Month: March 2012
Brief Comment on Integrative Radicalism
Just as modernity made overcoming class conceivable, it also made overcoming racism conceivable. By the same token, it made overcoming sexism, authoritarianism, and other ancient systems of domination seem achievable. Marxism focused on economic class as its central category. Nationalism made ethnicity central. Radical feminism made gender central, and anarchism made authoritarianism central. Each grasped […]
Two Questions on Political Philosophy
I’m currently working on a degree in Political Science and just finished a fun course in introductory political theory. I thought I’d post the final exam essay questions and my answers as a blog post. Plato argues that people should be philosophical. Machiavelli argues that people should exercise a certain form of virtue. Tocqueville argues that people […]
Freedom, Positive and/or Negative: Contradiction or Synthesis?
“He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to […]