Governments derive their legitimacy from consent of the governed. People enter into a social contract for their own well-being and the fundamental foundation of individual well-being is survival. Therefore, a social contract is only just or practical if it is created and maintained in the service of life. No government…
Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave,’ Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative, Hegel’s metaphysics — these are a few of the things one studies in philosophy. Much of philosophy, including these topics, remain remote and abstracted from the realities of everyday life. Sure Plato, Kant, and Hegel were intellectual giants. …
What is art? This is a question that has been pondered since the days before Plato. The definition of art, and various understandings have come to light in the past couple centuries alone. Unfortunately, many approaches to aesthetics in general center on Western aesthetics. Yes, the arts associated with Western…
Interior design is a subject ripe for abuse, particularly when it comes to those with excess space. The ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ mentality popular in American culture, indeed part of the mainstream since the 1950s, has exacerbated the worst elements of interior design while avant-garde minimalist design remained rather…
On 24 August 1814, the United States Capitol was overrun and burned. In the aftermath, President James Madison and Secretary of State and War James Monroe rallied the people in the face of this national emergency. On 6 January 2021, the United States Capitol was overrun for the second time…
“So briefly rests the dew upon the bush clover
Even now it scatters in the wind.”
-death poem of Lady Murasaki from the Tale of Genji (c.1010) reflecting on the brevity of her own life
A new year is upon us. The tumultuous year 2020 has begun to fade into…
The torch of Enlightenment shone, dimly at first, but firmly in the midst of the eighteenth century. The stultifying Old Regime authorities and decadent Parisian elites clashed to form an uneasy powder key of an environment in the French capital during the decades preceding the cataclysmic French Revolution. The Genevan…
The tragic late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries has obscured one of the most last influences in the history of two great nations of East Asia : Japan and Korea. The relationship between Japan and Korea had been dramatically different in the centuries before 1870, with the exception of Hidyoshi’s invasions in…
If one studies the varied and rich artistic traditions of cultures around the world, one sees quite different developments than can be seen in many of the -isms of modern art movements. Art is the balance between craft and creative exploration and a manner of individual expression with the power…
A restless genius in cosmopolitan Paris, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) contemplated the nature of authenticity and superficiality amidst the salon culture of Enlightenment Paris. Rousseau was an outsider looking in, in many ways. He was Geneva and proud of it. He signed his work ‘citizen of Geneva,’ though he spent very…
