Despite the mistaken use of the label "New Atheists," there is a lot of continuity over the past couple of centuries among atheist authors in their critiques of religion, theism, and superstition. Not every argument is identical, and even when the same basic argument is being offered there can be variety in how it is presented. This evolution of atheist critiques of supernatural religion is one of the virtues of Christopher Hitchens' book The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the (...) Nonbeliever. Well known for his own atheist book God Is Not Great, Hitchens treads some very heavily-traveled ground here in editing a compendium of atheist writings. Do we really need yet another book of essays, isolated chapters, and other selections from atheists, agnostics, freethinkers and skeptics of the past? What could we get out of this latest offering that we didn't get from the past half dozen that we bought - or the others that we simply skipped? Those are good questions, and reasons why I was skeptical of Hitchens' book, but in the end I think he succeeds in making his book more than "just one more" collection of atheist essays. (shrink)

A well-known objection to prioritarianism, famously levelled by Mike Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve, is that it wrongly ignores the unity of the individual in treating intra-personal cases like inter-personal cases. In this paper we accept that there should be a moral shift between these cases, but argue that this is because autonomy is a relevant consideration in intra-personal but not inter-personal cases, and one to which pluralist prioritarians ought to attend. To avoid this response, Otsuka and Voorhoeve must assume we (...) know nothing about the subjective information of the person being chosen for. But we show that this commits them to two controversial assumptions: that welfare consists in an objective list of goods, and – if one accepts an unorthodox but plausible account of the relationship between risk aversion and rationality – that there is only a narrow range of rational risk aversions. Only prioritarians who accept both these assumptions are on the hook of Otsuka and Voorhoeve’s objection; for all others, the examples have insufficient information, and so lose their sting. (shrink)

Presents the text of a debate between former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and British intellectual Christopher Hitchens about the role and influence of religion in the modern world.

Presents the text of a debate between former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and British intellectual Christopher Hitchens about the role and influence of religion in the modern world.

Abstract:The commentaries of Wang Bi (226–249 c.e.), who coined a substantial part of the xuanxue 玄學 tradition, represent one of the most systematic attempts in early China to explore language as limited in its capabilities of expression and how language can be used to deal with issues beyond the reach of language itself. However, few studies on Wang Bi explore his philosophy of language. Therefore, the relationship between what can and cannot be expressed through language, and what lies beyond these (...) limits, is explored via a comparison with the early works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who himself described this issue as "the cardinal problem of philosophy." I argue that Wang Bi and Wittgenstein share a similar hermeneutical approach, centered on the deficiency of language in mapping determinate sense beyond the manifest world. The factuality of the universe is therefore ineffable and "mystical," and silence becomes an indispensable means of expression. (shrink)

The “happy fish” passage in the Zhuangzi 莊子 is often interpreted as endorsing some form of perspectivism which precludes objective claims of knowledge and displaces the significance of human perspectives. Relativism has gained particular currency in contemporary readings. However, this essay aims to show the limited explanatory power of such relativist positions, with focus on Chad Hansen’s “perspectival relativism” and Lea Cantor’s “species relativism.” I will also offer a new, “transitional contextualist” reading, which intends to demonstrate that Zhuangzi’s utterance is (...) grounded in his epistemic context and that Huizi’s 惠子 disputation arises from his changing of the epistemic context, from one with quotidian “low standards” to one with “high-standards” skeptical demands. I further argue that when “wandering” (you 遊) is understood as a freedom from one’s partial perspective, it becomes clear how Zhuangzi analogizes a parallel with the fish’s “wandering” through a continuity between his “world” and that of the fish. (shrink)

Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" has been celebrated, criticized, maligned, suppressed, and co-opted, but Hitchens marvels at its forethought and revels in its contentiousness. In this book, he demonstrates how Paine's book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the U.S.

This chapter focuses on the resurgence of antisemitism. It argues that Hannah Arendt is a great prop and stay and comfort in dark times like these, because she was always very acute on the morbidly stupid element of totalitarianism. The absurdity of totalitarian thinking is related to its attack on the life of the mind, and Arendt was quite right to insist on confronting this anti-intellectual element of totalitarianism and the racist element in it.

