Why Tocqueville matters
Travel was a vital part of the French thinker’s political philosophy, but this has largely been forgotten in today’s secluded…
ByPolitical philosophy
Do we really need Rawls?
Daniel Chandler’s much-hyped new book says that, in an age of polarisation, the American philosopher offers a blueprint for society.
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Super-spreader
How Friedrich Hayek became the godfather of neoliberalism.
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The prophet of post-fascism
The late Marxist intellectual Gáspár Miklós Tamás captured Europe’s disorientation after the Cold War.
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What right-wing advocates for social mobility get wrong
Why should Katharine Birbalsingh’s pupils need silent corridors while Winchester College gets a rifle club?
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George Santos shows that the right is as fixated with identity as the left
The mendacious Republican’s unquestioned claims about his Jewish heritage and sexuality demonstrate we should stick to the facts.
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How to get on with your political opponents
Ultimately, what matters is not whether someone is principled, but whether they have been promoting genuinely good things.
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What Chantal Mouffe gets wrong
The Belgian philosopher’s influence on today’s left is unquestionable, but the transformative potential of her ideas is held back by…
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We shouldn’t demonise Winston Churchill – or deify him
The point of history is to see people and situations in the round rather than to succumb to satisfying myths.
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The left’s patient gardener
Mike Davis, the Marxist historian and urban theorist, died in October aged 76. As a theoretical innovator, his singular approach…
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Is America worth keeping?
Richard Rorty, the philosopher who predicted Trump, was scathing about the US’s failings but believed in the country’s capacity to…
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Plato was wrong about “philosopher kings” – just look at Kwasi Kwarteng
The swift consequences of the Chancellor’s textbook ideology prove that leaders can’t rule from the head alone.
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How politics became the chosen hobby of retirees
The politicisation of the young has been widely discussed, but it is the politicisation of the old that has been…
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The forgotten politics of personal sacrifice
For the first time in decades, Western politicians are asking people to forfeit for the greater good – and are…
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Out with the old: is neoliberalism really dying?
Despite our age of economic crisis, populism and pandemic, we may be living in the ruins of the neoliberal order…
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China Miéville: “If you don’t feel despair, you’re not opening your eyes”
The fantasy novelist and left activist on why Marx’s Communist Manifesto speaks to the crisis-ridden politics of the present.
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Reimagining political philosophy: on Charles Mills
Charles Mills, who died earlier this year, was a model for a political philosophy engaged with subjects the discipline had…
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The ghosts of Mark Fisher
How the cultural critic, four years after his death, became one of the most influential thinkers and writers of our…
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The ghosts of our lives
From communism to dubstep, our politics and culture have been haunted by the spectres of futures that never came to pass
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What is the Overton window?
The Overton window is the range of policies voters will find acceptable.
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