SPOTLIGHT

  • The African Union and its Reactions to Three Types of Coups in Guinea, Mali, and Chad

    Three different types of coups have occurred in Guinea, Mali, and Chad, and they are worth identifying. These are opportunistic, oligarchic, and sultanistic coups. Opportunistic in the case of Guinea, oligarchic in the case of Mali, and sultanistic in the case of Chad. All of the coups were staged as military takeovers of civilian government, but in different contexts.  

  • Bard vs. Bullet

    Good news for a change—but bad news, as usual. According to the Associated Press (July 31), there’s a shortage of ammunition all over the United States, as major manufacturers are unable to keep up with high demand. Only the military is unaffected, since the Army supplies its own ammo, for all branches of the armed forces.

  • The Critical Importance of Wildlife Conservation

    Many scientists believe that we are in the midst of a 6th mass extinction, one that is almost entirely caused by human involvement. While this is a grim reality, it also means that we have the power to do something to stop the future loss of species. From purchasing a shark bracelet that helps fund marine conservation to eco-friendly shoes, there are endless ways to make conscious purchases that make a big difference. 

  • The Abortion Wars

    The Texas law is an abomination, not just because it violates women's rights, but because the egregious manner in which it does so also betrays any who might be troubled by abortion on truly moral grounds. It is a law rooted in culture war politics, not moral concerns, and its effect will be the promotion of a more sinister and corrupt society, not a more morally sensitive one. And yet it is just such moral sensitivity that we require if we are going to caringly address abortion and other morally relevant issues.

  • African American Existentialism: DuBois, Locke, Thurman, and King

    Race today is often presented as a social construct. But social constructions, as Black people know all too well, can create real existential crises. Philosophers of the Black Experience writing during the Modern Era of the African American Freedom Struggle (1896-1975) engaged questions of freedom, existence, and the struggles associated with the experiences of being Black in America.

  • Surviving the City of Arts

    How do we teach humanities to STEM students in a time of increasing suspicion about the goodness of technology?

THEORY

The Unmasked Question: Behind the Veil of Misery

By |October 23rd, 2020|0 Comments

No veil of ignorance shields us from the worst, or blinds us to the fate we have in store. Only philosophers think that they can escape from it by erecting a priori theories and creating hypothetical cases, as if we could start from scratch and be given a second chance. Life is what it is—uncompromising and unredeemable. That is what people know in their bones. They don’t need a theory, be it original sin or the myth of meritocracy, to figure that out, or to understand that wearing a mask does not protect you from poverty, iniquity, or disgrace—or from being stomped on by the police, every day, or from being gang-raped, or from being homeless, or from being poor, naked, unaccommodated fool, thrust out upon the heath, in the cold, with no crown except the concussion from playing football or being beaten with a lead pipe by an ex-spouse, or being unnatural heir to a thousand shocks, both large and small, as you eke out a meager existence amid a thousand points of blight, with no end in sight, except the one we all dread, but are powerless to prevent.

Why I Signed the “Dump Trump, then Battle Biden” Open Letter

By |October 23rd, 2020|1 Comment

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.

Our New Civil War

By |September 18th, 2020|1 Comment

What distinguishes Trump from every other president in my lifetime is that he appears to be a supremacist, not only in action, but in ideological commitment. It is just in this sense that Trump is anti-American.

PRACTICE

JUSTICE

Licensing Parents

By |August 3rd, 2018|0 Comments

Ryan Jenkins from 1000-Word Philosophy examines the potential worth in licensing parents. Most people think it’s obvious that we have

Just War Theory

By |June 15th, 2018|0 Comments

Ryan Jenkins from 1000-Word Philosophy gives an account of just war theory. War is a profoundly destructive institution, yet most

ARTS & LETTERS

Plato’s Crito: When should we break the law?

By |January 11th, 2019|0 Comments

Plato’s Crito describes a conversation that takes place in 399 B.C.E. in an Athens prison, where Socrates awaits execution.Not long before, an assembly of more than 500 Athenian citizens convicted Socrates of corrupting the youth and impiety, essentially failing to respect the gods of the city.