Sentencing the Present: An Archive of a Crisis

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In a spirit of both open inquiry and political advocacy, and inspired by the response of readers to our own “Theses for Theory in ...
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Sentencing the Present: An Archive of a Crisis

Sentencing the Present: Part Two

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

This seminar is part of an ongoing series. Read part one of "Sentencing the Present" here. A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In a spirit of both open inquiry and political ...
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Sentencing the Present: Part Two

“The Liberal Idea Has Become Obsolete”

Putin, Geuss and Habermas

I was first alerted to Raymond Geuss’s sour anti-commemoration of Jürgen Habermas’s ninetieth birthday, “A Republic of Discussion,” coincidentally on the same day that Vladimir Putin declared the obsolescence of liberalism in a meeting with Donald Trump. Trump, with the exquisite cluelessness that has made him so easy to mock, ...
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