Meritocracy and Its Discontents
Meritocratic reformers claimed that they wanted equality. But instead they sought to replace the aristocracy of birth with an aristocracy of ability.
J. Michael Yarros
· 13 min read
philosophy
A collection of 96 posts
Reviewing Bronze Age Pervert's New Book: Quillette Cetera Episode 27
A conversation with Quillette writer Oliver Traldi.
Zoe Booth
· 1 min read
The Heckler’s Veto and the Right to Free Association
It's not just a matter of weighing up one group’s free speech against another group’s counter-speech. It’s also about one group’s freedom of association being impeded.
Holly Lawford-Smith
· 8 min read
Humanism and Its Discontents
Humanism aspires to ethical universalism but in practice it is defined by what it opposes and excludes.
Robert Huddleston
· 10 min read
Trans Identity and the Right to Exist
This is substance metaphysics for the twenty-first century.
Holly Lawford-Smith
· 10 min read
The Insidious Lie That We Can’t Understand Each Other
And a guide for how to productively push back against the identity trap.
Yascha Mounk
· 16 min read
The Cancellation of Bertrand Russell
Eight decades later, the issues raised by the Russell case—the rights to free speech and academic freedom—have still not been settled.
James Huffman
· 9 min read
On Political Hatred
On everything from Syrian refugees through Brexit and climate change to so-called gender-affirmative medicine, people take a totalizing approach to disagreement: either you agree with me, or you are despicable.
Holly Lawford-Smith
· 7 min read
Left is Not Woke: An Interview with Susan Neiman
In undermining universalism and moral progress, "wokeism" is inherently reactionary.
Maarten Boudry
· 14 min read
The Sanctification of the Self
The focus on the self to the exclusion of everything else is undermining the rule of law.
Megan Wildhood
· 8 min read
Heidegger’s Downfall
Richard Wolin’s reappraisal of Martin Heidegger offers both original contributions and a synthesis of critical scholarship. The result is a timely work of enduring importance.
Jeffrey Herf
· 18 min read
Aristotle (and the Stoics): An Interview with John Sellars
A new book by John Sellars explores the life’s work and extraordinary legacy of the man he has provocatively called “the single most important human being ever to have lived.”
Riley Moore
· 20 min read
On Conservative Socialism
Far from being a phantom in the imaginations of a handful of writers and scholars, conservative socialism is a real phenomenon.
Seamus Flaherty
· 16 min read
Brute Physical Facts and Social Construction
The progressive and the traditionalist are equally detached from the underlying reality as currently described by science.
Vinod Goel
· 12 min read
Ending Discrimination by Twitter
Gender critical feminists are among those who have been excluded from Twitter for years. The time is right for a correction.
Holly Lawford-Smith
· 9 min read