I have often pointed out to my students a kind of conceptual error endemic in the social sciences, a tendency to imbue names for large and complex processes with an imputed agency. A familiar example is when we talk loosely about ‘neoliberalism’ or ‘globalisation’ being the cause of some result we decry. For instance, ifContinue reading “The Problem of Imaginary Agents”
Author Archives: jshearn
Marxists or Jacobins?
One of the most disconcerting things about public discourse these days is the running together of ideas of ‘marxism’ and ‘postmodernism’, as though they are equivalent, or that latter grows directly out of the former. This can be found, for example, in statements by YouTube pundits Jordon B. Peterson (Prof. of Psychology at U. ofContinue reading “Marxists or Jacobins?”
Remembering Hume
My university has recently announced its intention to ‘temporarily’ rename David Hume Tower by the more harmless ‘40 George Square’,[1] in light of a recent petition calling for its renaming on the basis of objection to a notorious racist footnote in his essay ‘Of National Character’ (1753). One can read extensive comment on the footnoteContinue reading “Remembering Hume”
The irreducible tension between technology and morality
My university has just announced the launch of a new Centre for Technomoral Futures. The announcement lays out an agenda boldly. The new centre “… focuses on integration of the technological and ethical … as a groundbreaking initiative to design more sustainable, just and ethical models of innovation. … that unifies technical and moral expertise. TheContinue reading “The irreducible tension between technology and morality”
The culture of poverty, again…
In Defence of Competition
I’d like to argue, in a way perhaps uncharacteristic of the left, in favour of competition. Not for blanket endorsement, but qualified recognition of the value of competition. A basic premise to my argument is that the work of criticism, to be such, has to be concerned with differentiating the good from the bad inContinue reading “In Defence of Competition”
Michael Lind—Marx or List?
Michael Lind’s new book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Metropolitan Elite (2020, Atlantic Books) is a compact argument aimed at a general readership. In it Lind makes the case for a revival of ‘democratic pluralism’, his term for the post-WWII left-right consensus politics of the US and Europe, exemplified by FDR’s ‘NewContinue reading “Michael Lind—Marx or List?”
Dignity and the Modern Nation
Two things primed me to write a blog about Francis Fukuyama’s new book Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition. First, last week I gave a lecture to students on our MSc in Nationalism Studies on the key theoretical ideas of Liah Greenfeld. I was explaining to them the central role of theContinue reading “Dignity and the Modern Nation”
The Letter and the Spirit of Democracy
As I begin to write this on 19 October, 2019, Michael Gove is speaking for the government in Parliament against the Letwin Amendment, which requires that implementing legislation be passed before the Prime Minister’s ‘Brexit Deal’ is approved by Parliament. Once again, he gives the refrain that respect for democracy requires that Parliament support aContinue reading “The Letter and the Spirit of Democracy”
The UK Parliament and Instrumental Populism
In Jan-Werner Müller’s recent short study What is Populism? (2017, Penguin) he defines it as a form of politics characterised by anti-elitism, the imagined oneness of ‘the people’ and their representatives (regardless of the mechanisms of representation), and the categorisation of political opponents as ‘enemies’ outside the body of ‘the people’. Müller calls populism ‘theContinue reading “The UK Parliament and Instrumental Populism”
