THE RESTLESS MIND: PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, AND OTHER MATTERS

  • Where are we right now in philosophy? In need of a revolution.

    Hegel famously wrote that the owl of Minerva starts its flight at dusk. He meant to say that philosophy, far from being avant-garde, is, in some ways, always behind its time. For first comes reality and only then, belatedly, comes our understanding of it. Our words and theories are always chasing after the facts.

  • The disunity of knowledge

    January 19, 2018 – Our sharpest break with the tradition has come with the realization of the disunity of knowledge (of thought, the mind, the world, and pretty much else that concerns philosophy). We are no longer trying to construct “a system;” we are not looking for “the foundations” of a single structure; we have…

  • Data: The atomization of knowledge

    We have learned that the ocean waves pulverize our plastic debris which is then consumed as dust by the fish we eat. The circle is closed and the poisons we have created come back to us in this altered form. The internet pulverizes human knowledge and feeds it back to us as unconnected bits of…

  • THE WITTGENSTEIN PROJECT

    THE WITTGENSTEIN PROJECT

    My project is simple but demanding. I am trying to reread Wittgenstein from the beginning without, however, relying on any established interpretations. My question is whether we can look at his work with fresh eyes. Ignoring the halo of secondary writing that now surrounds that work. This does not mean that we will always end…

  • “A philosophical problem has the form: I don’t know my way about.” Wittgenstein on the Road

    How to read Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus remains a contested question. Is the book intended to advance a theory? Is it meant to lay out an atomistic metaphysics? A theory of truth and meaning? A logical theory? Or does it aim at showing that such theories are impossible? How does one get from its initial assertion…

  • Facts, possibilities, and the world. Three Lessons from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

    Abstract: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus has always been and remains a puzzle and that from its first page onwards. According to its initial assertions, the totality of facts constitutes the world and the totality of states of affairs defines the space of logical possibilities. But what are facts? What are possible states of affairs? And why do…

  • Wittgenstein on the limits of language

    Our attempts to deal with “the problems of philosophy” go characteristically wrong because we don’t understand “the logic of our language.” There are limits to language and these delegitimize the endeavor to advance philosophical theories. If we are to resolve our philosophical problems, we must go about it in some other manner, Wittgenstein writes in…

  • THE NEW POLITICAL REALISM: An Introduction

    THE NEW POLITICAL REALISM: An Introduction

    Political realism is what the hour calls for. But as soon as we say that, the questions multiply. To what does political realism commit us? What does it oppose? The term has already got a varied history. That a view conceives of itself as realist does not guarantee that it is. What is called “political…

  • Raymond Geuss on the task of political philosophy

    Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics There is often a significant time lag between an idea and its expression. Being aware of that gap maybe necessary for appreciating the original idea for what it is. I am reminded of this in reading Raymond Geuss’ book Philosophy and Real Politics which was published in 2008 but…

  • John Dunn: We need to rethink democracy

    “It is hard to see the citizenry of the United States at present as especially successful in furnishing themselves with good government under their uniquely time-tested and elastic democratic formula,” John Dunn, the English political theorist, observes in his profoundly unsettling book Breaking Democracy’s Spell

  • James Miller: Can democracy work?

    Can Democracy Work? is James Miller’s sequel to his book Democracy Is in the Streets of thirty years ago, In the intervening years he seems to have become less certain of the answer to the question whether democracy cam actually be made to work. The earlier book had been a somewhat nostalgic view back at…

  • Is our democracy in danger?

    “Is our democracy in danger? It is a question we never thought we’d be asking? … We have spent years researching new forms of authoritarianism emerging around the globe. For us, how and why democracies die has been an occupational obsession. But now we turn to our own country.” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in…

  • “The danger that politics disappears altogether from the world”

    We are living today in a state of heightened uncertainty – not least when it comes to politics. Carl Schmitt’s and Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the concept of the political illuminate why that is so.

  • How to do political philosophy

    You can’t make rules for a game, if you don’t know what game is being played.

  • Ci Jiwei on creating democracy in China

    Ci Jiwei on creating democracy in China

    Democracy in China. The Coming Crisis is a tightly argued  new book by Ci Jiwei that sets itself the dual task of analyzing China’s democracy deficit while doing so in a genuinely philosophical manner. Such an exercise in a “diagnostic” style of political philosophy is greatly more challenging than the usual abstract and normative theorizing…

  • CHINA’S DECOUPLING FROM THE WORLD

    The Chinese President, Xi Jinping, is calling for China to be “self-sufficient” in strategically important areas. There is talk also of an outright decoupling of the economic relationship of the US and China.  At the same time, China is seeking to enhance its status as a global power. It is clear that different and opposing…

  • Hong Kong in the rain

    Hong Kong in the rain

    August 10, 2018 I travel to Hong Kong and plan to talk to Joshua Wong about the future of the city.

  • Meeting Joshua Wong

    Meeting Joshua Wong

    August 11, 2018 It is Saturday morning and I am about to meet up with Joshua Wong at the Bricklane Café right across from Hong Kong’s Legislature where Wong’s political party has its office. It turns out that Wong has already been at work that weekend morning and I am not the only visitor he…

Got any book recommendations?