Digressions&Impressions

4 April 1979: Foucault on Civil Society (Ferguson vs Smith) (ep XL)

To simplify matters, I will take the most fundamental, almost statutory text regarding the characterization of civil society. This is Ferguson’s famous text, translated into French in 1783 with the title Essais sur l’histoire de la soc...

Seneca on Freedom (Letter 51)

I have set freedom as my goal [Libertas proposita est]; and I am striving for that reward. And what is freedom, you ask? It means not being a slave to any circumstance, to any necessity [necessitati], to any chance; it means compelling...

David Hume, Ibn Khaldun, on Cult of the Leader (and a comment on Hume on race)

I have mentioned parties from affection as a kind of real parties, beside those from interest and principle. By parties from affection, I understand those which are founded on the different attachments of men towards particular familie...

The Case Against Hume (II)

Hume’s notorious footnote may not have been widely known about until now. For my part, I have a fairly distinct memory of encountering it in the library of the University of Bristol when I was an undergraduate. I also remember being st...

Contextual Naturalism, Ernest Nagel, and The Philosophy of a Free Society.

It follows that the human scene is as much an integral part of nature, and as valid a subject for the philosopher's concern with basic features of existence, as is any of its other sectors. As contextualistic naturalism views them, man...

Ernest Nagel's Meta-philosophy of science (and politics)

Scientific knowledge does not depend on the possession of an esoteric capacity for grasping the necessary structure of some superior reality, nor does it require modes of warranting beliefs which are discontinuous with operations of ...

Trump's Renormalizing of Politics

Since his famous escalator ride, Donald Trump has, as Jacob Levy documented repeatedly, undermined many democratic norms and also the quiet, vital functioning of the government's role as a machinery of record. And while often, alongside ...

The Day Before the Restoration?

The first sign of a thoroughly ill-adjusted or bankrupt form of society is that the ruling classes cannot agree on how to save the situation. It is this division which opens the breach, and the ruling classes will continue to fight wit...

7 March 1979: Foucault on The Demands of Critical Morality (XXIV)

I have dwelt so long on this problem of German neo-liberalism first of all for methodological reasons, because, continuing what I began to say last year, I wanted to see what concrete content could be given to the analysis of relations...