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Trust, authority, and expertise

April 18, 2020

Modernity, we have been told, is an acid to tradition and blind faith.  Modernity is essentially a skeptical mindset.  Prove it; show me; where's the evidence: these are the imperatives we are told to affirm, as proper moderns.  The invisible legitimation of received authorities is as dubious as the passive voice which, we are assured, is the main device of their seduction of premoderns' assenting, supine minds.

There's something misguided about the over-oxygenated appeals to radical skepticism in that last paragraph.  Thinkers have...

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Some more links for reading and contemplating, these about the pandemic

April 14, 2020

Read some stuff.  These are all pandemic related.  Maybe they'll provoke some thoughts.  Then, if you can, go on a walk.  A long quiet walk.  Be alone with your thoughts.  Again--if you can.  

 

 

Agnes Callard is one of the more thoughtful philosophers in American philosophy these days, and also one of those willing to write to a non-professional audience in an interesting and provocative way.  In...

Read More Some more links for reading and contemplating, these about the pandemic

They call it Stormy Monday

April 13, 2020

After a few days of sunny and warm weather, now it's turned blustery.  Actually I like this--wind is good for the soul.  Hope you are snug wherever you are.

 

 

Has Nefertiti’s tomb been found, after all, hidden behind Tutankhamun’s tomb?  Maybe so.  This article makes that case; maybe something will come of it, this time ...

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Some links

April 11, 2020

Links for a Holy Saturday.  This one, in fact.

 

 

Cool conversation at my UVA from last year, on “Race in the decade since Obama’s inauguration”, still worth listening to, esp in another election year.

 

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OK, OK: Identity, more than class, shapes politics today. But what do we do then?

April 11, 2020

Can I recognize winning when it happens?  That's the question behind this post, really.  

Some background:

Since before 2016, I've been having an argument with friends and colleagues over whether identity or economic issues are more powerful political motivators for people in our current situation.  In fact many of us, around the world, are having this argument.  It's an old argument--it goes back to Marxist analyses, in fact, which people like me see as too-ruthlessly reductionistic.  Our opponents mostly disagree, and think that identity...

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Good Friday Links

April 10, 2020

Good Friday is all about social distancing--of the Romans from the Jews, of the disciples from Jesus, of Jesus from life, and perhaps God the Father; and perhaps Jesus from humanity as well.  Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?  May we all remember this Good Friday as an especially palpable Good Friday, now and in days to come.

 

And also, I have links for you.

 

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The power of religion qua religion in American politics; or, a link that metastasized into a comment

April 09, 2020

I meant for this to be one of my "links," but I decided it needed independent acknowledgement--both as a useful analysis of the state of American politics right now, especially in the role of religion in American politics; and as an example of how to give evidence for the independent power of religion as a political force.

Here is an...

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Just some links

April 08, 2020

Mellow day, some links for you, wherever you are.

 

 

“I doubt, in its 200-year history, the University has ever been quieter.”  This is true—a series of pictures of the eerily, spookily empty spaces of the University of Virginia, my school, in the midst of Coronavirus.  

 

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