'the core claim in this art of government is really fundamental: the state should avoid witnessing truth on which no compromise is possible or ever thought desirable.'

This is a really interesting post. I like the quote from the middle of it. Very wry.

On Montesquieu and the enemies of truth. open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Feuerbach is surprisingly entertaining. Feuerbach gets autocorrected into Feedback. Also entertaining.

A lot of discussions of liberalism focus on what @nescio13.bsky.social calls its “ameliorative, mitigating spirit,” the checks and balances tradition, the ways it calls for state power to be restrained and respect legal rights. www.liberalcurrents.com/liberalisms-...

My review of Katherine Brading and Marius Stan, Philosophical Mechanics in the Age of Reason, Oxford University Press, 2024, ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/phil...

Shklar on Harrington and Survivalism open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Mary Hesse on "the political aspect of...the Vienna Circle" and why analytic philosophers had "lost the urgency" of epistemological questions given that they "divorced their philosophy from ideological and practical interests" (1980, xiii). archive.org/details/revo...

On the Interaction Effects of Multiple regulations; on Engineering the Financial Crisis open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Re the Dutch election: I am actually fascinated that several years of intense and growing climate activism has made so little impact on at least two subsequent elections. Not sure what explains this.

On the Interaction Effects of Multiple regulations; on Engineering the Financial Crisis open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

The Montesquieu essay was very neat. Basically argues that if you treat Montesquieu as a mercantilist the whole book falls into place.

After their resounding victory in Tuesday’s elections, the Democrats had no choice but to surrender.

I would love to understand tactically and strategically why in a week of electoral victories senate Democrats are tempted to cave on the shutdown without anything to show for it.

Still don't care for his Marxism, but I enjoy reading Althusser’s works on the history of political thought.

one thing i find crazy-making is the idea that getting rid of the filibuster would make congress a purely majoritarian institution. bicameralism itself is counter-majoritarian! equal state representation is counter-majoritarian! the fact that senate elections are staggered is counter-majoritarian!

Spitballing here: why not repeal Obamacare and replace it with a single payer insurance system and call it Trumpcare?

Was it history or philosophy of science that had to make alimony payments after the divorce? Did they ever discuss staying together for the kids, Indy and Pitt? Who got to stay friends with Stephen Toulmin? Too many unanswered questions in HOHAPOS.

Thought maybe I needed to figure out microfilm, but the Internet Archive is a modern marvel that makes it possible to find issues of The Listener from 1951 in which Michael Polyani criticizes Stephen Toulmin's interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. archive.org/details/list...

Shklar on the function of Academic/Scholarly Activism open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

A Centrist tells fellow centrists to Chill open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

I feel very seen by those opening paragraphs

A Centrist tells fellow centrists to Chill open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

On the function of Woke Censoriousness and Lippmann's truth-apt defense of freedom of speech. open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

On the function of Woke Censoriousness and Lippmann's truth-apt defense of freedom of speech. open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

With the philosophical Left so warmly embracing Adam Smith's TMS, my work here is almost done on Earth. The next step is getting them to embrace books IV and V of Wealth of Nations. HT @lastpositivist.bsky.social

On Kierkegaard's Climacus' criticism of Spinoza open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

On Kierkegaard's Climacus' criticism of Spinoza open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

The Mandate of Heaven and a Public Ideology in Walter Lippmann open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

One amusing feature of the liberal dissing reformers of the modern university, is that they all invoke a new social contract. #ohjack

This is really a very lucid and sophisticated (short) book that with relatively limited data reaches fascinating diagnoses. Because it pisses on everyone's favorite explanations it never had much popular uptake. But worth thinking about.

Het was een eer deel te mogen nemen aan de NPO1 uitslagenavond en samen met mijn academic buddy @tomwgvdmeer.bsky.social aan de desk te zitten. Maar zonder ons datateam @eelcoharteveld.bsky.social @twanhuijsmans.bsky.social @emilymiltenburg.bsky.social en Cato waren wij echter nergens geweest.

My quick-read of the Dutch election result is this: Wilders may well end up with most votes. But he lost seats to other far right parties. So the far and extreme right remains effectively at ca 25% of the vote. The better news is that the centrist populists who flirted with far right all lost. 1/2

On Our Post-Constitutional Moment, PT 5; Some Wilson; some Ostrom, and the Threat of Despotism open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Sharing to read later.

This is actually not exactly right. It is uber-proportional with one electoral district, but administratively it is divided in 19 circles which allows for modestly different party-lists in different regions.:) [But I don't recall any recent party taking advantage of that.]

On Our Post-Constitutional Moment, PT 5; Some Wilson; some Ostrom, and the Threat of Despotism open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

"on my view liberalism was founded by Adam Smith and in his wake Constant and Bentham (as well as Humboldt and Grouchy) as a reaction to Locke’s influence on the political theory of mercantilism and nationalist imperialism that in the late eighteenth century mutated into Bonapartism, too.'

I am visiting Houston later this week

On Lippmann and Oakeshott on the art of governing well; with some Bergson and Foucault thrown in Shout out to @jcherniss.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

This works reasonably well in a PR system not in winner take all first past the post system.

I don't mean this as criticism...but in reading Deleuze & Guattari one does suspect they were using drugs during multiple drafts.

I will toast the cunning of history if the bail-out of Argentina generates constitutional government and enduring growth.

Lippmann, Rawls, Locke and the Social Contract as Public Philosophy open.substack.com/pub/digressi...