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How to end our love affair with evidence
A central aspect of my philosophical work these days is this: to warn against over-estimating, for example, how much one can learn from past financial crises, in thinking about future financial crises. How much, to put it in more general – and philosophical – terms, one can learn inductively. There is plenty one can learn; but there is also a severe limit on what one can learn. There is a limit, in other words, on the value of evidence. The danger of not being continually aware of this point is that one may think, at least unconsciously, that there are specific lessons to learn and that, once one has learnt…
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The real reason why libertarians become climate-deniers
We live at a point in history at which the demand for individual freedom has never been stronger – or more potentially dangerous. For this demand – the product of good things, such as the refusal to submit to arbitrary tyranny characteristic of ‘the Enlightenment’, and of bad things, such as the rise of consumerism at the expense of solidarity and sociability – threatens to make it impossible to organise a sane, collective democratic response to the immense challenges now facing us as peoples and as a species. How dare you interfere with my ‘right’ to burn coal / to drive / to fly; how dare you interfere with my…
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An allegory of a ‘therapeutic’ reading of a film: of Melancholia
This essay is a (more or less philosophical) account or allegory of my viewing(s) of Lars von Trier’s remarkable film, Melancholia (2011). It is personal, and philosophical. (The personal here turns out, potentially, to be philosophical.) Von Trier’s film in turn is clearly among other things a (brilliantly accurate) allegory of (his) depression; and it is also clearly (though at the very same time) much more than that. In expressing my experience of the film and the world (and my experience as a part time mega-melancholic – which is part of my basis for using the adjective “brilliantly accurate” in the previous sentence), my essay is inevitably personal, ‘person-relative’. Furthermore:…
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How ecologism is the true heir of both socialism and conservatism
I recently debated with Roger Scruton at the LSE on this question (you can listen to the podcast). This short article examines a couple of my main conclusions and from my own ongoing work in this area. My aim is to show how ecologism is the true heir of both socialism and conservatism, properly understood. A ‘socialism’ based in local and historical traditions; in the land, in resistance – a genuinely egalitarian socialism learning from Karl Polanyi and Andre Gorz more in the final analysis than from Karl Marx (let alone from John Rawls), and owing much in the present day in this country to Simon Fairlie and Maurice Glasman.…
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A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes
A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes is a book written by Rupert Read and published by Lexington Books. A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes examines how some of the classic philosophical paradoxes that have so puzzled philosophers over the centuries can be dissolved. Read argues that paradoxes such as the Sorites, Russell’s Paradox and the paradoxes of time travel do not, in fact, need to be solved. Rather, using a resolute Wittgensteinian ‘therapeutic’ method, the book explores how virtually all apparent philosophical paradoxes can be diagnosed and dissolved through examining their conditions of arising; to loosen their grip and therapeutically liberate those philosophers suffering from them (including oneself). The book contrasts such…
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Beyond The Tractatus Wars: The New Wittgenstein Debate
Beyond The Tractatus Wars is an edited collection co-authored by Rupert Read and Matthew A. Lavery. It is published by Routledge. Over fifteen years have passed since Cora Diamond and James Conant turned Wittgenstein scholarship upside down with the program of “resolute” reading, and ten years since this reading was crystallized in the major collection The New Wittgenstein. This approach remains at the center of the debate about Wittgenstein and his philosophy, and this book draws together the latest thinking of the world’s leading Tractatarian scholars and promising newcomers. Showcasing one piece alternately from each “camp”, Beyond the Tractatus Wars pairs newly commissioned pieces addressing differing views on how to…
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The philosophical and political implications of 'The Spirit Level'
If you want a primer on Wilkinson and Pickett’s joint book The Spirit Level, then the pieces here are worth a look (one by me). And for a comprehensive set of responses to their critics, including a pre-emptive strike against Gerry Hassan’s recent piece on OK this is all you need. (It is worth noting too that Wilkinson and Pickett’s work is peer-reviewed; that of their critics isn’t.) For me as a philosopher, the thing about The Spirit Level that is most exciting is that as a study of the pervasive harms of inequality it strongly suggests that John Rawls’s ‘difference principle’, which says that inequalities are OK provided that…
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There is No Such Thing as a Social Science: In Defence of Peter Winch
There is No Such Thing as a Social Science is a book written by Phil Hutchinson, Rupert Read and Wes Sharrock. It is published by Routledge. The death of Peter Winch in 1997 sparked a revived interest in his work with this book arguing his work suffered misrepresentation in both recent literature and in contemporary critiques of his writing. Debates in philosophy and sociology about foundational questions of social ontology and methodology often claim to have adequately incorporated and moved beyond Winch’s concerns. Re-establishing a Winchian voice, the authors examine how such contentions involve a failure to understand central themes in Winch’s writings and that the issues which occupied him…
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Applying Wittgenstein
Applying Wittgenstein is a book written by Rupert Read and edited by Laura Cook. It is published by Bloomsbury. A key development in Wittgenstein Studies over recent years has been the advancement of a resolutely therapeutic reading of the Tractatus. Rupert Read offers the first extended application of this reading of Wittgenstein, encompassing Wittgenstein’s later work too, to examine the implications of Wittgenstein’s work as a whole upon the domains especially of literature, psychopathology, and time. Read begins by applying Wittgenstein’s remarks on meaning to language, examining the consequences our conception of philosophy has for the ways in which we talk about meaning. He goes on to engage with literary…
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Philosophy for Life: Applying Philosophy in Politics and Culture
Philosophy for Life is a book written by Rupert Read and edited by Matt A. Lavery. It is published by Bloomsbury. Philosophy for Life is a bold call for the practice of philosophy in our everyday lives. Philosopher and writer Rupert Read explores a series of important and often provocative contemporary political and cultural issues from a philosophical perspective, arguing that philosophy is not a body of doctrine, but a practice, a vantage point from which life should be analysed and, more importantly, acted upon. Philosophy for Life is a personal journey that explores four key areas of society today: Politics, Religion, Art, and the Environment. Taking tangible examples from…