Debates

As Slavoj Žižek often recalls, philosophy’s purpose is not to provide all the answers but to ask the right questions. If the question concerning warnings is one of them, it’s …
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“I know what you’re thinking, but it is NOT my mother!” This unprompted reflection by a patient led Freud to the perplexing insight not only that ‘mother’ occupied some unusually …
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 Professors, like other teachers, must accustom themselves to being misinterpreted. For example, in a philosophy of law class I once cited the famous adage, variously and often mistakenly attributed, that …
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Everyone’s busy debating whether Donald Trump’s global tariff plan is economic protectionism, geopolitical strategy, electoral propaganda, or the act of a madman who has lost the plot. It seems to …
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The recent debate over “AI Slop”—a term coined to dismiss AI-generated works as trash—brings to light a host of issues. Some, like Ted Gioia, lament a vaguely defined “good taste” …
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“He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty windowpane, the past is something he could see but not touch … If he could break through that dusty …
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My favored plot of crime novels concerns a person (usually a woman) who is in mortal danger. Unknown forces try to kill her because she knows something she shouldn’t have …
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That every like is not the same, O Ceasar! The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon! William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Today we live in societies where real interpersonal relations have …
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The relationship between Michel Foucault and Philip Rieff is best understood through contrast rather than any direct interaction or influence. On the surface, they could hardly be more different. Foucault, …
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Slavoj Žižek’s recent provocation in The Philosophical Salon, “Why a Communist Must Assume that Life is Hell,” introduces a subtle but profoundly unsettling reimagining of the political and existential stakes …
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