In my essay in The Los Angeles Review of Books on the Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar López Rivera, currently serving a fifty-five year jail term in Federal prison for seditious conspiracy, I had written: The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 remain a blot on American democracy; John Adams deeply regretted — till the dayContinue reading “Democracy, The ‘Anti-National,’ And The Seditionist”
Category Archives: Philosophy
Turgenev’s Hamlet And Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man
This semester, I’m running an independent study on existentialism with a pair of students from the English department here at Brooklyn College. Our reading list includes seven novels, four plays, and extracts from several philosophical texts. We kicked off our readings two weeks ago with Dostoyevsky‘s Notes from Underground. Because my students had purchased theContinue reading “Turgenev’s Hamlet And Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man”
Antonin Scalia And His Incoherent, Hierarchy-Loving, Theory Of Constitutional Interpretation
I taught Antonin Scalia‘s writings–as found in his court opinions–on three occasions in my philosophy of law class. His theory of constitutional interpretation–originalism–was incoherent. His aggressive rhetoric, directed at those who would dare petition the highest court of the land for redress, was tasteless. He was a bully, and a blowhard. Like Christopher Hitchens, he willContinue reading “Antonin Scalia And His Incoherent, Hierarchy-Loving, Theory Of Constitutional Interpretation”
Madeleine Albright, Simone De Beauvoir, And Hillary Clinton’s Responsibility To Women
There is a truth, however uncomfortable, to be found in Madeleine Albright‘s recent remarks–at a Hillary Clinton campaign rally–that women who don’t support other women (in politics) have a special place in a very hot place reserved just for them. (Albright, justly notorious for her infamous remark suggesting the deaths of thousands of Iraqi childrenContinue reading “Madeleine Albright, Simone De Beauvoir, And Hillary Clinton’s Responsibility To Women”
Pigliucci And Shaw On The Allegedly Useful Reduction
Massimo Pigliucci critiques the uncritical reductionism that the conflation of philosophy and science brings in its wake, using as a jumping-off point, Tamsin Shaw’s essay in the New York Review of Books, which addresses psychologists’ claims “that human beings are not rational, but rather rationalizing, and that one of the things we rationalize most about isContinue reading “Pigliucci And Shaw On The Allegedly Useful Reduction”
A Fond Remembrance Of A Canine Friend
My brother’s family lost their pet dog yesterday. ‘G’ was a dachshund, brought home a little over twelve years ago. I have never owned a pet and probably never will; I simply do not have the emotional wherewithal for the caretaking required. I have thus never developed a particularly close relationship with domestic animals; myContinue reading “A Fond Remembrance Of A Canine Friend”
Nietzsche On The Interpersonal Dynamics Of Social Networks
This afternoon, I sat down to read through the portions of Human, All Too Human (Section VI – ‘Man in Society’ or ‘In Relations with Others’) that I had assigned to my Social Philosophy class, and once again, was struck by how acute and perspicuous so many of its aphorisms are–especially when it comes to anticipating theContinue reading “Nietzsche On The Interpersonal Dynamics Of Social Networks”
Writing On The Bernie Sanders Campaign: The Denial Of Agency
Bernie Sanders cannot win the general election. He is unelectable. He will not win Ohio, Virginia, or Florida. The Republicans will eat him–a self-proclaimed socialist who keeps talking about ‘revolution’ and ‘economic inequality’–alive. The most interesting of these several proclamations–all speaking to the hopeless, Quixotic, quest that calls itself the Bernie Sanders campaign–is, by far,Continue reading “Writing On The Bernie Sanders Campaign: The Denial Of Agency”
Descartes, The Planned City, And Misplaced Philosophical Desires
In Part 2 of Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences Rene Descartes, as a prelude to his ‘clearing away’ of prior philosophy, writes: [T]here is very often less perfection in works composed of several portions, and carried out by the hands of various masters, than inContinue reading “Descartes, The Planned City, And Misplaced Philosophical Desires”
Contra Damon Linker, ‘Leftist Intellectuals’ Are Not ‘Disconnected From Reality’
Over at The Week, Damon Linker accuses ‘the Left’ of being disconnected from reality, basing this charge on his reading of two recent pieces by Corey Robin and Jedediah Purdy. (It begins with a charge that is all too frequently leveled at the Bernie Sanders campaign: that its political plans are political fantasies.) What getsContinue reading “Contra Damon Linker, ‘Leftist Intellectuals’ Are Not ‘Disconnected From Reality’”
Samir Chopra 