Marx was a critic above all else. His most comfortable intellectual stance was criticism -- most of the subtitles of his works involve the word "critique". He was, of course, a critic of other thinkers --Proudhon, Smith, Bakunin, for example. And here, the key to criticism is the unearthing of indefensible intellectual presuppositions. But even …
Academic freedom from Hofstadter to Dworkin
Academic freedom is a core value in American higher education. At certain times in our history it is a value that has been severely challenged, including especially during the McCarthy period of the 1950s. But what, precisely, does it entail? One way of starting on this topic is to consider Richard Hofstadter's writings on the …
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Food and water
It seems likely enough that one of the largest global security issues in the next fifty years will be food and water. There is a brewing food crisis underway already, with prices for staple grains rising world wide, and poor countries are beginning to experience the consequences. But a crisis in fresh water seems not …
Idealist philosophy of history
In a previous post I commended W.H. Walsh's approach to the philosophy of history for Walsh's sympathetic effort to understand both traditions in the field, including what is called "speculative" philosophy of history. And Walsh is to be commended as well for his analytical ability to formulate and explicate these positions. This is in fact what we …
W. H. Walsh’s philosophy of history
English-speaking philosophers have often made a hash of the philosophy of history. Either they have had such disdain for continental philosophy that they could not get their minds around the thoughts of a Hegel or a Dilthey, or they became pre-occupied with certain minor linguistic or logical issues and therefore couldn't get to the more …
Dilthey on the human sciences
Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) maintained that the human sciences were inherently distinct from the natural sciences in that the former depend on the understanding of meaningful human actions, while the latter depend on causal explanation of physical events. Human life is structured and carried out through meaningful action and symbolic expressions. Dilthey maintains that the intellectual …
More on The Spirit Level
There are quite a few interesting comments on my earlier post on The Spirit Level on Economist's View. I can't respond in detail to all of them, but here are a few additional thoughts. A few commentators seem to think I'm unsympathetic to the book, which isn't accurate. So let me be more direct in my assessment of The …
Income inequalities and social ills
According to Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson in The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, income inequalities in a society are a source of a variety of social problems in that society, almost without regard to the absolute level of income in the society. Their basic measure of inequality across countries and states in …
The safety net in Michigan
Poverty in the United States has increased measurably in the past ten years, and this is particularly visible in the state of Michigan. (Here is a webpage provided by the Michigan Department of Human Services with some basic information on poverty in the state.) State departments of human services and non-profit organizations alike are being stretched by …
Microfoundationalism
detail: Lynn Cazabon photo The philosophy of social science encompasses several important tasks, and key among them is to provide theories of social ontology and social explanation. What is the nature of social entities? What is needed in order to substantiate a claim of social causation? What constitutes an acceptable social explanation? The concept of …
Understanding Society 