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Why Not Viewpoint Diversity?

Social psychologist Clay Routledge guest blogging in Scientific American. The tendency that Routledge points to is tone deaf to perfectly legitimate epistemic possibilities (meaningful viewpoint diversity) but we have long since pathologized ideology in a sad grab for power and influence (I have a chapter on this topic coming shortly). Surely the Overton window must be wide open…

The Central Scrutinizers

Released on this day in ’79 Zappa’s target was, according to some sources, motivated by the banning of music in revolutionary Iran. The target we do know Zappa had in mind was the ascendancy of the fundamentalist Right of the ’80s and the idiotic PMRC proposal . . . but now the target is more appropriately applicable to the regressive…

Remembering Ken Minogue

Born on this day — see the themed issue of Cosmos + Taxis dedicated to Ken. Here is Ken at his elegant and wry best in Morals & the servile mind. I think Ken would have been chuffed by BREXIT not necessarily because of which side actually won, but because of which side was the most arrogant. Clue .…

Some recent Oakeshottiana

Here’s a roundup of some recent Oakeshottiana: Rationalism and Traditionalism in Politics. The Correspondence Between Karl R. Popper and Michael Oakeshott — Spartaco Pupo in SCIENZA & POLITICA, vol. XXVIII, no. 54, anno 2016, pp. 121-14 Michael Oakeshott and Hayden White on the practical and the historical past — Jonas Ahlskog in Rethinking History: The Journal of…

Richard Flathman: The Reluctant Liberal

Richard Flathman who died last year has a posthumous collection of essays coming out within the year. I’ve always had a high regard for RF since he seemed far more philosophically informed (analytically speaking) than most other political philosophers of his generation. Thus we got on very well when he chaired a panel I was…