SPOTLIGHT
THEORY
A Case for Immortality
Our transient lives are governed by what I would call “mortal time”, an idea stretching its way through Western philosophy from Heraclitus through Socrates to at least Heidegger. It is a time curved to a specific end in death. All our society, culture, and even science is bent by our mortal temporal curvature. Our lives are sorted out and planned according to our inevitable decline and eventual total physical disappearance. The lens through which we view our entire existence is death, our consciousness is therefore a thoroughly mortal one.
Being without Borders: examining popular philosophies of illness and the biopolitics of pandemic
From our lockdowns we glimpse once more, at least on a biological level, the chaotic ‘state of nature’ laid out by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan; a life underscored by the continual ‘fear and danger of a violent death’, in which ‘every man is an enemy to every man’.
Of Friendship and Politics
The First World War traumatized the political and cultural life of Europe, especially in the German speaking world. Heidegger's, Jasper's, Freud's, Junger's, Hesse's (not to mention Hitler's) inter-war works are unthinkable without this bloody caesura in European history. In a profound sense, the inter-war period in Germany (but not only) could be viewed as a psychic expression of what we would call today: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. One of the more notable of these dark intellectual manifestations was Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political. Yet Carl Schmitt is closer to us than we are usually likely to admit.
PRACTICE
Why I Signed the “Dump Trump, then Battle Biden” Open Letter
I surprised myself, because the position of advocating a lesser-evil vote – not for myself in Massachusetts, but for those in “battleground” states – is one that I would not ordinarily take. But this is not an ordinary moment, and the allowance for this kind of exception finds strong precedents, including in the strategic thinking of Marx.
When Is The Right Time To Nominate a Supreme Court Justice After One Has Passed Away – A Flowchart by the RNC
A totally non-partisan and not-at-all-self-serving flowchart to SCOTUS nominations beginning with the question: Which Party has Control of the Senate?
The Trump Covid Hoax?
By: Dan Corjescu Political theater is nothing new. And Trump is, arguably, a master at it. The speed with which
JUSTICE
The Libertarian Error
By: Richard Oxenberg I. Introduction As Congress gears up for another round of massive tax cuts whose benefits will primarily
Right to Silence in the Age of Aadhaar
Unless the right to silence comes of age and accommodates the technological challenges posed by biometric ID systems, the lacuna in the law which distinguishes between password and fingerprint locks can be exploited to render the fundamental right to silence -- which is often the last bastion of civil society -- an abortive ideal.
All Generalizations are False. Including this One
By: Anurup Doshi Racial profiling techniques have been at the heart of debates about crime-fighting for a very long time.
ARTS & LETTERS
On the Strange Agreement Between Artists and Trump Administration: Doubts About the International Criminal Court
Art of Politics, Politics of Art, A Series By: Jeanette Joy Harris In this series, Jeanette Joy Harris looks at how artists
New Study Indicates that Childhood Vaccinations May Increase the Risk of Dying from Natural Causes Several Decades Later
Don’t Feed The Animals, A Series of Satirical Musings by: Josh Lorenzo Atlanta GA. – A recent public health study
Populism: The Long Con
Populism is an old trick. It’s been around since the earliest democracies. Plato, Aristotle and all the classical thinkers wrote about it and rightly condemned it, understanding that it would naturally end with a demagogue.