No wonder why Giacomo Leopardi’s notebook Zibaldone (1898) is considered to be one of the most important books of the 19th century. Zibaldone is a 2,500 pages (note)book full of wisdom about art, human culture,…
Thorstein Veblen on The Nature of Self-Respect; And Why Sometimes It’s Impossible To Achieve It
I am in the middle of re-reading of Thorstein Veblen’s book The Theory of the Leisure Class. In the second chapter titled “Pecuniary Emulation”, Veblen offers elegant and simple explanations of two phenomena: first, why…
Isaiah Berlin on The Three Pillars of Western Rationalism
In The Roots of Romanticism, Isaiah Berlin argues that Romanticism is, among thought movements in recent history, the one that most strongly shaped the history of the Western world. And not only in the arts,…
John Gray on Why Science Can’t Solve Fundamental Problems of Human Condition
We live in a time when a lot is expected from science. It seems that because science solves technological problems and improves technological abilities of society, we expect from it to answer to some more…
Freud on the Fragility of Human Happiness
The programme of becoming happy, which the pleasure principle imposes on us, cannot be fulfilled; yet we must not — indeed, we cannot — give up our efforts to bring it nearer to fulfilment by…
The Troublesome Origins of Modern Newspapers
Staying away from daily newspapers is a matter of mental hygiene. One side of the problem is the news itself. Rob Wijnberg does an excellent job explaining what exactly is the problem with news in his article The…
Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger on Studying Stupidity
If I could just avoid all the folly, maybe I could get an advantage without having to be really good at anything…And so this process I have gone through life identifying folly and trying to…
Leszek Kołakowski on The Source of Man’s Need for the Mythical
In his book The Presence of Myth, Leszek Kołakowski attempts to identify the source of the man’s need for myths. In enumerating the three forms in which the need for myth appears on the surface of our…
Robert M. Pirsig – The Metaphor of a Spiritual Mountain
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, a philosophical novel and a fictionalized autobiography, Robert M. Pirsig uses a journey through mountains as an elegant metaphor for one’s spiritual journey through…