Justin E. H. Smith is an American essayist, journalist, and satirist based in Montreal. He doesn't want to write satire, but, as Juvenal said, the world leaves him no choice. He is a regular contributor to Counterpunch, and has written for numerous other online publications, including N+1. His work has been linked or cited in the online editions of the Guardian, the Atlantic Monthly, the Stranger, the Washington Post, and (probably a mistake) the National Review. His archive, www.jehsmith.com, brings together writing of his available on the Internet. Quite apart from all this, Smith is also a professor of philosophy and a specialist on the life and work of G. W. Leibniz. To see his academic profile, please visit www.jehsmith.com/philosophy. Email: [email protected]
Justin E. H. Smith Anyone assessing the strength of Pascal’s wager –that, though there may be an infinitesimally small chance that Christianity is true, the potential punishment for not believing it, or reward for believing it, is infinitely great, and therefore it is rational to believe it– should watch this video before coming to any…
For those America-Bound Justin E. H. Smith Hi-ho, brave trail-cutters! Won’t you please tell us whether it is true what the French explorers say, that America is “une nation avec quantitez de beuffles,” so many buffaloos in fact that one can scarce walk from door to street without risking a sharp poke in the rump?…
Justin E. H. Smith is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University. Akeel Bilgrami has so decisively exposed the weaknesses of the recent attempt to invert the argument of Said’s Orientalism that I do not see much point here in weighing the virtues of his essay against those of Buruma and Margalit’s book. I would…
The Vendyak Justin E. H. Smith In his 1957 structuralist masterpiece, Le croustillant et le gluant, the French anthropologist Jean-Robert Klein argued that the fundamental binary distinction through which the savage mind filters the world is that between the crispy and the chewy. The first and primary domain of application of these concepts is of…
What’s Really Wrong With Bestiality Justin E. H. Smith — Books and articles discussed in this essay: John Corvino, “Homosexuality and the PIB Argument,” Ethics 115 (2005): 501-34 Cora Diamond, “Eating Animals and Eating People,” Philosophy 53 (1978): 465-79. Lawrence Krader, Social Organization of the Mongol-Turkic Pastoral Nomads (The Hague: Mouton, 1963). Ruwen Ogien, L’éthique…
Justin E. H. Smith There is a scene from Jean Renoir’s magnificient 1939 film, La regle du jeu, in which the members of a decadent French nobility, looking for ways to pass the time at a country estate, decide to put on a little play. There is a man in a bear costume played by…
Justin E. H. Smith * Works consulted for this essay: Robert Bernasconi (Ed.), Race (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2001). Emmanuel Eze, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1997). Eldridge Huddleston, Origins of the American Indians: European Concepts, 1492-1729 (Austin, Texas, 1967). Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: the American Indian and the…
Justin E. H. Smith Romania has its share of track-and-field athletes, and even some marathon runners, but don’t ask me where they train. In all of my dozens of visits there, I am the only person I have ever known to run in public parks and along public streets. I do it expecting harassment. What…
The Uncashed Metaphor of Natural Selection Justin E. H. Smith 1. In their classic 1979 article, “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm,” Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin fault the adaptationist program for its failure to distinguish current utility from reasons for origin; its unwillingness to consider alternatives to adaptive stories; its…
Justin E. H. Smith To all those men of science who have occasion to attend a beheading: we have heard that the head remains conscious and agitated for up to thirty seconds after separation from the body. Won’t you kindly make an arrangement with the prisoner (and, as needed, the executioner), so as to measure…
Justin E. H. Smith Judith Warner is in my head, and she won’t leave. She’s been in there for three weeks. Now I don’t mean I’ve been thinking intensely about Judith Warner for three weeks. I mean she is actually in there, perceiving the world through my eyes, seeing everything I see, peeing standing up…
Justin E. H. Smith In what spokespeople for both parties are calling an act of “unprecedented interference,” a strongly pro-government newspaper in the authoritarian republic of Belarus has offered its own endorsements in the US presidential primaries. Analysts contend that this operation was likely directed by president Aleksandr Lukashenko himself, and was meant to serve…
Justin E. H. Smith For those travellers departing to Nova Zembla: Please confirm for us whether the snow there gives off its own light, or only reflects that of the moon with unusual intensity. Hi-ho, to all those expert in the arcana of Finno-Ugric inflection: Won’t you kindly let us know how the vocative case…
Race and Music in America, Part II Justin E. H. Smith MC Hammer once boasted: “You’re ’87 and I’m ’89.” With time, the force of this taunt has weakened considerably, and it should serve as a lesson to anyone who associates too strongly with the Zeitgeist. Yet, whenever Hammer’s lyric replays in my mind, I…
What Philosophy Can Learn from Anthropology Justin E. H. Smith * Books Consulted or Discussed in this Essay Scott Atran, The Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Barbara Duden, Der Frauenleib als öffentlicher Ort. Vom Missbrauch des Begriffs Leben (Munich, 1994). Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of…
Race and Music in America Justin E. H. Smith * Books consulted or discussed in this essay: William L. Benzon, Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture (Basic Books, 2002) Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves (Belknap Press, 2004) Cecil Brown, Stagolee Shot Billy (Harvard University Press, 2003) David Brion…
Justin E. H. Smith Hail myself! Hail the iron law of my development! In just five years I have increased fat production by ten percent, and average snore decibels by twice that. In keeping with actually existing conditions, I have also reduced shampoo use to austerity-era levels, and increased fourfold the daily repetition of tales…
Justin E. H. Smith In Harlem, ten years or so ago, I overheard two elderly ladies waiting for a bus underneath a billboard that read: “Depressed? It’s Chemistry, Not Character.” This slogan was followed by a 1-800 number which would put the caller in touch with a medical professional able to write a prescription for…
Putin’s Teens Gleefully Fight Fascism Justin E. H. Smith What does it mean to be ‘antifascist’? Is this position laudable by definition, or is it just as prone to sinister deformation as any other? Here in Berlin the meaning of ‘Antifa’ appears crystal clear: it applies to the squatters of Neukölln and Friedrichshain, the pierced-faced…
Justin E. H. Smith O who could have foretoldThat the heart grows old? –W. B. Yeats, “ A Song” I am a salaried functionary and a family man. I long for peace and quiet and a good night’s sleep, and I wear whatever my wife tells me to wear. At this point I no more…