Philosophy in a Time of Terror [antikvár]

Preface: Philosophy in a Time of Terror Philosophy books are seldom conceived at a precise point in time or in a specific place. Kant mulled over The Critique of Pure Reasmi for eleven years: he called it the "silent decade." Spinoza worked most of his life at the Ethics, which was published posthumously. Sócrates never wrote a single line. The case of this book is different, for it was conceived in the span of a few hours, in New Yoik City, during the morning of September 11,2001. I lived 9/11 firsthand: I was separated from my children, stranded in their schools at the opposite ends of town, and from my husband, a reporter, who ran for his life covering the attack on the Twin Towers. From my perspective, the unthinkable broke out of a glorious late sum-mer morning, which inexplicably turnéd into something close to apocalypse. All communication was suddenly cut: the phone and the Internet were down, no public transportaron was available, the airports were closed and so were railway stations and bridges. Like the rest of the world, I viewed the tragedy unfold on television; unlike the rest of the world, I knew that some fifty blocks from my home scores of peo-ple were jumping ninety floors to their death, some holding hands and some by themselves. As the World Trade Center collapsed, the escalation of events looked thoroughly open-ended: the Pentagon was in fiâmes, the President displaced in the air, the Vice-President hidden in