"A lively discussion of the life and writings of one of the premier revolutionaries of the eighteenth century. [Ayer's] chapters alternate between the externals of Paine's life and career in England, America, and France and analyses of Common Sense, The Rights of Man, The Age of Reason, other significant but less well known writings, and Paine's anticipations of the welfare state."--History: Reviews of New Books "[An] exciting book about Paine's life and principles."--Christoper Hitchens, Newsday.

In 2004, Sam Harris published The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason which became a major bestseller. This marked the first of a series of series of bestsellers that took a harder line against religion than has been the custom among secularists: Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris (2006), The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006), Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett (2006), God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science (...) Shows That God Goes Not Exist by Victor J. Stenger (2007), and God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007) by Christoper Hitchens. (shrink)

ExcerptFive years after its publication, the late Christopher Hitchens's polemic against religion reads like a desperate call-to-arms against believers by a liberal who promises perpetual peace but in reality advocates endless war. The attacks on faith by contemporary militant atheists—Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Stephen Jay Gould, or Sam Harris—are becoming ever more shrill and hysterical, a clear sign of atheist anxiety about their absolute certainty that there are “absolutely no certainties.” Having risen to public, popular prominence with Dawkins's 2006 (...) best-seller The God Delusion, this “enlightened” vanguard has attracted much mediatic acclaim and academic attention. A close reading of their…. (shrink)

The first of five commentaries on “Bloomberg's Health Legacy: Urban Innovator or Meddling Nanny?” from the September‐October 2013.

This is an excerpt from the contentWhen Christopher Hitchens died in 2011 from cancer of the esophagus, he was arguably the best-known writer of non-fiction in the English language. His books include political journalism, history, and polemic in the most serious sense although those who value his politics regret that he may be most widely known for his militant atheism. His best-selling memoir, Hitch-22, had just been published when he was diagnosed in 2010. Mortality comprises seven articles that (...) class='Hi'>Hitchens wrote for Vanity Fair in which he chronicles his experiences in “Tumortown,” plus a collection of fragmentary notes.Writers who have brought considerable insight to other topics are expected to rise to the occasion of their own critical illnesses and death’s imminence. Hitchens’s expected himself to remain witty, effortlessly well-informed, and perhaps most of all, conversational. “The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed,” Hitchens writes . He recalls. (shrink)

Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great, and Sam Harris’ The End of Faith were published from 2004 to 2007. The new atheism was widely spread by these books. Compared to other atheisms, the particularity of this movement is rooted in its motivations, which are in a sense mostly cultural and political, rather than strictly circumscribed to philosophical issues. The goal of this note is to characterize the new atheism through (...) the arguments given by the four referred books. (shrink)

In earlier ages reliable information was rather hard to get, and in general people could be excused for taking the founding myths of their religions on faith. These were the "facts" that "everyone knew," and anybody who had a skeptical itch could check it out with the local priest or rabbi or imam, or other religious authority. Today, there is really no excuse for such ignorance. It may not be your fault if you don't know the facts about the history (...) and tenets of your own religion, but it is somebody's fault. Or more charitably, perhaps we have all been victimized by an accumulation of tradition that. (shrink)

A profound, valuable, scholarly study of theology from a cogent well- written Jewish perspective, exposing the arrogant disregard the "New Atheists" bring to the God-controversy by their collective neglect of the great variety of God- concepts embodied in the works of Jewish theologians.

What is a good death? How does one live well in the face of (potentially) terminal illness? Philosophical analysis has a great deal to offer in approaching these puzzling and deep questions. Perhaps more can be gleaned of cultural and personal significance, however, from narratives of those who have been forced to face these questions in their lives and in their writings. The greatest yield, I suggest, comes from combining narrative with philosophical reflections.Commentators have frequently contrasted the way we die (...) today with deaths in the past (Callahan 1993, 2003; Hardwig 2009). Before the first half of the 20th century, people mainly died from infectious diseases, with a rapid onset and swift progression to .. (shrink)