Human Exceptionalism with a Human Face
I think humans are exceptional. To many, this may seem naïve or chauvinistic. Surely, studies in animal behavior (ethology) have conclusively shown that all the attributes previously thought to mark…
Why Do Conservatives Dislike Immanuel Kant?
In his bestseller, The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great, Ben Shapiro recently became the latest in a string of conservative commentators to…
Why Donald Trump Will Be Re-Elected
In 2020, Donald Trump will be re-elected President of the United States. Why? Is it because Trump is a political savant? Well, no. Although the septuagenarian claims to be “like,…
Listening at the Great Awokening
Colleges and universities across the English-speaking world are caught up in the enthusiasm of a Great Awokening. Its dogmas are structural violence, systemic racism, racial stress, white privilege, white fragility,…
How Would Mill Have Responded to a Ban on Religious Modesty Dress?
Many self-described liberals of today believe that a ban on Muslim veiling would be inconsistent with liberalism. However, the chief architect of liberal political philosophy, John Stuart Mill, who was…
The Answer to Hateful Speech is Better Speech: An Invitation to a Debate
This essay anticipates a debate at the University of Leeds which will be live streamed on Inaya’s YouTube channel, on 7 May, from 5.30–7.30pm (BST). Two narratives have dominated discourse…
The Need for Political Diversity in Professional Health Education
The class activity started well. The students were genuinely engaged. We had just finished our annual cultural simulation in our school’s “Care of Diverse Populations” course. Students were divided into…
Shocking, Hilarious, Poignant: Ricky Gervais’ After Life
“Any plans for the weekend?” asks a sweet elderly receptionist in the fourth episode of Ricky Gervais’ new Netflix show, After Life. Gervais’ character, Tony, a writer struggling to cope…
No, Secular Humanism is Not a Religion
I was recently surprised to read in Quillette an essay which argues that secular humanism is a religion. Although a number of thoughtful arguments for and against the similarity of secular…
Anti-Natalism’s Existential Error
Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim.— Arthur Schopenhauer Nietzsche’s contemporary, Schopenhauer, had a remarkably pessimistic view of life, which…
The Supposedly Looming Spectre of Automation in the Service Industries
Automation is an interesting outlier within the modern canon of political topics of discussion. Views aren’t split down the usual left-right divide; instead, opinions tend to diverge along free market–protectionist…
Iconoclasm and the Erasing of History
At 1:32am on the morning of 8 March 1966, a loud explosion was heard in the center of Dublin. When dawn came, visitors to O’Connell Street were greeted by the…
The Beauvoir Bluff: What Gender Idealists Keep Getting Wrong about “The Second Sex”
“The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project.”—Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex It is…
Why Traditional Masculinity is Good for Academia
Male sex (and manliness in particular) should be important criteria for admissions and hiring committees. Here’s why. Strange things have happened in academia. In the late 1960s, Derrida and Lévi-Strauss…
Agile and the Software Industry’s Ideology Problem
In 2001, a group of technologists and software developers with unconventional theories about how software development ought to be managed met at Snowbird ski resort to try to commit some…
Bravado in the Absence of Order: Homicide and Race Talk
Racialized stigma is central to understanding why rates of homicide and other violence were, and remain, so much higher among the descendants of slaves than among other Americans. Yet to…
Die Loser: Why We Are Killing Ourselves More, and What’s the Cure?
We are killing ourselves more than we used to. According to both the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the UK Department of Health, suicides rates have doubled…
More Heat than Light: Ben Shapiro’s The Right Side of History. Book Review.
Socrates was executed by democratic Athens for impiety and corrupting the youth. Western political philosophy can be said to originate from this event perhaps more than from any other. Socrates’…
