Costica Bradatan is a Professor of Humanities at Texas Tech University and an Honorary Research Professor of Philosophy at University of Queensland, Australia. He is the author or editor of 10 books, most recently Dying for Ideas. The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers (Bloomsbury, 2015) and In Praise of Failure (forthcoming, Harvard UP), has written for The New York Times, The New Statesman, Times Literary Supplement, Dissent Magazine, The Boston Review, The Daily Beast, Christian Science Monitor, The Globe & Mail, and other similar venues. Bradatan serves as the Religion/Comparative Studies Editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
“An Idea in Our Minds”: What It Means to Be an American When You Weren’t Born One
Andrei Codrescu, Aurelian Craiutu, and Costica Bradatan discuss what it means to be an American when you were not born one....
The Plot and the Argument: Philosophy as a Narrative Affair
The compelling story of four German-language thinkers in the aftermath of World War I....
Always Narrating: The Making and Unmaking of Umberto Eco
Costica Bradatan looks back at, and behind, the life and thought of Umberto Eco, who waged a long war against “dietrologia” (“behindology”)....
The Gifts of Humility
Costica Bradatan contemplates the blind cruelty of power and the gifts of humility....
Philosophy Needs a New Definition
Costica Bradatan says we need a Sufi master (or Plato) to enlarge our understanding of philosophy....
Why We Fail and How
We fail precisely because we are so afraid of failure....
The Philosopher of Failure: Emil Cioran’s Heights of Despair
Failure runs through it all, from Cioran’s “On the Heights of Despair” to “The Trouble with Being Born.”...
Body of Work: The Dying Philosopher
The scene of the philosopher's death is a reminder that what is most precious — our life — is also the most fragile....
The Idea of Europe
Costica Bradatan and Robert Zaretsky on George Stiener and "The Idea of Europe" as a place defined more by philosophy than economics....
In Defense of Margins
A garbage sorter in Mumbai's Annawadi slum can know capitalism inside out, even though he is placed at the margins of capitalism....
The Two Abysses of the Soul
Costica Bradatan shows us how The Brothers Karamazov explains Russia's current politics....
Andrei Codrescu
A Review, an Interview, and Poems...
As Unclear as Life Itself: An Interview with Cristian Mungiu
CRISTIAN MUNGIU'S Beyond the Hills (2012) won the award for Best Screenplay at Cannes, and its two leads shared the Best ...
The Romanian New Wave Crests: Cristian Mungiu's 'Beyond the Hills'
The best of the new Romanian directors and his film about exorcism....
On Reza Aslan’s “Zealot”: A Symposium
Reza Aslan's "Zealot": A Symposium...
A Radical Move by a Conservative Pope
ON FEBRUARY 12, 2013, POPE BENEDICT XVI, invoking poor health, abruptly announced his resignation effective at the end of the month. ...
Philosophy as an Art of Living
A QUIET REVOLUTION may have taken place over the last three decades in our understanding of the history of Western philosophy. ...
