Barthes vehemently opposes the view that authors consciously create masterpieces. He maintains that authors such as Racine and Balzac often reproduce emotional patterns about which they have no conscious knowledge. He opposes the view that authors should be interpreted in terms of what they think they’re doing. Their biographies have no more relevance to what…

According to this reading of myth, a myth occurs only if someone is a true believer who consumes the myth innocently. This is why, for certain later writers, a postmodern ‘ironic’ reading, which recognises and plays with the constructedness of myths, is deemed subversive. It is also why ironic uses of stereotypes are sometimes differentiated…

David Chalmers, however, argues that materialist reductionism of the Churchlands’ type throws out too much, and cannot deal with the fact that humans enjoy sunsets. Chalmers agrees with Thomas Nagel that there is something that it feels like to be a bat, or a human, but there may be nothing that it is like to…

Goldman Sachs, the global investment bank and financial services firm, announced Friday morning that it is running for president of the United States. The announcement was made at a farm near Waterloo, Iowa, by the musician Ted Nugent, who was hired to speak for the candidate. “We love oil and God and gasoline!” shouted Mr.…

As a young girl, I was an opinionated, asocial, extroverted, impossible egregious brat whose primary friends were books! The early lessons I learned, generally the hard way, in standing up for myself and my egocentricities, being proud of being ‘different,’ doing my own thing, gave me the strength of purpose to continue doing so later…