Category: politics

• February 20, 2011

  What is the role of the public philosopher in the case of Madison, Wisconsin?

  I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t know why it’s happening. I don’t understand. I’m not Naomi Klein, and I’m not Scott Walker. I want to be honest: I’m confused. Why am I confused? Not because I haven’t read the news, watched video, or poured over commentary. Not for lack of trying or…
• February 19, 2011

  Robyn Creswell on Egypt

  In his n+1 article entitled “On Egypt,” Robyn Creswell provides a lucid bird’s-eye-view account of the political unrest in Egypt. Creswell sheds light in particular on Egyptians’ alienation from political life stemming from the early 1970s.
• February 19, 2011

  McEwan’s Solar: A philosophical review

  Ian McEwan’s most recent novel Solar (2010) picks up where his last novel Saturday (2005) left off. (His 2008 work, On Chesil Beach, is a novella. It is also one of his best.) In Saturday, McEwan poses the political question: Can an open society resist the threat posed by 21st C. terrorism? The question can be…
• February 14, 2011

  Can I be happy as the world burns?

  I’m not sure what the question means. If it means, “Can I be happy even as the planet ceases to be a domicile for homo sapiens,” then the answer is clearly no. It is difficult to fathom what conception of happiness would allow for the extinction of life–my life included. (That is, provided that we limit…
• February 13, 2011

  Ian Brunskill on Montaigne’s art of living

  Ian Brunskill has written a fine review (“For a Little Room Behind the Shop” [American Interest, March/April 2011]) of Sarah Bakewell’s book on Montaigne, How to Live. Near the end of the review, he writes that Montaigne’s was “a productively detached kind of engagement with life.” Montaigne’s outlook, Brunskill concludes, is a “counterpoint to a media-driven, mediated modern culture…