An Invitation to Take the Question of Secession Seriously
Political philosophers should think more about the theory of secession. There is a philosophical literature on secession, most obviously the work of Allan Buchanan,...
Learning from AI’s Bullshit
Anyone who has used modern AI knows how unreliable they are. They might recommend adding glue to pizza sauce to keep the cheese from sliding...
Socrates in Exile: The Fate of Thought in a Bureaucratic Age
As the foundations of independent thinking are rationalized in the administered world, the public role of philosophy as magistra vitae becomes an intellectual afterthought....
Executive Orders, Offices, and Laws: Democratic Conundrums in Ancient Greece and Modern America
An executive order is issued by the new ruler of a country. A woman defies the order in the name of higher laws. How...
Technofascism and the AI Stage of Late Capitalism
Technologies produce disorientation
Since the release of ChatGPT 3.5 in November 2022 and the extraordinary AI hype that has followed in the last two years,...
Life in Plastic: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Barbie Movie
2024 has ushered in yet another wave of big-budget nostalgia. From the film adaptation of Wicked to the unstoppable Barbie juggernaut, it seems Hollywood...
Terrence Malick, or, Philosophy by Other Means
Given the chance to become a movie director in Hollywood or a professor of philosophy at Harvard, I imagine very few of us would...
Elon Musk vs. the Bureaucrats: A Paradox of Democratic Authority
Elon Musk’s conquest against the bureaucrats is based on two contradicting ideas of democratic authority.
The last months have been a non-stop flood of news...
To Protect Democracy from Oligarchy We Must Fight Inequality, but also Hierarchy
The problem of oligarchy is a problem of undue influence of wealth on politics. This problem takes a specific form in liberal-democratic, capitalist regimes....
Rebelling or Revelling?: Humor as a Sisyphean Task in Mystery Science Theater 3000, Part...
The now classic movie-riffing series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), and its spinoffs such as Rifftrax, can tell us something about how to deal...