An Incautious Defense of Optimism
(Optimistically dedicated to Steven Pinker) In a world suffering from a global pandemic, it would be both easy and understandable to be morosely pessimistic. Yet, even here, midst frantic calls…
Dan Corjescu
To Be A Dissident
What does it mean to be a dissident? At its simplest, it means to critically engage with and seek to change the material and the ideological structures of the society…
Thinking about the “Power of the Powerless”
“There are things which are worth suffering for” wrote the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka shortly before his death which was caused, in part, by the treatment he received from the…
On The Moral Graciousness of Fatalism
Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea. Dylan Thomas “Fern Hill” Fate show thy force, ourselves we do not owe What is…
Of Friendship and of Politics
Although it is somewhat banal to say, it should never be forgotten how the First World War traumatized the political and cultural life of Europe, especially in the German speaking…
Fearing Kantian Globalization, Democracy, and Migration
Globalization, Democracy, and Migration are themes which continually ignite both scholarly and non-scholarly debate. Not so surprisingly, none of this is new. In his own inimitable way, the German Enlightenment…
A Totalitarian Republic?
Faction: A number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse…
Alien Invaders and the Ethic of the Earth
Imagine this rather typical SF scenario: alien invaders arrive on Earth. They are vastly superior in intelligence, technology, and most importantly, ethics. They quickly perceive that Earthlings are a dire…
On Democracy: 10 Unpalatable Reminders
1) Democracies often behave like little children: reluctant to take their medicine—unless irrationally coerced. 2) A democracy's great weakness is its vanity. The people's vanity. A mortally dangerous tendency that…
On the Persistence of Religion
We feel that even if all possible sci entific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all --Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus Recently I received an…
The Metaphysics of Revolution
Socrates was the first revolutionary. He opened up with a legendary oracular search the inner space from which the individual, as we understand him today, would eventually emerge. His “daemon”…
Epstein, Faction, and Neopatrimonialism
Faction: a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse…
The End of History: Thirty Years Later
Fukuyama’s book is a profound book and as a profound book it is profoundly misleading. A mixture of Platonic and Hegelian psychology/historical teleology as well as offering a good explanation…
If These Be Men…
Considerate se questo è un uomo Che lavora nel fango Che non conosce pace Consider if this be a man Who works in the mud Who knows no peace --Primo…
Last Men or New Men? Nietzsche in the Global Age
Does Nietzsche have anything important to say to us, we the current inhabitants of a global age? Nietzsche speaks of spiritual health as a result of the superabundance of the…
A Green Global Party?
Following the lead of the late Ulrich Beck in works such as Risk Society and Power in the Modern Age the time has now come to ask ourselves whether or…
The End of Anarchy and The Solidification of the Global Class
There once was a world where state actors operated in an anarchic international environment, where maximizing their overall power was their goal, and war was their means of achieving it.…
Message from ET: Leave Me Alone!!
Here’s a thought: What if alien civilizations want to be left completely alone? Listed below are some of the unspoken presumptions underlying our nascent interstellar expansionism: We know what “universal…
Enlightenment How?
This democracy makes possible prosperity without freedom. -- Jürgen Habermas Constantly we are collapsing. Constantly we are fixing. -- Vaclav Smil I define modernism as any attempt by modern…
Surgical Totalitarianism
You don't have to control everything to be in total control. In the modern world this seeming paradox is a systemic reality. In the past, classic totalitarian governments sought to…
Good Cop/Bad Cop: The US and Russia Show
There may have been a time when the US and Russia were serious geopolitical rivals. That time has long since passed. Now, the two "nations" (elite controlled entities masquerading as…
Are We Fascist Yet?
To characterize modern day America as a fascist state is at one and the same time both ahistorical and close to the present truth. In order to resolve this apparent…
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