Jonathan Haidt has argued that a university can seek truth, or it can pursue justice, but not both. He’s right about the dichotomy, but I’m not sure he’s best identified the two choices. Getting the truth is far above anyone’s… Read More ›
Locke
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 ›
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 ›
ON CONDOLENCES
Allow me to just stipulate. By political individualism, as distinct from individualism simpliciter, I shall mean the view that what justifies the coercive power of the state are the interests of its constituent members. By contrast, for the collectivist it’s… 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 ›
AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING RACIST …
Let’s not quibble about whether they came across the Bering Strait or miraculously burst into being sui generis. Let’s just say that those who descended from those who could be found in the Western Hemisphere prior to 1492 shall be… Read More ›
CHALLENGE versus RIDICULE
Much as I’d sometimes like to be, I’m not a knee-jerk civil libertarian. I understand that the maintenance – and before that the promotion – of a civil society sometimes requires limits to freedom of movement, of association, of expression,… Read More ›
TWO LECTURES YOU WON’T GET AT LAW SCHOOL
LESSON 1: NATURAL LAW AND POSITIVE LAW There are, among the Great Unwashed – that’s everybody except me, by the way – some pretty serious misconceptions about law. Some people, including some philosophers, think there’s something called natural law, by… Read More ›
Anthropogenesis
WHY MY COLLEAGUES ARE IDIOTS – Rant # 164 – ANTHROPOGENESIS Suppose the world came into being five minutes ago, precisely as it was five minutes ago, with all those pseudo-history books on those shelves and all those pseudo-memories in… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 