Words

excerpts from my memoir manuscript

My quotidian experience consists of a continuous, self-conscious cavalcade of self-criticism. Everything about myself that comes before my mind, everything that appears on the spotlighted stage at the Cartesian Theatre, is made to do a pirouette and then is bathed in boos and hisses.

I am possessed of sufficient self-knowledge to know a substantial number of the primary characteristics of my personality type, those which would be evident not to an acquaintance or even a friend, but discoverable only by a trained psychoanalyst: paramount among these is a normal amount of self-absorption and an unusual amount of ambition, plus a penchant for complicated dependent clauses, near-perfection in grammatical construction, and long—but never breathless—sentence structure.

More Words

My Substack is called “Armchair Vertigo” which comes from some thoughts on Hume’s problem of induction.

Check it out: https://davidjfrost.substack.com/

Essays

“We should forget the Manchurian Candidate angle. Isn’t what Trump did bad enough that it almost doesn’t matter why he does it? We continue, vainly, to seek the proverbial smoking gun. The imponderable whys have crowded out the deplorable whats.”   

Read more at The Smart Set


An excerpted chapter from my memoir titled “Halfway Twice is Not Yet Once”

at Slab literary journal (archived)


Naturalism, the idea that everything can be explained without reference to the supernatural, for Nietzsche is both the cause of nihilism and the only path to take as we struggle on after the death of God. It is therefore from a naturalistic perspective that we will best understand some of Nietzsche’s otherwise strange exhortations about how to go on living – his advocacy for a certain diet and climate, for instance. What is basic for humanity is not theology and philosophy, but physiology and psychology. For example, Nietzsche says he is interested in one question “on which the ‘salvation of humanity’ depends far more than on any theologians’ curio: the question of nutrition” (Ecce Homo, ‘Why I am So Clever’).

Read more at Philosophy Now


“On January 6th, we witnessed the extraordinary danger credulity poses to democracy. One wonders whether or not we possess the critical thinking skills required by our era.”

Read more at As It Ought To Be Magazine


I authored the first chapter of this book. My essay was titled “How Not To Watch Girls” after Adorno’s “How Not To Watch TV.”

Buy at Amazon


My book review of my favorite author, Maggie Nelson’s book On Freedom published in Ruminate. (defunct) (archived)


A book review of Joshua Alexander’s book “Experimental Philosophy” in PHILOSOPHIA


My book review of Mustapha Chérif’s Islam and the West: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida in PHILOSOPHIA


https://linktr.ee/davidfrost