Month: June 2011
June 26, 2011
The Lesson of Japan
In The Fifth Mountain, Paulo Coelho affirms that “all of life’s battles serve to teach us something, even those that we lose”. If there is a country from which the...
June 19, 2011
Pact and Democracy
In some philosophical circles, there is an old debate on the efficacy of a long-standing mode of Chinese execution denominated ling chi, death by thousands of little cuts. Whatever the...
June 12, 2011
Our Neighbors
Carl Friedrich, one of the most important political theoreticians of the XX century, said that “to be an American is an ideal; while to be a Frenchman is a fact”....
June 05, 2011
Costs and Reckonings
Myshkin, the hero of Dostoyevsky’s novel “The Idiot”, -erudite, coarse, naïve- arrives at an important party, obsessed with not breaking the Chinese vase in mid-salon. He attempts to maintain his...