Daniel Johnson on the life and work of Max Weber, whose controversial views on democracy still resonate today First posted August 28, 2020 As a young freelance of my acquaintance, exceptionally gifted, tells me that she has abandoned journalism in favour of a teaching post at a university. “I don’t think I’d be able to… Read More Daniel Johnson: Myths of the Prophet Max
If, as a teacher, you become overly cautious before you utter a word, if you worry that a student is recording your lecture, or the administration is continually monitoring your every move, how can you teach Marx, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Tagore, Iqbal, Manto and Premchand freely, spontaneously and creatively? Avijit Pathak The primary reason I could… Read More After Pune teacher’s arrest: Fear and surveillance in the classroom
NB: Meanwhile the JNU History Centre collection, one of the most valuable in the country, is being dismantled by the authorities to make room for a new centre of Tamil studies. I am sure lovers of Tamil language and culture do not wish for the university’s history collection to be removed. This is nothing but… Read More Sri Lanka, thirty one years after: Burning of the Jaffna Public Library, May 1981
Paula Marantz Cohen: Talking Cure: An Essay on the Civilizing Power of Conversation Reviwd by Danny Heitman As we’ve often been told, the art of conversation is on life support, ravaged by the excesses of technology. Hooked to our phones and laptops, or so the theory goes, we’ve lost the true gift for gab. Sherry Turkle,… Read More The Joys of Spirited Conversation
There are no softballs in Arianne Shahvisi’s “Arguing for a Better World: How Philosophy Can Help Us Fight for Social Justice.” Instead, the Kurdish-British author, ethicist and academic sets up the reader with exactly the sort of provocative questions many of us heard from our most whataboutist friends and family members. “Has ‘political correctness’ gone too far?” she asks in one… Read More ‘We are all implicated in this system’: A philosopher’s advice for surviving unethical times
DENNIS DALTON When Michael Borodin baptized Roy into Marxism in 1919, Roy came from Indian nationalism to the new faith with the zeal commonly found amongst fresh converts. ‘Marxism is a wonderful philosophy, is it not?’ he exclaimed to a fellow comrade in 1923. ‘It has made of history such an exact science. Roy’s first… Read More MN Roy was to Marxism what Vivekananda was to Hinduism. He separated spirit and form
In the face of an inscrutable, indifferent universe, Pessoa suggests we cultivate a certain longing for the elusive horizon Jonardon Ganeri In elusive point sits on the horizon. A deep yearning stirs within to move closer to this point, perhaps in search of the unknown, perhaps in search of questions without answers. It is a… Read More Solace and saudade
Major UN report issues warning over excessive use, with one in six countries already banning the devices; Analysis: distraction and bullying are key concerns; ‘I would crank up the restrictions’: teachers on banning phones in school Smartphones should be banned from schools to tackle classroom disruption, improve learning and help protect children from cyberbullying, a… Read More Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools
First posted February 16, 2015 We live in a world where all too many people purposefully contribute to the harm of other human beings either by action or inaction. Most violence emerges with some kind of rationale to legitimize its use. Based on his work with extremely violent offenders, the psychiatrist James Gilligan argues that even the… Read More Ted Grimsrud: Violence as a theological problem
First posted March 31, 2013 Shame, Guilt, and Violence / James Gilligan James Gilligan is the author of Violence: Reflections on Our Deadliest Epidemic During the past 35 years I have used prisons and prison mental hospitals as “laboratories” in which to investigate the causes and prevention of the various forms of violence and the relationships between… Read More James Gilligan on Shame, Guilt and Violence
After the truth-shower 