Political Philosophy

A preview of what's coming up in three weeks' time--a new series on Eugene McCarraher's The Enchantments of Mammon, a new book published by Harvard University Press. … More The Enchantments of Mammon–What’s Up Next (Preview-Audio)

This video deals with Chapters 6 and 7 in Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism. While Lasch is critical both of how Americans teach their youth and how they parent, he doesn't place all the blame on schools, teachers and parents. Rather, it's the overly specialized bureaucratic capitalist system that necessitates a particular kind of education, the kind that puts out docile worker bees, a...

Christopher Lasch wrote a chapter in The Culture of Narcissism on the state of American sports. He thought that spectator sports like football and baseball served a special social/cultural function that was being undermined by two things: the tendency to turn sporting events into spectacles attracting fans with little interest in the actual sport, and the use of sporting events to promote national...

Our current situation demonstrates the extremes of what Christopher Lasch leaned into in his book The Culture of Narcissism. How did we get here? Lasch's answers take us deeper than the typical observations of the day, which mainly dwell at the surface. In this video, which primarily deals with ideas from chapter 4 of Lasch's book, we find an explanation for the loose hold many people have on the...

This video covers chapters 2 and 3 of Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism. We explore why the strong narcissist is likely to work their way up the bureaucratic ladder in corporations and government service, and why, since bureaucracy is clearly not efficient, we insist on bureaucratic "rationality." I also discuss Lasch's ideas regarding detachment from a sense of time and from immediate...

This video reacts to the first chapter of Christopher Lasch's 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations--what does Lasch mean by narcissism, and what does it do to our relationships? In my view, our collective narcissism has created a culture of death, or a societal death cult. Lasch's ideas are useful for understanding how our economy encourages and...

In this second half of my interview with Jakob Hanschu, we evaluate the worth of reading Marx's Capital, discuss capitalism's impact on community, culture and faith, discuss the rise of identity politics and the New Right, and deal with the topic of intersectionality. Some of the thinkers discussed besides Marx are Wendell Berry, Chantal Mouffe, McKenzie Wark, Jacques Derrida and Slavoj Zizek. Jak...

In this conversation with Jakob Hanschu, Fulbright scholar at the University of Nottingham, we discuss a wide range of topics all centered around human impact on the environment. Subjects include New Materialism theory and the insights it provides on large monoculture farming, insights from the psychological theories of Freud, Jung and Lacan (particularly the shadow, death drive and jouissance), M...

I finish up this series on Chantal Mouffe's The Return of the Political with a discussion of her proposal for an "associational socialism." Inspired by Italian socialist Noberto Bobbio's attempt to combine elements of liberalism, democracy and socialism, Mouffe shows how his ideas fit with her notion of finding politics again through the interplay and competition of shifting identities and associa...

Mouffe's book The Return of the Political puts forward a view of the self and of society that is fractured into many and shifting identities, and she argues that we can find common ground as citizens, not only in an agreement over the rules of the game of democracy, but also in our various experiences of subordination. Mouffe hopes that this possibility will lead to left coalitions that allow citi...

In this podcast I discuss Chantal Mouffe's take on John Rawls' version of liberal social contract theory. Mouffe is not impressed, ultimately, but she does want to take away the liberal respect for the dignity of the individual while strengthening the person as a citizen, member of community, embedded in the public context. Can she have both--and what dangers do we court when we try to have strong...

This video covers chapter 2 of Chantal Mouffe's The Return of the Political, where we learn how Mouffe agrees with Communitarians on some things, but ultimately wants to move beyond them and keep what is valuable about liberalism. Is Mouffe's "thin community" good enough? Not sure, but we'll see as we move through the rest of her argument. Some major Communitarians, Charles Taylor, Alasdaire MacIn...

