CRITICAL THEORY | SOCIAL ANALYSIS | POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
Definitions of “politics” and “the political” are legion in scholarship. At the extremities of the spectrum one encounters mutually exclusive definitions. Betwixt one finds a bewildering assortment of cross-cutting variation. This definitional diversity reflects the fact that scholarly definitions of “politics” and “political” are fundamentally stipulative. Whatever referent in reality they purport to signify, their […]
By the time this article appears in print the press will have thoroughly milked every egregious as well as superficial aspect of the American college admissions cheating scandal. The global media, having surveyed virtually every significant angle of commentary, will quickly become obsessed for a day or two with something else. Indeed, just as I […]
If politics names the power relations regarding the polis, in their deliberative form, then ‘the political’ names the environment in which those power relations operate. From the outset of Western civilization, Aristotle saw the polis or ‘State’ as this environment. For him, it was organic and had life, as well as a genealogy, based on […]
In his 1934 essay “Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism,” Emmanuel Levinas evaluates the social and political realities that led to massive support for the Third Reich. What is fascinating about the essay is that Levinas mostly eschews direct critique of Hiterlism itself, but focuses instead on the problems at the heart of Western liberalism […]
The following is the final installment of a three-part article. Part one can be found by clicking here. Part two can be found by clicking here. The defense of nature can be considered a political problem in so far as it involves the issue of freedom. As shown earlier, the freedom of humans is put […]