Category Archives: Politics

From Scientific American, Oct. 26, 2020: * …conservatives desire security, predictability and authority more than liberals do, and liberals are more comfortable with novelty, nuance and complexity. * Understanding the influence of partisanship on identity, even down to the level … Continue reading →

Harvard Political Science professor Dennis F. Thompson writes in 2008: * Citizens and their representatives are expected to justify the laws they would impose on one another by giving reasons for their political claims and responding to others’ reasons in … Continue reading →

Here are some highlights from this 2013 book: * In the years since World War II, the prevailing paradigm of politics has largely centred on the redistribution of resources. Hobbes and Schmitt, by contrast, help us appreciate two other conceptions … Continue reading →

Here are some highlights from this 2011 book: * …* more difficult for intellectuals to sustain the type of vertical authority that is associated with the first two types of public intellectuals. With education comes a growing awareness of the … Continue reading →

Professor Jeffrey Alexander, a sociologist at Yale, writes in this 2012 book: * Being a public intellectual, in other words, is not just a matter of telling the truth and of being separate and free-floating and truly representing the universal. … Continue reading →