PART 1 4. Reversed Teleology I wish to draw attention to a different aspect of the “retrospective twist” I described in part I of this essay. As I indicated, this technique is applied by reading works of, for instance, Kant, with a contemporary mindset. It is easy to frame Kant as a bigot, racist and … [continue reading]

1.  Introduction Nietzsche is well known for a terrifying thought experiment: if one night, a demon would visit you in a dream, and reveal to you that you would re-live your live again and again for all eternity, what would you do? Nietzsche’s initial hunch is that most people would wake up screaming, having glimpsed … [continue reading]

APP Editors’ Note: This is the sixth in a series on the historical and philosophical foundations of anarchism and socialism, with special reference to social anarchism (aka “anarcho-socialism,” “libertarian socialism,” etc.) and democratic socialism. We decided to start with the Democratic Socialists of America, aka the DSA, and the Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation, aka … [continue reading]

Mike Segar / Reuters I. So as not to leave you in suspense, here is my radical solution for “the crisis in the humanities”: higher education without commodification, aka HEWC. But before this no doubt surprising, if not downright baffling, assertion can have its proper philosophical impact, I’ll need to tell you what I think … [continue reading]

Bryan W. Van Norden’s June 25 opinion piece in The New York Times, “The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience,” is useful for one main reason: it is a symptom of the decline of two venerable institutions, academic philosophy (Van Norden’s profession) and print journalism. Van Norden’s basic thesis is that John … [continue reading]

1. Introduction Something I’ve been hearing and seeing a lot recently in journal/news media and social media, on blogs, and in everyday conversations, both in philosophical contexts and non-philosophical contexts, is the claim that “free speech is wonderful, it’s the First Amendment, it’s mom-and-apple-pie, I so totally love it–unless you offend us, and then you … [continue reading]

Is professional academic philosophy a bullshit job? Yes. This means that, as a professional academic philosopher, even though you began by loving real philosophy for its own sake, you’ve unintentionally turned your working life into the very opposite of what you hoped it would be. And that’s genuinely tragic, even if depressingly widespread. Can you … [continue reading]

The one thing that remains, until now at least, relatively unscathed from the increasing politicisation of academic philosophy is the double (or sometimes triple) blind peer review for most established philosophy journals. This is different for books, which do not enjoy the privilege of double blind reviewing (authors do not know who the reviewers are, … [continue reading]

There are still people and herds somewhere, but not with us, my brothers: here there are states. The state? What is that? Well then! Now open your ears, for now I shall speak to you of the death of peoples. The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this … [continue reading]

Introduction Novalis is perhaps best known to contemporary philosophers for his aphorism, “Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality.” But less well known is the following sentence: “Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?” In other words, Novalis is saying that philosophy is profoundly more practical than … [continue reading]