Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
I know that with climate change, it’s a bit difficult to tell when one season ends and another begins. But by the calendar, this is the first reading list of the summer of 2025.
It’s always nice to start thinking about summer reads. And I hope this year is no different from any other in that regard. I’ve got plenty of things on my list. Let me know about yours!
In the first post of the Epicureanism 101 series, we talked about Epicurus’s division between types of desires. He divides between necessary, unnecessary, and unnatural desires to provide us a guide to focus our behavior.
But focus it toward what? That’s the question we answer in today’s post.
For the Epicurean, we aim for pleasure! That is to say that pleasure, for the Epicurean, is our final end or goal. It’s how we achieve eudaimonia.
So, in this post, I’ll say a bit about pleasure.
It’s been more than 10 years since I finished my dissertation and published my first book. Both centered on the notion of practices. Hitting that round number pushed me to think back to that work and its significance to me – both to my intellectual development and my personal life.
Like much of the work I’ve done as an activist or in my career, it was all pretty heterodox for its time and place. I got my education at a very traditional analytic philosophy department, while my work cut across the lesser appreciated analytic and even continental (!) traditions.
But I bear no grudges there. I’ve never minded heterodoxy. And I’ve greatly appreciated my education both then and now.
Hi all – just wanted to send a note that I’m taking a break this week for my 42nd birthday!
Hope everyone has a great week. I’ll be back on the regular schedule next week.
In the sixth anniversary post of the blog, I told readers I enjoy writing the annual anniversary post. And it’s true. I do! It’s fun to look back and think about how far the blog has come. We’re well past the half decade point, and we’ve made it through a lot of news and events – a brutal presidential campaign, a pandemic, and what I can only describe as a revanchist response to the cultural politics of the 2010s.
Whew – that’s a lot! Thanks for reading.
I always aim to keep things fresh, and this past year saw the addition of a major new component: the philosophical counseling page. I’ve been accepting clients for a couple of months. Check it out!
I’m also still writing over at Medium.
With all that said, let’s take a look at the data from Base and Superstructure.
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