Category Archives: Uncategorized

Mark your calendar! On Thursday, October 30th at 5:00 pm EDT, the Princeton University Press is hosting an online panel celebrating Harry Frankfurt’s classic work On Bullshit. Jaime Fernández Fisac, Elizabeth Harman, and Gideon Rosen will speak on the importance of … Continue reading →

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poème_sur_le_désastre_de_Lisbonne Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall in south-western Jamaica as the strongest storm to ever hit the Caribbean island nation in modern history, brought to mind Voltaire’s poem on the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. See also: “The Dialogue between Voltaire and Rousseau on … Continue reading →

Among the luminaries I met during my recent visit to Puerto Rico was my old colleague and friend Daniel Nina. (Thanks to the good efforts of Orlando Martinez-Garcia, we met at Professor Nina’s home office in Santurce on Thursday afternoon … Continue reading →

My wife Sydjia and I were going to spend this past weekend at the tropical Caribe Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but our close friends Orlando and Mireya invited us to stay with them at their home in the … Continue reading →

When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; … Continue reading →

Nota bene: a Rube Goldberg machine is an elaborate chain-reaction-type contraption intentionally designed to perform a simple task in a comically overcomplicated way.  I concluded my previous post by asking whether the man within the breast and the impartial spectator … Continue reading →

As I mentioned earlier this month, my colleagues Daniel Klein, Nicholas Swanson, and Jeffrey Young (KSY) have published a new paper in Econ Journal Watch, and their paper caught my attention because it’s about the impartial spectator in Adam Smith’s … Continue reading →

One of Adam Smith’s most original ideas in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) is the “impartial spectator”, but who (or what) is this perplexing and puzzling observer? Thus far, we have seen how the Scottish philosopher refers to this … Continue reading →