In this second in a series on Chantal Mouffe's ideas in The Return of the Political, I discuss her use of Carl Schmitt's critique of liberalism and relate her ideas to authors she draws from, such as Leo Strauss, Isaiah Berlin, Michael Oakeshott, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer and Hans Georg Gadamer. I try to get an initial handle on her preferred "agonistic pluralism" as an answer to the question...

In this first in a series on her book The Return of the Political, I introduce political theorist Chantal Mouffe, briefly discussing her background and the broad outline of her perspective, with reference to McKenzie Wark's treatment of it in General Intellects. … More No Escape from Politics: Intro to Chantal Mouffe (1 Audio)

Both classical conservative Edmund Burke and democratic socialist Eduard Bernstein were very skeptical about whether the "common man" of their time was up to the task of real political leadership. Even their reasons for being skeptical are similar. But, the differences are also stark, and they bring back the nature versus nurture debate. Bernstein thinks that the deficiencies of the working class...

I cover several points of agreement or near agreement between Edmund Burke (author of Reflections on the Revolution in France) and Eduard Bernstein (author of Evolutionary Socialism). Though a century apart and on supposedly opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, these two men thought in the same mode when it came to their dislike for revolution, sudden change, reform and the limitations of th...

Edmund Burke, father of classical conservatism, and Eduard Bernstein, one of the foundational thinkers of democratic socialism, have a remarkable similarity in their approach to solving problems. Here I begin by showing that they share a disdain for dogmatic certainty. … More Burke and Bernstein Against Dogmatic Certainty (Audio 1)

Launching off the interplay between the Desert Manifesto and Eckersley's Green State, I discuss the meaning and place of the anarchist value and strategy of mutual aid. I talk a bit about the origins of the concept of mutual aid, and some of the reasons why this idea is becoming popular now. … More Origins of “Mutual Aid” and Why It’s Getting Popular– Desert v Green S...

According to the anonymous author of Desert, even anarchists have been caught in the Enlightenment grand narrative of history as progress,and the "end of history" in some ideal future utopia. Though they disagree about the promise and value of state power, Desert and Robyn Eckersley (The Green State) both depart from "ideological possession." Either explicitly (Desert) or implicitly (Eckersley), t...

This brief video discusses what a time bank is and some of the philosophy behind the idea, including the ideas of its founder Edgar Cahn. I became interested in the idea after reading Walter Brueggemann's Another Kingdom. Time banks already exist in a lot of cities and towns. The URL below will take you to TimeBanks.org, which has everything you need to find out if you have one nearby or to start...

In the midst of a huge challenge, the Coronavirus pandemic, I'm forcing a dialogue between two seemingly opposite ways of thinking--advocacy for the state as the most useful way to address global challenges such as climate change, and an anarchist view that is skeptical, to say the least, about the possibility of the proper use of state power. I'm drawing from the writings of Robyn Eckersley, a po...

In this video, I reflect on the current coronavirus pandemic and what I think I have learned over the past couple of years about the human reaction to crises and how our "just in time" economy and expectations can leave us without the resources to deal resiliency with unforeseen contingencies. … More Eat This–Dealing With a Stress Test (Audio)

In this final video on McKenzie Wark's Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? I discuss some of the big takeaways I get from the book, and relate Wark's view of "past masters" and detournement of old ideas to Friedrich Nietzsche's three types of history in On the Use and Abuse of History for Life. Along the way, we find out why farmers are turning into hackers. … More Farmers vs. Vectoral...

I will make some final observations based on reading McKenzie Wark's Capital is Dead next weekend. The weekend after that I'll put up a special topic lecture on Machiavelli. Starting on the third weekend of March I'll start up on Robyn Eckersley's The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty. If you'd like to follow along on that book you can get it for under $20 on Kindle or in paperback...

Thinking about Ch. 5 in McKenzie Wark's Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse?, I dwell on how the scientists and technologists might have been able to make the world truly better rather than more dangerous and polluted. We still look at them as our heroes and saviors. But they've done more harm than good, at least arguably. Who or what is responsible for their status as tools of corporate prof...