Daniel Little
Stephen Esquith has spent much of his career observing, teaching, and engaging in "conflict societies", and trying to develop an understanding of how best to move from high-violence to low-violence societies. In particular he has spent a great deal of time in Mali in west Africa. He has come to emphasize the importance of "political …
Continue reading "The role of political education in social progress"
If you are concerned about the fate of our democratic institutions, the rise of xenophobia and hate, and the rule of law, please consider following affirmingdemocracy.org -- an ongoing group blog aimed at affirming our democracy and opposing the racism, lawlessness, and authoritarianism we now face. This group blog describes its goals in these terms …
Rawls believes that a just society must be a pluralistic society, and that means that it must be neutral across (reasonable) comprehensive conceptions of the good. Citizens must be enabled to pursue their own comprehensive conceptions without interference from the state. Does this imply that a comprehensive conception based on the idea of ethnic or …
Continue reading "Confronting race through Rawls’s political philosophy"
John Rawls and Philip Pettit agree about the idea that a liberal democracy depends on the idea that all citizens have equal liberties, rights, worth, and dignity. Therefore they also agree that social and legal arrangements that are incompatible with equal rights, equal liberties, and equal dignity are illegitimate. They disagree in some details about …
Continue reading "Can liberal political philosophy support anti-racism?"
Chicago is a highly diverse city, and it is a good example of life in a multicultural democracy. The image above is a photo of the crowd on Navy Pier on a recent Saturday summer evening. According to local estimates, as many as 120,000 people visit Navy Pier on a Saturday night, and it is …
Philip Pettit’s writings about republicanism offer a valuable and distinctive perspective on individual freedom and the nature of a good society. He develops those ideas most fully in Republicanism : a theory of freedom and government. Pettit’s core idea is that we should conceive of freedom as “non-domination” — that is, that an individual is …
Continue reading "Republicanism and multicultural democracy"
The three greatest threats we face today seem almost insurmountable. They include global climate change, whose consequences are potentially catastrophic for the whole planet, from Bangladesh to California and Florida; the rise of anti-democratic right-wing extremism in the United States and other liberal democracies, whose consequences threaten the viability of liberal democracy; and the resurgence …
Thomas Edsell's piece in the August 3, 2022 New York Times offers a truly chilling view of the plans currently underway by Donald Trump and his supporters for creating an authoritarian one-party state in the United States (link). Edsell draws primarily from Trump's own words at the America First Policy Institute in late July 2022. As he …
Continue reading "The growing risk of authoritarian rule in the US"
There is certainly a working class in the United States, and it is a majority of the population (persons who earn their livelihood through wage-paying employment). But it is highly fragmented, mostly in the service sector, unorganized, and often disinclined to believe in the possibility of serious social change. A recent Brookings research report by …
What were the social conditions that led many English intellectuals in the 1930s to engage in fundamental critique of the society in which they lived? Why was social criticism so profound and sustained in Britain from the time of Carlyle and Engels to the surge of English socialism in the 1930s? The answer, of course, …
Understanding Society 