmas banquet for faculty and staff. Given budget shortfalls and belt-tightening that has happened across the college, this made good sense to everyone I talked to. And today on NPR’s “All Things Considered,”…
This month’s Vanity Fair has an informative article by Seth Mnookin on the New York Times bureau in Iraq. The Times is one of the few news outlets with a substantial presence to report the war (CBS news, for instance, has no full-time correspondent in Iraq), at a substantial cost. I found Mnookin’s observation about…
From Vanity Fair: “Not to be outdone by its colonial cousin Australia, the Commonwealth of Canada has commissioned its own 300-minute tentpole, starring Alanis Morissette and Dan Aykroyd as lovers divided by language, ideology, and the great Molson-Labatt debate.” Read the rest.
Stanley Fish’s most recent column on academic freedom is worth a read, even if one might not agree with him. The hook is a new book by Finkin & Post, For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom (Yale, 2009). The authors first distinguish between academic freedom and the sort of freedom secured by…
I’m very pleased with the cover for Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Baker Academic, 2009). The art & design folks at Baker Publishing Group are very receptive to suggestions and invite my input on most projects–and then always pull together a clean, pleasing design. I’m particularly thrilled with the fact that we’ll…