Just for fun, since we were talking about “race science” the other day: You could actually construct a new political platform, completely outside the old-and-busted Left / Right paradigm, based on something very close to the old concept of “racial hygiene” (which, again pace Z Man, is something they would’ve understood in the 1920s; Francis … Continue reading "Biopolicy"| Founding Questions
Tonight, October 21, 2025 at 7 p.m. US Central Time, I'll be having a conversation on Zoom with Stephen Paff, author of the Ethnodata blog and host of the new podcast Democracy Demythologized. See the bottom of this post for information about how to join.| The Maurin Academy for Regenerative Studies
[This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>] …Continue reading →| nescio2
[This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work consider becoming a paid subscriber at …Continue reading →| nescio2
[I am phasing out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my …Continue reading →| nescio2
[I am phasing out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my …Continue reading →| nescio2
On love of country| Double Aspect
It was thirty years ago, in 1995, that a then-unknown junior academic named Jeffrey Kripal published Kālī’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. The book took a new look at the stories written about the revered 19th-century Bengali mystic Ramakrishna, from the then-current Freudian lens: it explored passages that it described as homoerotic, and argued that there was a connection between the homoeroticism and the mysticism. Kripal, who was raised Cat...| The Indian Philosophy Blog
Arendt wrote the prologue to The Human Condition not long after the successful launch of Sputnik raised the first realistic prospect of humanity taking its first steps off-planet, and in the shadow of threatening and perplexing developments in atomic and quantum physics (see her comments on the crisis of language in the sciences). It’s a… Read More »Hannah Arendt on science, language, politics and our future machine overlords The post Hannah Arendt on science, language, politics and our...| Driverless Crocodile
Laurie's latest Political Philosophy video. Political Philosophy is a Maurin Academy channel and podcast.| The Maurin Academy for Regenerative Studies
Virtual Summer School: Feminist Critiques of Kant’s Views on Women & Human Progress Organized by Olga Lenczewska, co-taught by Helga Varden and Holly Wilson Session 1: June…| BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
“If I want to understand Sir Winston Churchill's philosophy of life and living, what books would you recommend?” Your question first seemed impossibly broad. But on further thought, there very definitely is a body of work that helps provide the answers. Please use our online annotated bibliography for details and notes on books mentioned or to search for others in the same field. The post What was Winston Churchill’s Philosophy of Life and Living? appeared first on The Churchill Project...| The Churchill Project – Hillsdale College
The trade war is a metastasis of big government, and Canada is wrong to respond to it by empowering government at the expense of individuals| Double Aspect
Photo of Aleksandr Dugin on Wikimedia by Mahdieh Gaforian (CC BY-SA 4.0). Alexandr Dugin is a Russian ultranationalist political theorist and television commentator. He currently serves as the head of the newly established “Ivan Ilyin Higher School of Politics” (HSP) at the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH) in Moscow. In recent years, he has been…Read More| Canopy Forum
Coercion is both presumptively wrong and undermines the responsibility of the person coerced. How do these two features of coercion hang together, and what explains why? In this paper, Japa Pallikkathayil offers a rich and original account. She focuses on cases of “volitional” coercion (hereafter, simply coercion)—where one agent tries to alter another person’s choice—rather … Continue reading Japa Pallikkathayil, “The Possibility of Choice: Three Accounts of the Problem with C...| Political Not Metaphysical
Holly Lawford-Smith’s brief article, “Ideal Theory—A Reply to Valentini”, is exactly what it sounds like: a concise reply to Laura Valentini’s “On The Apparent Paradox of Ideal Theory”. Valentini, as I summarize elsewhere, outlines a paradox consisting of three premises: Any sound theory of justice must be (1) action-guiding and (2) ideal, but (3) any … Continue reading Holly Lawford-Smith, “Ideal Theory—A Reply to Valentini”→| Political Not Metaphysical
“What are the merits and limitations of ideal and nonideal theory, and what is their property role?” asks Ingrid Robeyns in “Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice”. Normative Social Justice Analysis: A Typology To answer that question, she begins by distinguishing “three different layers” of “normative social justice research”. (Note in so doing see sets … Continue reading Ingrid Robeyns, “Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice”→| Political Not Metaphysical
In recent years, political philosophers have started to pay more attention to methodology, largely to due pressure from the charge that political philosophy is too detached to really guide political action Many of theses methodological debates have clustered together under the heading ideal/non-ideal theory. In this article, Laura Valentini argues—I think rightly—that the debate about … Continue reading Laura Valentini, Ideal vs. Non-Ideal Theory: A Conceptual Map→| Political Not Metaphysical
Anthony Appiah’s recently published book As If: Idealization and Ideals is an insightful and original treatment of the role of idealization in philosophical thought. This has been a hot topic in recent political philosophy. But, part of what makes Appiah’s discussion more interesting than most is that he places his discussion of ‘ideal theory’ within a … Continue reading Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Political Ideals: Lessons from John Rawls” in As If: Idealization and Ideals.→| Political Not Metaphysical
In “Ideal and NonIdeal Theory”, A. John Simmons takes up the familiar distinction Rawlsian distinction, a distinction Simmons thinks has not received enough “sustained attention”. His aim is to “rationally reconstruct” Rawls’s position on the distinction, defend Rawls’s approach against alternatives, and reply to some criticisms of Rawls’s approach. Rawls’s Ideal Theory Rawls divides any … Continue reading A. John Simmons, Ideal and Nonideal Theory→| Political Not Metaphysical
Nine philosophers explore the various issues and questions raised by the newly released language model, GPT-3, in this edition of Philosophers On, guest edited by Annette Zimmermann. Introduction Annette Zimmermann, guest editor GPT-3, a powerful, 175 billion parameter language model developed recently by OpenAI, has been galvanizing public debate and controversy. As the MIT Technology Review puts| Daily Nous - news for & about the philosophy profession
