Digressions&Impressions

On Cugoano on Hume on Race, and the Protestant Work Ethic

But as a hindrance to this, the many Anti-christian errors which are gone abroad into the world, and all the popish superstition and nonsense, and the various assimilations unto it, with the false philosophy which abounds among Christi...

Once more on Socrates and Thrasymachus

Do you think that a city, an army, or bandits, or thieves, or any other group that attempted any action in common, could accomplish anything if they wronged one another?” “Certainly not,” said he. “But if they didn't, wouldn't they be...

Recognition as Terrorism Prevention

[I]f you recognize another person with regard to a certain feature, as an autonomous agent, for example, you do not only admit that she has this feature but you embrace a positive attitude towards her for having this feature. Such reco...

Our Manichean Madness into Civil War

A few days ago, in the context of a (relatively minor, albeit symbolically intense) controversy, I described the debates over Zionism and the BDS movement as exhibiting the character of "Manichean battle" that should not be encou...

On Total Humanity, The Origins of Human Rights, and Unreasonable Pluralism

[T]he totalitarian rebellion of our time is not only directed against nineteenth-century liberalism and democracy. It attacks the sum total of the tradition of the Western world, its religion, its science, its law, its State, its prope...

On Marilynne Robinson's Edomites

Assmann’s argument is the sort of razzle-dazzle that depends on coinages like “mnemohistory,” which is the exalted and useful discipline of interpreting history that collective memory has displaced and suppressed so thoroughly only the...

When the Top Just War Ethicist Calls for Proxy War

[A]irstrikes against targets within the cities that the Islamic State controls will almost inevitably cause disproportionate harm to innocents. The West must not adopt the tactics of Assad. Ground forces capable of discriminating betwe...

Ibn Khaldun, Discursive Power, and the Invention of Whiteness.

The four other zones are intemperate, and the physique and character of their inhabitants show it. The first and second zones are excessively hot and black, and the sixth and seventh zones cold and white. The inhabitants of the first a...