Nikole Hannah-Jones, Frederick Douglass, and the Left
[Published at Dissident Voice and other places.] Twitter conversations with public intellectuals are rarely worthy of note, but a recent...
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Wright's Writing
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- Jan 31
- 55 min
The Book of Joe: A Satire of Capitalist Society
Here's an insanely long post. It's actually a "literary experiment" I wrote almost twenty years ago (as the following preface says, which...
- Jul 30, 2022
- 7 min
Classical music vs. mediocrity
On one side is the mediocrity of all functionaries. All bureaucrats. There’s no point in my writing about bureaucrats in the ordinary...
- Sep 8, 2021
- 11 min
Excerpts from "Battle Cry of Freedom"
In an effort to escape the dreary drumbeat of daily news, I'm reading James McPherson's mammoth Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era...
- Jun 10, 2021
- 22 min
Introduction to my forthcoming book
If all goes well, I'll be publishing a book sometime in the not-too-distant future. It'll be called something like Popular Radicalism and...
- Jun 6, 2021
- 8 min
Closed borders and democratic theory
You may have noticed that the question of immigration is on people’s minds lately (as it has been, almost without interruption, since the...
- Mar 4, 2021
- 9 min
Personal reflections on anarchism
Anarchism (anti-authoritarianism, love of freedom) is an essential thing, an essential guide for our thinking and action, but I have to...
- Sep 13, 2020
- 6 min
On how to live
When I was younger, I used to wonder: should I care what people think of me? I saw arguments on both sides of the question. And I still...
- Sep 5, 2020
- 5 min
The commodification of education
David Noble's essay "Digital Diploma Mills," written in the 1990s, is a brilliant and still timely critique of the automation and...
- Aug 30, 2020
- 37 min
Critical remarks on academia and philosophy
I was recently skimming old notes of mine and came across the following thoughts from a two-volume book on "humanism" I wanted to write...
- Aug 28, 2020
- 17 min
A critique and defense of Plato’s “just state”
In case anyone out there has an interest in Plato, here's a paper from my student days in which I did the shamelessly anachronistic and...
- Aug 26, 2020
- 6 min
"A refutation of Kantian and Benthamite ethics"
Here's a paper from my undergraduate days, which you might find mildly interesting in its outline (and critique) of both Kantian and...
- Aug 11, 2020
- 59 min
The relativity of values
Back in my twenties I had an intellectual and creative energy I don't have anymore. I was consumed by philosophy, jumping from topic to...
- Jun 14, 2020
- 19 min
Critical remarks on Thomas Nagel
[From 2009.] I’m reading Thomas Nagel’s famous book The View From Nowhere (1986). Nagel seems more sensible than most contemporary...
- Dec 27, 2018
- 3 min
The meaning of life
[Excerpts from this book. See also this blog post, "Excerpts on happiness."] The meaning of life?— Life is not totally “meaningless.”...
- May 29, 2018
- 8 min
The importance of John Brown
[Grad-school notes...] I'm reading about John Brown--David Reynolds' John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the...
- Mar 25, 2018
- 7 min
Excerpts on moral pathologies
[From Notes of an Underground Humanist.] How is mass inhumanity possible?— When I ask myself how it’s possible that so many white...
- Nov 10, 2016
- 2 min
On "success"
[From this book.] The more one experiences the world, the more one understands how difficult it is to be “successful” and have integrity...
- Jul 2, 2016
- 4 min
On "lesser evilism" in politics
The following is a long comment I wrote on a Facebook thread months ago arguing against a left-wing friend that--in swing states--one...
- Jun 23, 2016
- 2 min
The utility of "God"
I attended my first Episcopalian service last night [in April 2010]. It was Maundy Thursday, so we did the whole foot-washing thing and...
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