A long, long time ago, in a far-away land, I read Arthur Danto’s Transfiguration of the Commonplace, because I was thinking about philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of art on the one hand and critical social and political theory on the other, and was intrigued by Danto’s thesis that differences in collective intentionality determine the difference … [continue reading]
Institutional Amnesia: Modernity, Philosophical Professionalism, and the Practice of Forced Forgetfulness.
Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners never happened. Oceania was at … [continue reading]
Professional Philosophy Inside the Ivory Bunker.
Recently I’ve been re-reading Hannah Arendt’s brilliant Eichmann in Jerusalem and Paulo Freire’s equally brilliant Pedagogy of the Oppressed, alongside some work I’ve been doing in political philosophy. One important idea is that Nazi-style banal evil can inhere in action-guiding institutional structures that we’re not reflectively aware of, guiding us towards terrible human oppression (Arendt’s … [continue reading]
Why Policy Needs Philosophers As Much As It Needs Science.
The Guardian (13 October 2016) In a widely-discussed recent essay for the New Atlantis, the policy scholar Daniel Sarewitz argues that science is in deep trouble. While modern research remains wondrously productive, its results are more ambiguous, contestable and dubious than ever before. This problem isn’t caused by a lack of funding or of scientific … [continue reading]
Salovey’s Dilemma, Lilla’s Thesis, and Professional Philosophy.
In a recent (17 October 2016) op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, “Yale Believes in Free Speech—and So Do I,” Yale’s President Peter Salovey argues this: The United States is struggling culturally and politically with questions of race and ethnicity, as it has through its entire history. It should be no surprise that these … [continue reading]
Professional Philosophy in the Age of Trump.
I. Introduction: The Age of Trump By now, it’s self-evident to everyone that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 US Presidential election to Donald Trump because: (1) Clinton’s campaign arrogantly failed to address the concerns of angry, fear-driven, lower-to-middle income, non-urban, relatively under-educated, nativist white voters, whereas (2) Trump directly played to those concerns and effectively … [continue reading]
Crippled Morality: Disability, Thinking, and Professional Philosophy.
I am physically disabled and I come from the country where the able-bodied typically assumed that I wasn’t capable of thinking. In truth, while being home-schooled, I was already an over-achiever. I was reading Nietzsche, French existentialists, and law textbooks at the age of fourteen, as my few friends called me “the smartest person they’ve … [continue reading]
Philosophers of the World, Unite!
I. Introduction by Z What follows is a Spanish translation of APP’s Five-Point Manifesto. We most warmly invite translations of the Manifesto into other languages too. One of the many false assumptions of Anglo-American professional academic philosophy is that its own unique version of collective stupidity in philosophy, of destructive philosophical Gemeinschaft, is somehow inevitable. … [continue reading]
Utopia Now: Something for Philosophers to Do.
I. Introduction: Collective Altruism In a recent edgy essay, starting with some ideas borrowed from Rutger Bregman’s excellent book, Utopia for Realists, I briefly sketched a realistic utopian political proposal I called radical utopia for realists. That line of thinking was then super-charged by my recently working through two other equally excellent books on altruism … [continue reading]
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised On The APA Website.
I. Introduction The Punch-and-Judy show that is masquerading as the current US Presidential election pits a bigot, demagogue, and would-be tyrant (Trump-Punch), against a seasoned Establishment insider and card-carrying member of the military-industrial-university complex (Clinton-Judy). So, for a philosopher, there really isn’t much to think about: we temporarily put aside our worries about Clinton-Judy/insider-politics-as-usual, … [continue reading]