Deriving Ought from Is
I agree with Fredric Jameson that we have witnessed a disturbing ‘return of traditional philosophy … beginning with its hoariest subfields, such as ethics.’
Christy Kelly
Our stake in the arms industry
Imperial College London has a £3.9 million stake in the arms industry, according to a report in the London Student.
Philsophical Investigations
Beneath the differences between Wittgenstein’s Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus and his Philosophical Investigations there is a more fundamental continuity between the texts. This article relies heavily on two books, Alain Badiou’s Wittgenstein’s Anti-Philosophy ...
Sorry for droning on...
At the time of writing, the Guardian has just run an online story about Obama. It seems he is ready to bypass congress when it comes to his 2014 agenda.
NHS Data Sale: Ramifications?
All members of the broadly defined ‘left’ occasionally fall into the trap Yeats left us when he said ‘the best lack all conviction whilst the worst are filled with passionate intensity’.
The Role of Role Models
I will confess now that I have never really understood the appeal of role models. It has always seemed slightly ridiculous to treat someone as if they were an exemplary figure, and with a little maturity I also came to recognise the symbolic violence in raising that someone above...
Now is the winter of our discontent
Christy Kelly takes on the world
Student Protests in Ukraine
The dramatic events in Ukraine in recent weeks have again brought the country into the headlines. The mainly student protests in Kiev are about reneged promises over further integration with the EU...
The Orwellian Spanish Security Bill
I learned this week that the Spanish government have recently been taking lessons from George Orwell.
Since when was wealth common?
What could possibly link Angelina Jolie and the first female President of Sri Lanka, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga? Why William Hague and last week’s Commonwealth summit, of course!
“Grub first, then ethics”
Somewhere in the imposing tome, Less than Nothing, author Slavoj Žižek relates an anecdote about the attitudes taken by Bertolt Brecht and Dashiell Hammett in their respective McCarthy-inspired HUAC trials.
Atheism and the Irony of Religion
Irony has always been, well, ironic. Take for example Aristophanes, great ancient Greek satirist of whom Nietzsche said ‘that transfiguring, complementary genius, for whose sake one pardons all of Hellenism for having existed’, and his play The Clouds.