The Republicans’ Trump Problem

The Republican Party has a problem. At the time I am writing (March 24, 2016), Donald Trump enjoys a clear lead in the race for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination. With nearly 60% (739) of the 1,237 delegates required for the nomination, more than both of his remaining opponents, Ted ...

Read More
The Republicans’ Trump Problem

2016 Heuss Lecture: The Dialectics of Progress

Rahel Jaeggi

How should we conceive of social change and moral progress? How do they come about? How are the two phenomena related to each other and how can they be evaluated—as change for the better? These are questions which have repeatedly preoccupied contemporary philosophical discussion and which seem to be indispensable for a critical ...
Read More
2016 Heuss Lecture: The Dialectics of Progress

Vision and Reality in Bernie’s Revolution

“And the children swarmed to him like settlers. He became a land.” (Edward Lear, 1945) A certain classic exposition on moral political thought holds that men acquire control and certainty about their world and their own existence through justice, and that humans’ knowledge of the world is inseparable from their own ...
Read More
Vision and Reality in Bernie’s Revolution

A Working-Class Hero Is Something To Be

Bernie Sanders and the White Working Class

A good deal of ink has been spilled over the question of Bernie Sanders’s relationship to African American voters, and it still remains a real question whether he can attract enough black Democratic voters in the upcoming primaries to close the distance between himself and Hillary Clinton.  Even his historic ...

Read More
A Working-Class Hero Is Something To Be

Flirting with Populist Politics

“He reminds me of Hugo Chavéz”, I blurted out to the group discussing Donald Trump and the current state of the US presidential election. Befuddled looks abounded. Much has been written and plenty discussed regarding Trump’s authoritarian streak. Mainstream media is rife with articles, memes, and comments comparing Donald Trump ...

Read More
Flirting with Populist Politics

Hilary Putnam

The Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam passed away on Sunday, March 13 2016, at the age of 89. It’s safe to say that while he was alive, Putnam was remembered not so much for a persistent theme or doctrine (such as: Quine’s rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, or Gadamer’s notion of ...
Read More
Hilary Putnam