Kant and Humbug

It is perhaps no surprise that the country which brought us Kant and the categorical imperative has also given rise to the word “Gutmensch” as a term of disparagement for what English speakers tend to refer to as do-gooders, although a more accurate translation of the German would be “good thinkers.” Kant sought in his philosophy… Continue reading Kant and Humbug

In Defence of the Open Society against its Enemies

  Some have declared that 2016 was the year democracy died. This is nonsense of course and represents nothing more than those persons peeved sense of entitlement based on the firm conviction of the rightness of their own political persuasion, a persuasion disavowed at the ballot box. If this is the case, democracy may not have… Continue reading In Defence of the Open Society against its Enemies

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Virtuous Thinking?

Are we as human beings all different from one another, or are we not rather all basically the same? And do you feel you are a better person for the way you answered the previous question? If your answer to the second question was not a self-satisfied “well, yes”, then I commend you for your… Continue reading Virtuous Thinking?

Chance and Necessity in Populist Revolution

May you live in interesting times (Confucian curse) Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites (Edmund Burke) A scholar of impeccable academic credentials once suggested to me that revolutions are spaced about the average lifespan of a human apart, about 70 years.… Continue reading Chance and Necessity in Populist Revolution

The Politics of Division

Is the new populist style of politics emerging on both sides of the Atlantic a cause or a symptom of the increasing sense of division in society? Surveying the “Hillary for PA” Twitter feed last week as I have been known to do (well, on at least one previous occasion), I found an interesting exchange… Continue reading The Politics of Division

What is the point of the Left? A dispassionate assessment of its virtues and vices

After the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1990s there was a brief window in which it was predicted that the forces of democracy and the free market had triumphed and leftist and socialist parties would thereafter only wither away. The view from the present is of a very… Continue reading What is the point of the Left? A dispassionate assessment of its virtues and vices

Three Cheers for the EU ‘Single Market’ (but Not Four)

Now that the dust kicked up in the hubbub preceding and succeeding the Brexit referendum result is beginning to settle, the real options facing the UK (and indeed the EU itself) are becoming visible as battle lines are drawn for the playing out of the Article 50 process. Or perhaps the lines were always clearly delineated,… Continue reading Three Cheers for the EU ‘Single Market’ (but Not Four)

Postscript to the Referendum: the Continuing Case for Reform of the EU

Amid the celebrations, dejection, hopes, foreboding, possibilities, instability, treachery, transformation and general uncertainty that has followed the outcome of the EU referendum, one thing has been generally overlooked, which is unsurprising as it hardly featured in either the campaign to leave or to remain: the desperate need for fundamental reform of Europe’s political institutions. This… Continue reading Postscript to the Referendum: the Continuing Case for Reform of the EU

The Moral Basis of the European Project?

Colin Turfus asks if the European Union is or can ever be faithful to its own founding principles. The Two Pillars For over half a century now a project has been under way to transform European society from what it was at the mid-point of the 20th century, a disparate collection of peoples possessed of… Continue reading The Moral Basis of the European Project?