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Sep 6, 20238 min read
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...


Jan 31, 202355 min read
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, 20227 min read
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, 202111 min read
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, 202122 min read
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, 20218 min read
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, 20219 min read
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, 20206 min read
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, 20205 min read
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, 202037 min read
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, 202017 min read
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, 20206 min read
"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, 202059 min read
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, 202019 min read
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, 20183 min read
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, 20188 min read
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, 20187 min read
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, 20162 min read
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, 20164 min read
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, 20162 min read
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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