For all that he tried to extend the scope of human sympathy in his influential oeuvre, Professor Ronald Dworkin, who died last year at the age of 81, was a divisive figure. To his critics, the US philosopher and scholar of constitutional law was the theorist-in-chief of ‘rights culture’ and the poster boy for an... Continue Reading →
Moonlighting in Moccasins
In the political debates of the 1980s, one common (and very irritating) rhetorical manoeuvre was the Conservative Appeal to Human Nature. More conversation-stopper than debating point, this nifty ideological clincher was ever on the lips of smooth-talking Tories for whom politics was reducible to a question of self-interest aggravated by prejudice. Certainly the shtick wasn’t... Continue Reading →
The Flame of Power
For Plato, the ideal city-state was one in which ‘philosopher-kings’ would take charge; ‘Unless philosophers bear kingly rule in cities,’ he has Socrates say in The Republic, ‘there will be no respite from evil.’ In reality, however, the history of intellectuals in power has not been a happy one; indeed, it seems that theoretical acumen... Continue Reading →
Philip Dodd and I go head to head
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iT-pOJqh5rk
On Geoffrey Robertson and Michael Kirby
‘Although an expatriate, I am not an ex-patriot’, writes the human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson in his introduction to Dreaming Too Loud, a collection of essays spanning thirty years and touching on subjects as diverse as drones, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Julian Assange. It’s a point on which he insists more than once, perhaps because,... Continue Reading →
Talking about offence with the ABC’s Richard Fidler
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/local/brisbane/conversations/201311/r1203534_15602380.mp3
Would You Kill the Fat Man?
Consider the following scenario. Terrorists have hijacked three passenger aeroplanes, two of which have just been flown into skyscrapers in the middle of a busy city. On its first run, the third plane missed its target, but it is now lining up for another attempt. In the meantime, you – the head of the Air... Continue Reading →
Review: The Importance of Being Civil
In his stimulating book The Importance of Being Civil, John A. Hall tears a leaf from the street-fighter’s handbook and gets his retaliation in first. To those who will say that concepts such as decency have no place in a work of sociology, he insists that ‘civility is not sugary froth but an ideal of... Continue Reading →
On the side of the Angels: A. C. Grayling
Of all the shady turns of phrase to have lodged themselves in the popular consciousness since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the term ‘Enlightenment fundamentalist’ is surely one of the shadiest. A version of the logical fallacy known as ‘the appeal to hypocrisy’, this ingenious bit of rhetorical jujitsu suggests that the enemies of religious... Continue Reading →
Review: Two Cheers for Anarchism and How to Run a Country
‘Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice,’ declared Mikhail Bakunin in 1867, ‘[but] socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.’ This ideological double-bind is no less relevant to party politics as it is practised in contemporary Canberra as it was to what Eric Hobsbawm termed, in his book of the same name, ‘the age of... Continue Reading →