Cure-alls and Remedies
Let’s get the jokes out of the way: “If corporations are people, do they get to vote?” “If corporations are people, can we start incarcerating them when they commit crimes?” “Does this mean I can marry my bank?” “Does charging a fee for incorporation constitute an unconstitutional violation of their reproductive rights?” “Thank God we’ve…
The concluding paragraph of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own kinda gives me chills sometimes: For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a…
My old boss Ted Kinnaman has a piece in the Huffington Post on Pat Robertson’s claim that Haitians deserved the recent earthquake because they made a pact with the devil in order free themselves from colonial slavery. Others have developed the historical case for such a pact . Where many have taken Robertson to task…
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Robin Wright reviews the three manifestos: The statements set tough preconditions for a political truce: resignation of the current leadership, introduction of broad democratic freedoms, prosecution of security forces engaged in violence against the opposition and an end to politics in the military, universities and the clergy. The proposed reforms would amount to a total…
Going to graduate school in the humanities, especially in philosophy, should be similar to converting to Judaism . Like rabbis, a student’s undergraduate professors should serve as a formal (but slightly secretive) part of the graduate school admissions process, situated as an obstacle or test for the student’s commitment. They should bend their efforts to…
I won’t spend much time justifying the duty to assist now, except to link to Ramsey Clark’s essay ” Haiti’s Agonies and Exaltations ,” but I do want to talk about the kinds of assistance we can offer: Personal: in the short term, we can all text “HAITI” to 90999 to give $10 to the…
I’ve recently realized that there’s a pretty massive network of blogs devoted principally to philosophy, and I’m slowly adding them to my news feed. So what should I be reading? I already have PEA Soup (whose collaboration with Ethics looks quite promising.) I’m a longtime fan of Public Reason . Similarly, I recently discovered Philosophy,…
A friend suggests that my recent arguments against the moral status of contempt ignored an important role it plays in policing our moral community. The concern is that if we cannot feel (and expect others to feel) contempt for someone like Bernie Madoff, then we will lose the morally instructive value of punishment. If we…
Watch this: Beautiful, right? Now watch this: It’s all computer generated! Here’s how it’s done . ( via )