One of the many definitions of “dialectic” is “a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to discover the truth”; another is “discussion and reasoning by dialogue as a method of intellectual investigation.” On either definition, Richard J. Bernstein is indisputably the most proficient and prolific ...
I wonder if “conversion disorder” -- a classical psychiatric term for the conversion of psyche into soma in the form of psychosomatic issues -- could be one way of thinking about the present. Especially with so many patients complaining of bodily symptoms, armed at times with cadres of healers; with ...
Bernie Sanders’ campaign to be the Democratic Party’s nominee in the 2016 US presidential election presents the left in the United States with some hard questions. Is this the revolution we’ve been hoping for? Or is it just more of the same, another effort to generate and mobilize enthusiasm that ...
The Bernie Sanders campaign for President is one of the most exciting and hopeful developments in US politics in decades. Sanders is, and long has been, a man of principle -- democratic socialist principle. He articulates a clear message -- that a more genuine democratic politics in the United States needs to ...
Earlier this week the United States Center for Disease Control (the CDC) released yet more guidelines for women of “reproductive age”. These guidelines take what could be seen as a draconian, or perhaps more bluntly, a misogynous stance of recommending that all women of reproductive age who do not ...
One way of understanding Shia LaBeouf’s “Just Do It” motivational video is as a translation of Bernard Stiegler’s recent work about “escaping the anthropocene.” And vice versa. Reading Stiegler’s essays and watching LaBeouf’s video are essentially the same experience: one feels exhilarated, thrilled, excited (as if one might ...
Last Thursday, I received a message via Facebook messenger. The message’s author was (so it read) the Chief Censor of Israel’s Military Censor, one Colonel Ariella Ben-Avraham, and in it she demanded that I submit to the Censor’s warrant. Entering Ben-Abraham’s Facebook page showed a page that was almost empty ...
No US election campaign in living memory has seen as many invocations of “populism” as this one. Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are labelled as “populists;” the term is regularly used as a synonym for “anti-establishment,” irrespective of any particular political ideas; it is also associated with particular moods ...
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