Nov 3, 2021Fascism wasn’t neededThe attack on the US Capitol Building gave new impetus to an ongoing media debate over whether Donald Trump (and others like him) should be called a fascist. There is a limit to how fruitful debates like this can be, of course. There is no simple rule on how we…Fascism6 min read
Jun 19, 2021Discount Rates, Exploitation, and the End of CapitalismAlexander Douglas I don’t often have the opportunity to publicly engage in general speculation about our economic future. I hope you don’t mind my using this event as such an opportunity. Everything I say below is offered as a mere speculation, whose establishment would depend on a great deal of…Capitalism22 min read
May 17, 2021More on Spinozist and Zhuangzist ImmortalityI wrote before about Hao Wang’s suggestion that Spinoza’s view on immortality — or what Spinoza calls “the eternity of the mind”:Spinoza9 min read
Jan 12, 2021Justin Smith on René GirardJustin Smith wrote a fairly critical blog post on René Girard to which I feel moved to reply. A lot of it attacks Girard’s appeal in Silicon Valley, which I don’t know much about. But the post also criticises Girard’s theory itself. The conclusion states that “René Girard, in sum…Rene Girard9 min read
Published in Genus Specious·Nov 29, 2020A Bit More on Marx and CohenIn the last post I questioned G.A. Cohen’s critique of the Labour Theory of Value, which comes in two parts: (1) the LTV involves a mistaken idea that labour creates value; (2) Marx’s theory of exploitation can be retained without the LTV. These have been taken as established by some…Marx5 min read
Published in Genus Specious·Nov 27, 2020G.A. Cohen on Marx on ExploitationAs I was writing on Marx on value, a few analytic political philosophers recommended this essay to me: G.A. Cohen’s “The Labor Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation”. I puzzled over it for a while, but I think it must be wrong, at least on one central…Marx7 min read
Published in Genus Specious·Nov 14, 2020Susan Stebbing on Metaphysics and BeautyIn 1932 L. Susan Stebbing gave a wonderful presentation to the Aristotelian Society, on ‘The Method of Analysis in Metaphysics’. In it, she begins with a number of accurate historical statements, for example that J.M.E. McTaggart was ‘the greatest deductive philosopher of this century (and […] the greatest since Spinoza)’…Philosophy5 min read
Published in Genus Specious·Nov 9, 2020Language, Daoism, Mimetic DesireMedieval philosophers spoke of words being ‘imposed’ for things, either directly or by way of the ideas of things. When we acquire language, we learn which words are imposed for which things. It is as if we begin by encountering the things and then wonder what they are called. Or…12 min read
Jul 16, 2020A Mystery in Spinoza’s Psychological TheoryIn his Ethics, Spinoza often discusses how our emotions lead us to ‘strive to imagine’ various things. We strive to imagine things that affect us with joy (3p12) and things that exclude the existence of what causes us sadness (3p13). We strive to imagine someone we hate being affected with…Spinoza3 min read
Jul 2, 2020On the Business Case for the Closure of UWE PhilosophyThe University of the West of England has announced a plan to close its BA Philosophy programme, halting student recruitment for the 2020/21 academic year. As far as I can tell, there isn’t any stated financial reason for closing the programme, and the strategic reasons for it are very much…Philosophy4 min read
