Emeritus professor of philosophy at Princeton Harry Frankfurt‘s book, On Bullshit, was a surprise bestseller a few years ago. Given the public musings about our President, I thought it time to revisit the main idea of the book. Continue reading Lying vs. Bullshit →

Death causes many to doubt life’s meaning. It isn’t surprising that the connection between death and meaninglessness pervades the pages of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, or that death figures prominently in much the world’s literature about the meaning of life. Continue reading Death and Meaning in Life →

The Denial of Death is a work by Ernest Becker which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1974, shortly after his death. (In the scene above Woody Allen buys the book for Diane Keaton in the Academy Award-winning movie “Annie Hall.”)

The book’s basic premise is that human civilization is a defense mechanism against the knowledge that we will die. Continue reading Ernest Becker’s, The Denial of Death →

Books of My Youth

The first books I remember reading as a child were baseball biographies. Continue reading Orwell’s 1984 →