Politics & Society
Truth and justice are the essential foundations of any legitimate political order—not merely moral abstractions. Deny truth, and you replace reason with power. Abandon justice, and you permit domination to thrive. This is vividly clear in Gaza and Ukraine, where truth and justice are shown to be not distant ideals but concrete conditions for peace. […]
At the most fundamental level, my concern about the identity synthesis is not about the ways in which it has “gone too far.” Rather, it is that the identity synthesis is, even at its best, likely to lead to a society that fundamentally violates my most fundamental values and my most ardent aspirations for the […]
Even if collective rights were compatible with the individualistic design of modern legal orders based on subjective rights, it would not make any sense to employ them for cultural survival projects enforced by state power. There cannot be a “preservation” of cultures in the same sense as most of us advocate the preservation of animals […]
You may argue that theory is secondary: of course woke activists seek solidarity, justice, and progress. Their struggles against discrimination are animated by those ideas. But they fail to see that the theories they embrace subvert their own goals. Without universalism there is no argument against racism, merely a bunch of tribes jockeying for power. […]
The influence of the basic themes of the philosophy of history on the social-theoretic argument of the Dialectic of Enlightenment is so strong that Adorno and Horkheimer cannot but comprehend the socially oppressed subject as a passive and intention-less victim of the same techniques of domination that are aimed at nature. It seems as if […]
In science, courage is to follow the motto of enlightenment and Kant’s dictum — Sapere Aude! To use your own understanding, having the courage to think for yourself and question ‘received opinion,’ authority or orthodoxy. In our daily lives, courage is a capability to confront fear, as when in front of the powerful and mighty, not […]
. Postmodern identity politics always makes yours truly come to think of Wolfgang Pauli’s famous quip — “Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch.”
. At the heart of the Dunning-Kruger effect is the recognition that overconfidence in ignorance makes people with low ability or knowledge believe they are more capable than they are …
The conflicting attitude towards Nietzsche is instructive. It indicates that the Dialectic of Enlightenment owes more to Nietzsche than just the strategy of a totalizing critique. It is still difficult to understand a certain carelessness in their treatment of, to put it quite blatantly, the achievements of Western rationalism. How can the two advocates of […]