Claims to Populism, Danger to Democracy?
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 ...
Spinoza in Love
In Part III of the Ethics, Spinoza begins to diagnose more deeply what it means to be a finite mode (e.g., a human being). In his attempt to address “men’s way of living” and contravene the erroneous conception of “man in Nature as a dominion within a dominion” (III Preface), ...
Refugee Resettlement Is a Church-State Enterprise
If Rand Paul supports church efforts to aid refugees, then he should support government efforts, too.
During the last Republican debate, Senator Rand Paul expressed opposition to resettling Syrian refugees because of his concern about government spending. “Charity is about giving your own money,” Paul declared. “Charity isn't giving someone else's money.” Paul lavished praise on private efforts to aid refugees, ...
...Ecology, Security, and the Death of Liberal Democracy
In a recent episode of the FX series Fargo, Minnesota Sheriff Lou Solverson answers a key witness’s refusal to accept police protection from a local crime syndicate by recounting his experience in Vietnam: “There’s a look a boy gets when he’s been shot, or a landmine takes off ...
Barbarism or Barbarism?
The Paris Climate Deal: Just Words?
Or just enough to move the earth?
As the world leaders read through endless scripted statements about making history and saving the planet for our children, environmental critics were already denouncing the Paris climate deal as a fraud. It is not difficult to see why. First, the deal contains no legal obligations for countries to cut ...
Against “Charm”
The Uses of Autobiography for Philosophy
Butler’s “ethic of vulnerability” and redefining “liberal” in the “liberal arts”
Agnes Heller and “Everyday Revolutions”
Portrait of a Philosopher
The forms of the southern clouds at the dawn of April 30th, 1882, are comparable to those mottled streaks on this one book he had only seen once (a Spanish edition). Following the Naturalis Historia, he recounts exactly four historically exemplary cases of prodigious memory: Cyrus ...
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