Digressions&Impressions

On The Brexit/Lexit Pseudo-Democrats and Pseudo-Internationalists

Brexit offers a historic opportunity for democratic and economic renewal. This opportunity is being squandered by Britain’s political class. The Full Brexit will set out radical arguments for a clean break with the European Union. Inst...

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...

On Realism, Theoretical Modesty, Systematicity, and Prefiguration

We have now seen how realists, especially through their focus on legitimacy, tend to be committed to strongly contextual approaches to political normativity. Contextualism also provides a way into the last and so far least developed fo...

On the Paris Statement

We are not passive subjects The true Europe is a community of nations. We have our own languages, traditions and borders. Yet we have always recognized a kinship with one another, even when we have been at odds—or at war. This unity-i...

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...

Gellner on Nationalism and Liberal Self-Deceptions

The basic deception and self-deception practised by nationalism is this: nationalism is, essentially, the general imposition of a high culture on society, where previously low cultures had taken up the lives of the majority, and in som...

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...

On Bonevac's What it’s like to be a college professor who supports Donald Trump

Other professors used to ask me questions about politics: “You’re smart. You’re knowledgeable. How can you support” whichever Republican was running for president that year? Far from being dismissive, that used to lead to interesting a...

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...