Abstract This paper reads like – because it is – a meditation. Its ‘moments’ are these: That like cases are to be treated alike seems to be the core axiom behind all our moral and political reasoning. And yet this… Read More ›
Hobbes
THE REDUCTION OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE TO TRIBUTE
Von Clausewitz thought that war is just the continuation of politics by other means. I hold that it’s exactly the reverse. But if all political categories are reducible, without remainder, to military ones, to what are considerations of distributive justice… Read More ›
WHAT IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY?
In this paper I attempt to rescue the notion of a crime against humanity from the charge that it is either redundant or else a pseudo-concept. I argue that crimes against humanity are gross violations of basic human rights when… Read More ›
WHAT, IF ANYTHING, IS WRONG WITH GENOCIDE?
— for presentation on October 7, 2009, and again on October 4, 2012, for the Liberal Education Capstone course on genocide —
COERCION
I argue that if the notion of coercion is given a non-normative interpretation, then it can do no work for us. Of its normative interpretations – any precisification of the term and condemnation of coercion arising from natural law is… Read More ›
A THEORY OF WAR
ABSTRACT: By virtue of what I call the Counterfeit White Flag Problem, a state of civil society and a state of war are shown to be both phenomenologically and epistemically indistinguishable. From this – or so I argue – it… Read More ›
Guest Post by Pamela Lindsay: A Crash Course in Rhetoric.
Apropos Paul’s post Of Decolonisation and Marranos , re: the perlocutionary force of language. The extent to which language controls thought is a hotly debated topic. John McWhorter, for one, argues language doesn’t control thought as much as some believe. … Read More ›
HOW TO BE A MORE EFFECTIVE TERRORIST – LESSON FIVE
THE DIRECT APPROACH In Lesson One we asked under what conditions terrorism might be justified, and we concluded that there are no conditions under which it’s not. This is because justification in a state of war is what, were he… Read More ›
HOW TO BE A MORE EFFECTIVE TERRORIST – LESSONS ONE THRU THREE
LESSON ONE: THE DEFENCE OF TERRORISM The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist. I’m just as clever. I titled this paper so that whatever censors might be out there would think it’s obviously… Read More ›
THREE WAYS TO DEFANG THE MOB
Now that the Woke have achieved ascendency in the current public discourse – and topped itself off by joining in with the ‘cancel culture’ – the time has come for those of us who’ve yet to convert to their new… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 