Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 866 )

• Incitement of Violence by Far-right Media Networks

  

  The sickening tragedy of Buffalo yesterday -- the racist attack on a group of African-American shoppers and workers by an 18-year-old white supremacist man in... Read more

  Posted on 15 May 2022 SOCIETY

• Злі Наслідки Тоталітарних Ідеологій

  [This entry provides Ukrainian and Russian translations of a recent post on totalitarian evil offered as a gesture of support for potential Ukrainian readers.... Read more

  Posted on 12 May 2022 SOCIETY

• Evil Consequences of Totalitarian Ideologies

  

  It is evident that human beings create evil; but human beings are often driven and dominated by totalitarian ideologies that make great evils possible. Read more

  Posted on 08 May 2022 SOCIETY

• Tolstoy's Characterization of Napoleon (Putin)

  

  One of Leo Tolstoy's characteristic beliefs about history in War and Peace is the idiocy of the notion of "great men" who make history. Read more

  Posted on 01 May 2022 SOCIETY

• Tolstoy's Philosophy of History

  

  Isaiah Berlin's essay The Hedgehog and the Fox is a particularly interesting combination of philosophical analysis and literary criticism. Read more

  Posted on 29 April 2022 SOCIETY

• Can Nietzsche Support a Decent Political Philosophy?

  

  Nietzsche's anti-moralism is a key theme in his philosophy and civilizational criticism. He regarded traditional European morality as "herd morality", the... Read more

  Posted on 24 April 2022 SOCIETY

• Realism About Social Entities

  

  Critical realism depends on the key notion that sociologists are justified in construing their statements about social entities as real, objective features of... Read more

  Posted on 19 April 2022 SOCIETY

• Machiavelli and the Totalitarian State

  

  Isaiah Berlin's essay on Machiavelli in Against the Current is penetrating and detailed, valuable both for the specialist and the general philosophical reader. Read more

  Posted on 10 April 2022 SOCIETY

• The Open Texture of the Social World

  

  What is involved in arriving at scientific knowledge about the social world? The position I have consistently taken emphasizes contingency and heterogeneity of... Read more

  Posted on 06 April 2022 SOCIETY

• Philosophies of the Far Right

  image: Joseph de MaistreThe ideologies of the far right have a particularly strong grip on a segment of democratic society in the current epoch. Read more

  Posted on 02 April 2022 SOCIETY

• Classification of Political Systems and Theories

  

  Graph of political systems (click image for full resolution)It is possible to analyze much of the history of modern political philosophy -- political theory... Read more

  Posted on 28 March 2022 SOCIETY

• Carlyle's Critique of Modernity

  

  What is wrong with life in the modern world? The complaint that modern society represents a toxic reduction of the importance of community in the lives of... Read more

  Posted on 26 March 2022 SOCIETY

• An Extremism Index for Elected Officials

  

  Senator Mike Braun (R-Indiana) made news in the past few days by questioning whether the Supreme Court was right to rule in 1967 that state bans on interracial... Read more

  Posted on 23 March 2022 SOCIETY

• Russia's Aggression Against Ukraine as a War Crime

  

  When Nazi Germany attacked Poland in 1939 it committed a war crime, codified by the standards established in preparation for the Nuremberg Trials in 1945. Read more

  Posted on 16 March 2022 SOCIETY

• Advancing High-energy Physics in the United States

  

  Here is an interesting and important scientific question: where is high-energy physics going? What future discoveries are possible in the field? And what... Read more

  Posted on 11 March 2022 SOCIETY

• Durkheim's Social Holism

  

  Emile Durkheim is celebrated for many achievements in the founding of the discipline of sociology, but most striking is his endorsement of the autonomy and... Read more

  Posted on 05 March 2022 SOCIETY

• Vasily Grossman on Good and Evil

  

  Vasily Grossman's novel Life and Fate was long delayed in its publication because of Soviet censorship but has come to be recognized as one of the greatest... Read more

  Posted on 25 February 2022 SOCIETY

• Atrocious and Evil -- Russian Aggressive War in Ukraine

  

  The moment has come, after months of insistent, indignant jabber from Vladimir Putin that he has no intention of invading Ukraine: Russian forces have invaded... Read more

  Posted on 24 February 2022 SOCIETY

• How to Think About Deliberate Social Change

  

  What is involved in trying to create a better world? That is: what is involved in being an activist, a reformer, a radical, a revolutionary, or – for that matte... Read more

  Posted on 24 February 2022 SOCIETY

• A Topology of Political Theories?

  

  We sometimes think of political philosophies as falling on a spectrum from left to right. Bernie Sanders is on the left and Greg Abbott is on the right. Read more

  Posted on 21 February 2022 SOCIETY