Category: Uncategorized

Why study history? We need our own Livy

 

“I invite the reader’s attention to … the kind of lives our ancestors lived … I would then have him trace the process of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them. The study of history is the best medicine for a sick  mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.”  (Livy, History of Rome, Preface).

 

TYRANNY AND RELIGIOUS FAITH – A lesson for today

“”Again, a tyrant should always be seen to be very zealous about matters concerning the gods, but without appearing foolish in the process. For people are less afraid of suffering illegal treatment at the hand of such people. And if they regard their ruler as a god-fearing man who pays heeds to the gods, they plot against him less, since they think that he has the gods on his side.” (Aristotle, Politics, 1314b)

What, if it happened here?

China executes former senior banker for taking $156m bribes

Bai Tianhui, the ex-general manager of China Huarong International Holdings (CHIH), was found guilty of accepting more than US$156 million while offering favourable treatment in the acquisition and financing of projects between 2014 and 2018, state broadcaster CCTV said.

AFP, Dec. 8, 2025

The more things change, the more they are the same

“I say not this, as disproving the use of universities; but because I am to speak thereafter of their office in a commonwealth, I must let you see on all occasions by the way, what things would be amended in them; amongst which the frequency of insignificant speech is one.”

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 1

ON TYRANNY

“It is not individual prosperity, but the general good that makes cities great; and certainly the general good is regarded nowhere but in republics… But the very reverse happens where there is a prince whose private interests are generally in opposition to those of the city, whilst the measures taken for the benefit of the city are seldom deemed advantageous by the prince. This state of things soon leads to a tyranny… And if fate should have it that the tyrant is enterprising, and by his courage and valor extends his dominions, it will never be for the benefit of the city, but only for his own.”    (Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy)

Wittgenstein and Politics

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Wittgenstein and Democratic Politics Lotar Rasiński and Leszek Koczanowicz

Part 1: Grounding the Political

2. The Heart of the Heart: Wittgenstein’s Place in Political Theory Thomas Wallgren

3. Using Wittgenstein’s Method to Explain and Understand Democratic Politics Michael Temelini

4. Wittgenstein as a Political Philosopher Richard Raatzsch

5. Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Politics Hans Sluga

Part 2: Conceptual Entanglements

6. Grounding Democracy in Radical Practices of Care: From Sameness to Entanglement Naomi Scheman

7. What Is a “Democratic” Form of Life? Anat Biletzki

8. Community and Temporality: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Political Judgment Désirée Weber

9. Wittgenstein’s “Family Resemblances” and their Political Potential Dimitris Gakis

Part 3: Seeing Connections

10. Wittgenstein, Arendt, and the Problem of Democratic Persuasion Linda M. G. Zerilli

11. Wittgenstein and the Politics of Vision Adam Chmielewski

12. The Proletariat and the Left: Critical Perspectives – Thinking of Political Understanding and Persuasion with Eribon, Arendt and Wittgenstein Anat Matar

13. Language-Based Critique of Deliberation as a “Picture” in the “Album Theory” of Democracy Wojciech Ufel

Conclusion

14. Philosophy and / or Politics: Learning from Engagement with Wittgenstein Thomas Wallgren and Anat Biletzki

Mark Lilla, Ignorance and Bliss. On Wanting Not to Know

From the publisher:

“Aristotle claimed that “all human beings want to know.” Our own experience proves that all human beings also want not to know. Today, centuries after the Enlightenment, mesmerized crowds still follow preposterous prophets, irrational rumors trigger fanatical acts, and magical thinking crowds out common sense and expertise. Why is this? Where does this will to ignorance come from, and how does it continue to shape our lives?

In Ignorance and Bliss, the acclaimed essayist and historian of ideas Mark Lilla offers an absorbing psychological diagnosis of the human will not to know. With erudition and brio, Lilla ranges from the Book of Genesis and Plato’s dialogues to Sufi parables and Sigmund Freud, revealing the paradoxes of hiding truth from ourselves. He also exposes the fantasies this impulse lead us to entertain—the illusion that the ecstasies of prophets, mystics, and holy fools offer access to esoteric truths; the illusion of children’s lamb-like innocence; and the nostalgic illusion of recapturing the glories of vanished and allegedly purer civilizations. The result is a highly original meditation that invites readers to consider their own deep-seated impulses and taboos.”

The Age of Neoliberalism is Over

Neoliberal doctrine proclaimed the liberation of the market from political control but it failed to foresee that the centralization of market power which came with the liberalization of the market would increasingly embroil the market with the state.

The modern state with its claim to sovereignty is giving way to a strange, new conglomerate of state and corporate power, call it the corporate. Billionaires like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their associates are the protagonists of that turn of events. Neoliberalism, we now realize, was the last gasp of the modern state.

Where the rich used to assert political influence through sympathetic politicians, they now want to do away with the middle-man and rule by themselves for they believe that they know better than anyone else what is needed, and their experience as corporate leaders has convinced them that they also know how to execute their plans.

It remains to be seen how well Trump and associates will succeed. But the corporate is not likely to go away soon. Its tentacles are already spanning the globe. It is a small hope that every form of political organization fails in the long run. Our prospect for now is that of the emerging corporate. Or, to put it negatively, the disappearance of the modern state with all its organizational variations, including that of popular democracy.

Contemplating the void

Having recently sold part of my library, the empty shelves invite me now to contemplate the void in a new way.  Some books I miss already. How can they have disappeared? Others I can’t even remember- they may not have proved  worth reading or worth reading just once only to be forgotten. What I call my view of the world has always been a tissue studded with holes, but those holes now appear larger and the void one can glimpse through them more evident.