Globalization is out and nation states are in, if you believe the agitators. The reality is, however, quite different. The nation state was never a happy construct and technological change has undermined it once and for all. But what comes next? Justified anxieties about where we are going and what globalization will bring us have cast the idea of the nation state in a new, unexpectedly rosy light. It's, however, a false and deceptive light. Rana Dasgupta has written a terrific article in The Guardian explaining the demise of the nation state, why it is unlikely to come back, and what to do about it. Don't miss it.
The Soviet Union is alive and well — in the USA
Conformism is a danger to any society, including democratic ones. The Americans, who pride themselves on their individualism, are, in fact, often quite conformist in their behavior. Look at the American cities or how people dress and what they eat, and you discover a great deal of conformity. Strangely enough, that conformism can go hand-in-hand with the belief that you are free, independent, and your own individual person.
Conformism is also a political problem and a political danger. Read this article, watch the embedded video, and decide for yourself. https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local-tv-owner-turned-its-news-anc-1824233490
The Common Good
Michael Shirrefs, an Australian researcher and journalist, and his wife came to visit me for an interview. We talked about politics, America, European unity and disunity, and finally the question whether we still have a concept of the common good.
“This is the way the world ends.” — Drowning in people
Last June a United Nations report predicted that the world's population - now at 7.6 billion - was likely to increase to almost 10 billion by 2050 and to 11.2 billion by 2100. Now a Vienna based group of demographers have calculated that by 2070 the world's population will reach ONLY 9.5 billion. This has been hailed as good news.
Capitalism and Democracy. A Lesson from Hong Kong
The rise of Xi Jinping has made Hong Kong democrats increasingly nervous. But the main threat to their goal to make Hong Kong more democratic does not even come from the authorities in Beijing; it comes from their own home-grown capitalists. The case of Hong Kong raises broad questions about the state of global politics and the future of democracy.
“The Owl of Minerva” – 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.
How to do political philosophy
We can distinguish three styles of political philosophy: (1) abstract normative theorizing, (2) political realism, (3) diagnostic practice.
My claim is that abstract normative theorizing is a dead end and that normative political considerations have to be based on an understanding of the political realities. Normative political thinking thus presupposes political realism. But how well do we actually understand the political realities? And what are the epistemic constraints on political philosophy? Political thinking as a diagnostic practice sets out to examine that question. It is evident that an understanding of the political realities presupposes diagnostic practice.
President for Life
Here is a piece from the South China Morning Post worth thinking about. Naturally, it is full of speculation of what may happen, but it raises some pressing questions about where China is going.
Can we define “populism”? Perhaps, but what is gained by this?
What is populism? The most serious mistake in trying to answer this question lies in the (usually unspoken) assumption that where we have a single word or term there must be a single corresponding concept and that the word will therefore refer to a singular definite phenomenon.
The place of America — in political philosophy
For those living in the United States the conditions of American politics will, for obvious reasons, be of some interest. But given the economic, political, and military power of the US it is not surprising to discover that American politics is scrutinized all over the world. When one looks at the International media one notices how much attention they pay to American affairs.
Does this mean that American politics also has a particular interest for political philosophy?
Why China matters – also in political philosophy
There are plenty of reasons why we should be interested in China. It is the world’s most populous country with more than a billion people and it presents thus (together with India) a singular challenge as to how a state of such magnitude can be governed.
A Bad Bargain
Joshua Green, Devil's Bargain. Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising, Penguin Books 2017, republished with a new preface 2018.
Joshua Green's book has been somewhat overshadowed by the publication of Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury but it adds significantly to Wolff's account and corrects it at some important points. It tells in fascinating detail the story of bad bargain the American people accepted when they elected Trump.
Political Philosophy: What to read
Philosophers have written copiously about politics. There is, moreover, no sharp dividing line between “philosophical” writings on politics and other kinds of writing on this topic. So there is no end to what one might read under the heading of “political philosophy”. Here is a list of 15 significant texts, some classical and some modern, some short and some long, some famous and some not so famous, some highly readable and some very demanding. The selection is, of course, mine; others might add to it or subtract from it. I will add some comments on what makes these writings interesting and important.
Xi Jinping Rule
What's happening in China? On Sunday, February 25, the Xinhua news agency reported: "The Communist Party of China Central Committee proposed to remove the expression that the President and Vice-President of the People's Republic of China "shall serve no more than two consecutive terms" from the country's Constitution." Some commentators called this a bombshell.
Politics as a field of imperfect cognitive states
Imperfect cognitive states are characteristic of social and political life. But these are not the cognitive states our epistemologists have in view. We need to consider, in particular, states of uncertainty and disorientation since those are now so prevalent in our politics.
Who is responsible for our decline? – The Frankfurt School, of course.
Stuart Jeffries, Grand Hotel Abyss. The Lives of the Frankfurt School, Verso, London 2017
Poor Frankfurt School. Turn to the internet these days and you realize that the handful of German professors who go under that name are being held responsible for almost everything bad that has happened to society since … when? !990? 1970? 1945? Or even 1920? All these dates are being tossed around on those feverish websites. Neo-Marxism, cultural Marxism, feminism, multiculturalism, sexual excess, postmodernism, political correctness, and all in all the entire “Western decline” are due to their nefarious doings.
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 information. Our minds are bound to be ultimately overwhelmed by all this new kind of poisonous debris.
Digital technology has had the peculiar effect of atomizing human knowledge and this in two ways. It has favored the creation of small bits of information which are passed around in digital messages. And it has overwhelmed our ability to concentrate on extended lines of reasoning. There is too much information, tempting us to move quickly from one bit to another. We are distracted by all these bits of knowledge that are offered to us so enticingly on all the websites of the world. This is already showing disastrously in our students who find it increasingly difficult to read whole books. We feed them instead with power point slides that contain carefully selected bits of information. Even this blog illustrates what is happening. Blogs are signals of the decreasing attention spans of those who write them and those who consume them.
“This is the way the world ends”: Drowning in Plastics
There is much debate about climate change, but changes to our environment are nor limited to the weather.