Daniel Little
What role did American multinational auto companies play in the rearmament of Germany during the early period of Nazi rule? And to what extent did these companies participate in Nazi practices like forced (slave) labor and Aryanization for which they should have been held morally responsible? An early discussion of the responsibility of American corporations …
Continue reading "Forced labor and multinational corporations"
Social scientists are generally interested in "explaining" social outcomes: why did such-and-so take place as it did? Why did the Indochina War occur, and why did it end in the defeat of two modern military powers? Why did the French fail so miserably at Dien Bien Phu? Why was the Tet Offensive so consequential for …
Continue reading "Five easy pieces (for the social sciences)"
Democracies have fallen to strongmen, tyrants-in-waiting, bullies, thugs, spewers-of-bombast. But these powerful personalities are not the greatest threat to democracy today. The greatest threat is a loss of trust in the institutions and offices of a democratic society, on the part of the citizens of the democracy. And what are these institutions? Courts, judges, police; legislatures, representatives, …
It is apparent, 90 years after the beginnings of the Nazi period, that large corporations played an important and lamentable role in Nazi power and administration, and the implementation of the atrocities of slave labor and mass murder. This is true for domestic German industries, like I.G. Farben and Siemens; and it appears to be …
Seneca's epistles to Lucilius in Letters from a Stoic represent a huge contribution to Stoic philosophy, filled with examples and aphorisms that illuminate both common life situations and a consistent "Stoic" attitude towards them. Can we say more than this? Is Seneca fundamentally an aphorist, or is he a philosopher with deep and extended theories and ideas? …
Shlomo Avineri is one of the interpreters of Marx's thought for whom I have had a great deal of respect since the publication of Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx in 1968. (I also greatly admire his book on Hegel's political philosophy, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State.) Avineri has recently published Karl Marx: Philosophy and Revolution, and …
A kidney stone is an affliction. It is a source of pain, it makes sleep impossible, it is a misery that makes thought about anything else impossible. And its treatment is ... dramatic. It is just the kind of life situation we humans are subject to. But we might shrug it off when it's all …
Continue reading "A brief Senecian reflection on the humble kidney stone"
Here is a hard question. Can the creators of television shows and other kinds of pop culture be understood sometimes to pose fundamental and important questions about human life and morality? We probably all believe that great novelists are able to confront and explore hard human moral predicaments and life contradictions -- often in ways …
image: survey instruments, 1728 The history of technology was sometimes approached as a self-contained field of study. A more fruitful approach in the past thirty years has involved a broader perspective, placing technology change within a broader context of social change and cultural values. A good example is Lynn White's Medieval Technology and Social Change, where …
We don't think of the ancient world as being one that was rich in technological innovation or progress. And yet in a number of areas, there were very significant developments in technology -- in ships, mining, fortification, siege engines, road-building, and bridges and aqueducts, for example. And there is the intriguing example of the Antikythera …
Understanding Society 