Tag Archives: philosophy

FRIDAY’S WORDS OF WISDOM: WHAT MONEY CAN’T BUY BY MICHAEL J SANDEL

Posted on June 8, 2012 by

Michael J Sandel opens What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012) with a list (3-5) of some novel items that can be bought: In California prisoners can pay $82 a night for better, … Continue reading →

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FRIDAY’S WORDS OF WISDOM: WHY SOME THINGS SHOULD NOT BE FOR SALE BY DEBRA SATZ

Posted on March 23, 2012 by

Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale by Debra Satz is a work of political philosophy that critiques the assumptions that underlie much modern economic theory and the implications of those assumptions in the application of markets to real … Continue reading →

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FRIDAY’S WORDS OF WISDOM: FIGUEIRA AND SPARTAN WOMEN

Posted on February 24, 2012 by

This week I have been reading Sparta: The Body Politic (The Classical Press of Wales, 2010, editors Anton Powell and Stephen Hodkinson), which contains a number of interesting essays on ancient Sparta but the one that really got me thinking … Continue reading →

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FRIDAY’S WORDS OF WISDOM: ESTLUND’S DEMOCRATIC AUTHORITY

Posted on February 17, 2012 by

I’m a bit late to getting around to David Estlund’s Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton, 2008) but it’s a major work of political philosophy. It is very much in the American tradition of political philosophy strongly influenced by John … Continue reading →

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AGAINST UTOPIA: ARTHUR C CLARKE AND THE HETEROTOPIAN IMPULSE

Posted on August 1, 2011 by

ABSTRACT In this essay I briefly set out the Marxist theories of utopianism espoused by the influential German philosopher Ernst Bloch and contrast the closing down of future possibilities inherent in Bloch’s notion of a realisable “concrete utopia” with the … Continue reading →

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JOHN STUART MILL AND THE HORROR IN NORWAY

Posted on July 23, 2011 by

When faced with appalling events such as those that occured in Norway yesterday it can be difficult to respond rationally. The murder of so many young people who were guilty of nothing more than enthusiasm and idealism inspires pity, grief, … Continue reading →

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