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Responses and some links for my readings of James Baldwin Post 1

My recent reading of James Baldwin has turned into a full-on binge. In order simply to keep up with myself, I'm going to be putting links and thoughts in this blog. The first link below is the YouTube video of the debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, which is a must-see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tek9h3a5wQ Next are two videos of James Baldwin on Dick Cavett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWwOi17WHpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzH5IDnLaBA The next video is an examination of James Baldwin's  No Name in the Street  with Darryl Pinckney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW6KwSE4958
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Derek Parfit -- The Final Entry

After a long, tedious, explanation of what is wrong with various versions of "Subjective Theories", without really dealing with what I would call the 'real problem', nihilism, he talks about Kant. I have to say that I find actually reading the text unbearable.  So, I'm going back to the summary to see if he gives me an argument I can sink my teeth into. So, after skimming through much more tedium I  violated all canons of what is good and decent by going right to the "conclusions" section! Sigh, and here is what I was treated to: "everyone ought always to do whatever would make things go best."(pg. 74)   Let's read that again: "everyone ought always to do whatever would make things go best."(pg. 74)  I need a 600 page book for this? Here's another gem: "When there is only one set of principles that everyone could rationally will to be universal laws, these are the only principles, we can argue, that no one could re...
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Pragmatism -- Entry 3, the practicality of God

James takes on traditional philosophical problems such as the meaning of matter. Matter as a substance underlying experience.  What does it mean to say that the world is constituted by such?  Philosophers later in the century would say that such metaphysical questions are meaningless.  James has a different approach.  He says first: "What do we MEAN by matter? What practical difference can it make NOW that the world should be run by matter or by spirit? I think we find that the problem takes with this a rather different character...It makes not a single jot of difference so far as the PAST of the world goes, whether we deem it to have been  the work of matter or whether we think a divine spirit was its author..."(pg. 41) It sounds like he might agree with those later thinkers when he says: "The pragmatist must conclude consequently say that the two theories, in spite of their different-sounding names, mean exact same thing, and that the dispute is purely v...
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