Digressions&Impressions

On Escaping Our Gated Community

Rawls himself said in the opening pages of “A Theory of Justice” that we had to start with ideal theory because it was necessary for properly doing the really important thing: non-ideal theory, including the “pressing and urgent matter...

On Srinivasian on Nussbaum; on Anger in Politics.

But it is not radical in the sense of being unfamiliar. With the notable exception of black and feminist thinkers who have defended anger as a vital tool of the oppressed, almost all of Western political thought since the Stoics has la...

Should Policy Relevant Researchers Stay Out of Politics?

To lock yourself up in an ivory tower is impossible and undesirable. To yield subjectively, not merely to a party machine, but even to a group ideology, is to destroy yourself as a writer. We feel this dilemma to be a painful one, beca...

On Ethics & Economics and the Pre-History of Friedman’s ‘as if’

But this, measured by the standard of natural science, is not very far. There are no data for a science of conduct in a sense analogous to natural science. The data of conduct are provisional, shifting, and special to individual, uniqu...

The Letter against Derrida's Honorary Degree, re-examined.

The Times (London). Saturday, May 9, 1992 Sir, The University of Cambridge is to ballot on May 16 on whether M. Jacques Derrida should be allowed to go forward to receive an honorary degree. As philosophers and others who have taken a...

It's a Great Time to become a Political Philosopher/Theorist

Nationalist (sometimes racialized) identity politics, promoted by demagogues and irresponsible, profit-seeking media which benefit from the frisson, is resurgent. It's not just confined to the tired, European democracies and post-Communi...

Funding Sources Do Make a Difference! (In Economics and Philosophy)

The most serious charge that critics have made is that corporate interests and wealthy foundations have distorted much of the university-based research agenda in economics through funding and grants for research, selection bias and pre...

On Living in an Epistemocracy: or Why the Collapse of Neoliberalism Did Not Produce a Progressive Revolution

'Neoliberalism' has been a key concept used by progressive intellectuals to analyze and understand a whole bunch of political developments associated with the rise of Thatcher and Reagan and the subsequent, purportedly market friendly po...

Mill's Argument against Benevolent/epistemic Dictatorships

The supposition is, that absolute power, in the hands of an eminent individual, would insure a virtuous and intelligent performance of all the duties of government. Good laws would be established and enforced, bad laws would be reforme...