Evil in Modern Thought: An alternative history of philosophy (2002)
Context: The picture of modern philosophy as centered in epistemology and driven by the desire to ground our representations is so tenacious that some philosophers are prepared to bite the bullet and declare the effort simply wasted. Rorty, for example, finds it easier to reject modern philosophy altogether than to reject the standard accounts of its history. His narrative is more polemical than most, but it's a polemical version of the story told in most philosophy departments in the second half of the twentieth century. The story is one of tortuously decreasing interest. Philosophy, like some people, was prepared to accept boredom in exchange for certainty as it grew to middle age.
The Betrayal by Technology (1993 film)
Source: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925), p. 2
“Middle school is for being like everyone else; middle age is for being like yourself. (430)”
Source: Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit
“I grew up in a middle-class family in the middle of America in the middle of the last century.”
Economic policy speech, May 29, 2007. http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=1839
Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)
"Haunted by Halloween", in the New York Times (31 October 1990).
The Almost Perfect State (1921)
Context: Of middle age the best that can be said is that a middle aged person has likely learned how to have a little fun in spite of his troubles.
It is to old age that we look for reimbursement, the most of us. And most of us look in vain. For the most of us have been wrenched and racked, in one way or another, until old age is the most trying time of all.
In the Almost Perfect State every person shall have at least ten years before he dies of easy, carefree, happy living... things will be so arranged economically that this will be possible for each individual.
“Logic, like lyrical poetry, is no employment for the middle-aged”
Source: Essays In Biography (1933), F. P. Ramsey, p. 296
Originally published in The Economic Journal, March 1930. and The New Statesman and Nation, October 3, 1931
“I grew up in Middle America and in the suburbs…”
New York Times Interview (November 11, 2010)
