The power of the written word is hard to overestimate. The printing press is usually blamed for the European wars of religion, with the resulting multiplication in ways of life ranging from Calvin’s Geneva to Puritan Massachusetts and the Dutch experiment in toleration. Later, the Republic of Letters would
One common approach for discrediting an opponent’s ideas without engaging with them on their merits is to attempt to place them in an unsavory history. Critics since Nietzsche and his On the Genealogy of Morality have been drawn to the power of this method. Recent projects in this spirit
As the headlines on August 18th blared out the news of Steve Bannon’s firing, a wave of relief seemed to grip many of President Donald Trump’s opposition. From moderate Republicans, news anchors and journalists, to liberals, leftists and intellectuals, the feeling was of triumph, of invigoration at such
In mid-March of 1969, John Kennedy Toole visited Milledgeville, Georgia, the home of famous southern Gothic author Flannery O’Connor. By the end of the month, Toole committed suicide via gas asphyxiation. Such a story would lack resonance and significance if Toole was not the author of one of the
In 2010, Ken Minogue penned his last full-length book The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life. As fond as I am of democracy I am still inclined to (begrudgingly) call it a critical tour de force. It’s a full-on assault on the assumptions, procedures, intricacies, and inner
Senator Cory Booker’s bill to legalize marijuana is righteous and beautiful. It is well-timed and well-crafted. It is noble… and it is doomed. That a progressive Senator would champion marijuana legalization, and that his bill would stand no chance of passing, highlights a deep and important problem in social
Drawing primarily on Karl Popper, Oliver Traldi argues that hot take culture diminishes our desire or ability to quietly reflect on events. In addition, they subsume complex human events into simplistic and pre-determined theories. Against this, I will draw on Charles Taylor’s philosophy of language and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s
The Liberal Currents Podcast LC Podcast #2: Sam Hammond on Capitalism and Social Justice Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 35:59 Subscribe Share Apple Podcasts Stitcher Google Podcasts Spotify RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in
It has been almost eight months since Donald Trump took office. If the rest of his term looks like these first months, we may have dodged a bullet. Rather than the authoritarian we feared, we would end up with a buffoon who almost reflexively self-destructs. In spite of having both
“The only sin,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1841, “is limitation.” It was in this spirit (and under this influence) that John Dewey wrote some years later in How We Think that “growth is the only moral end.” Growth as a theme runs like a golden thread through all of
Here’s something I’m ashamed of: Sometimes when I see a movie or read a novel and I’m not sure how to react, I search for reviews hoping they’ll tell me how. I can’t speak for anyone else, but the reason I don’t like what
In American politics, it is sometimes claimed that democratic majorities must never be “in chains,” as the historian Nancy MacLean has recently reminded us. This phrase is a truly remarkable piece of loaded language, because nobody likes chains. Chains are awful! And everybody likes democracy, provided we collectively forget about