From murder mystery to true crime, to realpolitik, to political philosophy.

Yesterday I got the little pop-up notice to agree to new terms of service and promptly deleted the TikTok app. Unlike that other time that I also thought TikTok was dead and deleted the app (I wrote...

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; -- Yeats, The Second Coming Tell me if you can relate to this, but these past weeks I have been thinking about the role of artists and thinkers in difficult...

“His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would...

In previous parts of this series, we saw how work is depoliticized when it is relegated to the private realm of individual choice. Working to politicize work in much the same ways that feminists have...

In previous parts of this series, we saw how work is depoliticized by being relegated to the private realm of individual choice. Working to re-politicize work, much like feminists politicized the...

In the first part of this series, we explored how both work and marriage are framed as private, individual matters, even though the state actively structures and enforces both arrangements. We’re...

Kathi Weeks begins The Problem with Work with this brilliant insight that work and marriage are analogous social institutions. Much of her analysis hangs on this analogy, which extends across the...

This session details the meticulous process of creating a syllabus for a six-week, one-credit online course titled “Philosophy of Work and Leisure” at Smarties University. The course, structured with...

Today it began. We started our venture of creating our own Philosophy courses. You can come along with me on the course I’m making, or you can run parallel to me and create your own course for...

I was really inspired by ’s post for autodidacts, “How to Create Your Own University Course to Teach Yourself Almost Anything,” where Settecase shows readers how to create a course on any topic, then...

--- ALL YOUR FAVORITE SUBSTACK PHILOSOPHERS AND HUMANISTS IN ONE COMMON FEED. BEHOLD All THE TRUTH, GOODNESS, AND BEAUTY! 📣 Announcing Substack Philosophers’ Alliance (in Beta) This is like a...

A deliberate and strategic effort to redefine and attack empathy has been underway for nearly twenty years. What might initially appear to be isolated critiques of empathy, upon closer examination...

--- This piece picks up where “The Christian Right’s Anti-Empathy Crusade I” leaves off. You might want to read that first. Stuckey’s Toxic Empathy (2024) Allie Beth Stuckey is a conservative...

--- This piece picks up where “Dangerous Feelings” left off. You might want to read that first. --- Paul Bloom’s book Against Empathy was not published by an academic publisher that would vet the...

--- This piece examines how Paul Bloom, in his book Against Empathy, uses a rhetorical strategy called dissociation to cut a distinction between cognitive and emotional empathy, to disparage...

--- Prior in this Empathy series: --- Today, I’d like to begin to tell you the story of how those on the religious right (Christian, Evangelical, Nationalists) have mounted the war on empathy over...

--- Before in the series: --- “…part of what the Christian argument against empathy is is to say that empathy is different from that… It's not just compassion. It's not just sympathy. It's something...

Hello Frens, Exciting news! The first volume of Mindscaping, A Philosophical Journal is now available. As a paid subscriber to Philosophy Publics, you're getting exclusive access to this new resource...

Thank you , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. We delve into the six characteristics of totalitarianism as discussed by Seyla Benhabib,...

As a group, we attended a panel and discussion hosted by the Library of America billed as follows: “The rise of totalitarian governments,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is the central event of our world.”...

Dear Frens, Looking back at the past couple weeks, we have been very busy! First, I launched our private subscriber 1. Discord Server where we have been discussing all the things and getting to...

Hello Frens! Here is your round-up of Philosophy Publics posts going back a few weeks. Much of this content was in response to requests that came from y’all — keep the great suggestions coming! I’ve...

--- 1. $1 a secret plotCritical Theory - Journalism - ArtBy Tom Pazderka --- 1. $1 Critical Theory & Burning QuestionsCritical Theory & Burning Questions is a Marxist-Leninist publication dedicated...

1. The most challenging aspect of being human right now? > “Being human itself. Belonging to the human race. With its violence, prejudice, evil, greediness and shortsightedness. For 2025 I might get...

In the video linked below, TikTok user @jenesaisjj reminds us that Jim Jones, leader of the Jonestown cult, held what he called “White Night” drills, where his followers were instructed to drink...

I recently announced in our subscriber chat that I would trade one critique for a monthly subscription (see above). It is my way to make Philosophy Publics accessible as I begin to paywall some...

We have watched the price of food rise over the past few years, and so many of us have had to ask ourselves if we can afford our usual groceries. The price we pay for shelter is becoming prohibitive,...

It had been defeated, but popped back up again, twice by my count. And it looks like this time, the TikTok ban will go through. People on TikTok seemed resigned to this almost too quickly, and after...

In our subscriber chat, many of you shared some significant challenges of being human right now: feelings of isolation; information overload; difficulties in building community; and misanthropic...

In our subscriber chat I asked y’all what you thought was the single most challenging aspect of being human right now, and your answers really capture where we are in this moment. I responded to some...

1. The Value of Empathy Mike’s SubstackEmpathyAs a young pre-school boy, some of my earliest memories were of time spent fossicking within the ‘benign’ fenced in paradise that was our back garden....

In "Why Empathy Makes Us Cruel & Irrational," author characterizes empathy as an emotionally transmitted disease, a virus, and as a parasite. He claims that empathy debilitates thought, makes us...

Antagonisms of the Everyday: Philosophy, Culture, PoliticsPolitics and Philosophy on the irregularities and antagonisms of everyday life. Focusing on US,UK, European politics and political theory,...

I’ll cut to the chase. Here is a list of changes we can expect, and since I didn’t want to give you this scary list without actionables, below are some quick ideas for how you can prepare to weather...

In Hegel’s Master/Slave dialectic, the dialectic is resolved when the Master realizes his dependence on the Slave, who produces the goods that maintain the Master’s life —mutual recognition becomes...

1. Rags To Reason "Rags to Reason" delves into existential themes, the interplay of art and ethics, and the relevance of classical philosophers like Aristotle and Sartre in modern contexts. The...

There was a recent flutter on Twitter about public philosophy, what it is and what counts as public philosophy. I opined that I didn’t think that you could be both a public philosopher and an...

> But, I would argue that much of what actually characterizes everyday life — the creative moments arising out of artful improvisation on the spur of the moment — will still continue to be opaque to...

The pivotal moment in G.W. Friedrich Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic occurs when a slave, engaged in the work of making things for the master's consumption, sees himself1 in those things and there...

The following examples are taken from either historical or currently existing movements and initiatives. While they may not be flawless, they provide us with a tangible glimpse into what is already...

In this engaging dialogue, Toni Negri explores his philosophical and political journey, spanning from his early engagement with Marxism and workerism (operaismo) to his later involvement with...

Part One: The Desire for Community As is true of many of the stories that we tell ourselves, the narrative creates the reality in which that story makes sense and becomes truth. For example, my...