It is a key feature of the Culture Wars that they tend to be winner-takes-all affairs. This is arguably because both sides tend to adopt rights-based approaches, then to assert mutually incompatible sets of rights. But is there not a more fruitful way of conducting moral discourse whereby the protagonists of both sides engage with each other in a less confrontational manner?
Category: Philosophy
Collectivism and the Intolerability of Uncertainty
Collectivism is back in fashion at the moment, particularly with the young in the West, who have no experience of living in collectivist societies and who are a generation or two removed from the experience of their effects in the political sphere, and also with those who are enamoured of the moral kudos that comes… Continue reading Collectivism and the Intolerability of Uncertainty
Emancipation with a Clenched Fist: A Critique of Postmodern Critical Theory
At a time when we are encouraged to nod through policies embedding “diversity, inclusion and equality” in our places of work and subject to their ubiquitous manifestation in our entertainment industries, few recognise that this is not the spontaneous and organic growth of the desire of the mass of ordinary people but the outcome of… Continue reading Emancipation with a Clenched Fist: A Critique of Postmodern Critical Theory
The Imperfect Paradise: Narratives of Ordinary Life and the Incursion of Evil
“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” (Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1977) The problem of evil is one of the oldest problems in human thought. Every religion and many philosophical systems have contended with its nature and… Continue reading The Imperfect Paradise: Narratives of Ordinary Life and the Incursion of Evil
Book Review: Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, “Cynical Theories: How Universities Made Everything about Race, Gender and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody”
It tells us something when a potential reviewer of a book is warned that so doing could spell the end of their academic career, or when a scheduled lecture or guest speaker is cancelled because students declare themselves unsafe while threatening violent disruption, or the plug is pulled on important research because one person feels… Continue reading Book Review: Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, “Cynical Theories: How Universities Made Everything about Race, Gender and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody”
Social Morality from Kant’s Categorical Imperative to Transcendent Individualism
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” (Immanuel Kant, Epitaph) In the Metaphysic of Morals Immanuel Kant proposed what he considered to be the rational basis of all morality,… Continue reading Social Morality from Kant’s Categorical Imperative to Transcendent Individualism
Book Review, Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?
While Michael Sandel’s arguments against the meritocratic ideal and the skill with which he deploys them in his latest book make an ostensibly compelling case, is there not perhaps more to the argument than the skilled practitioner on stage is revealing to us? Has the professor, like so many others, not become unduly beholden to the social justice movement?
On the Virtue of Conflict
Viruses and vaccines are very much on our mind at the moment, and they stand in also as ready metaphors for social dangers and prophylactics. There may well be more to the analogy than convenient literary devices though. The similarities between biological entities and societies seen from a systemic perspective has intellectual respectability. In fact,… Continue reading On the Virtue of Conflict
Personal Authority and the Social Contract in the ‘Crisis of Freedom’
The concept of freedom, which has held sway in the West for at least the past 250 years and been a feature, particularly in the English-speaking world, for much longer, is now under attack on multiple fronts.
The Quest for Social Justice?
The notion of “social justice” has been transformed and weaponised in recent years by proponents of applied postmodernism making use of a category mismatch between the political and moral realms. An understanding of their tactics and methods is needed to counteract the sleight-of-hand that is thus being deployed.