Digressions&Impressions

Decolonizing the Curriculum and Viewpoint Diversity

But then I look at the stereotyped Non-Western philosophy list and I can't help but notice another thing - it's a rejection of things that contemporary heirs to the Romantic tradition hate. Fair enough, they are trying to draw out what...

On Livy, Hybridity, Elective Kingship, and Freedom

Ancus reigned twenty-four years, unsurpassed by any of his predecessors in ability and reputation, both in the field and at home. His sons had now almost reached manhood. Tarquin was all the more anxious for the election of the new kin...

On Foucault on 24 January 1979: On The Crisis and Crises of Liberalism (X)

The third consequence (the second being the conjunction between the disciplines and liberalism), is the appearance in this new art of government of mechanisms with the function of producing, breathing life into, and increasing freedom,...

On Foucault on 17 January 1979 On Two Concepts of Freedom (IV)

So, there is a shift of the center of gravity of public law. The fundamental problem of public law will no longer be the foundation of sovereignty, the conditions of the sovereign’s legitimacy, or the conditions under which the soverei...

Arendt on Equality and Political Collapse

The breakdown of the feudal order had given rise to the new revolutionary concept of equality, according to which a "nation within the nation" could no longer be tolerated. Jewish restrictions and privileges had to be abolished togethe...

Guest Post by Eric Winsberg: Discounting the Future in Pandemic Mitigation Ethics

[This is an invited Guest Post by Eric Winsberg [The University of South Florida]--ES] “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” J. Wellington Wimpy Much of the political debate about how strict our measures to mitigate t...

Models, Politics, Populations, and Public Science in times of Pandemic (IV); on Ernest Nagel and the role of Philosophy of Science

In the midst of actual and impending disaster, men are inclined to listen to any voice speaking with sufficient authority; and during periods of social crisis, when rational methods of inquiry supply no immediate solutions for pressing...

On Siedentop and The Re-Invention of Liberalism (I)

Thus, even before Augustine’s ‘city of God’, Christian apologists were invoking ‘the country of God’ to assert the claims of the individual conscience. Such claims of conscience seemed to follow irresistibly from the assumption of mora...