Kant and Democracy: Problems and Possibilities
Year 2024 was a historic year for democracy. It is estimated that over 4 billion people—that is, roughly half of humanity—voted in national elections...
Civil Capacity in the Age of Burnout
It’s been an exhausting few months. Most days, I just can’t read or think about the news. When the latest story—someone in power doing...
The Machiavellian Moment, Weak Covenantal Politics, and Co-existential Anxiety in the American Republic
The unpredictable character of contemporary history has become increasingly overwhelming, to the point that, when waking up in the morning, I experience the anxiety...
The Ethics of Loneliness
“I wanna go home where I belong'Cause now I'm just a lonely teenager
When I was sixteen, ran away all alone on a strayWhat can...
Imagination, the Engine of Possibility
When I was thirty, I told some coworkers about my plan to enter grad school to become a psychotherapist. We were technical writers for...
Musk’s Town Square Is Built on Sand
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity...
Wittgenstein and the Paradoxes at the Limits of Language
This post was originally published by the Institute of Art and Ideas and is republished here with permission as part of the Blog of APA’s partnership with the...
Nightclubs, Surveillance, and Nietzsche: The Dance Between Power and Freedom
Imagine you are walking into a nightclub in Berlin. You have waited in line for a while, and now there are two stickers on...
How Much Freedom of Speech is Too Much? (From a Philosophy of Language Point...
On February 14, 2025, the Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance, accused European countries of being too restrictive in their approach to...
Science and the Public
I was awarded my Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2007. Early in my Ph.D. program, I mentioned to a more senior graduate student that I...