In the interview he granted me shortly after the riots of 2005, the chief of police for the district in which I was then carrying out research expressed his amusement and surprise at the attitude of youngsters from the projects who, he said, would routinely run away when they saw a police car. “So they’re... Continue Reading →
What is now imposed on penal justice as its point of application, its ‘useful’ object, will no longer be the body of the guilty man set up against the body of the king; nor will it be the juridical subject of an ideal contract; it will be the disciplinary individual. The extreme point of penal... Continue Reading →
Consider the example of a highly intelligent seven-year-old child whom I wish to teach to play chess, although the child has no particular desire to learn the game. The child does however have a very strong desire for candy and little chance of obtaining it. I therefore tell the child that if the child will... Continue Reading →
In this eye-opening book of Talal Asad, a genealogy of secularism and secular concepts are made. Asad first asks questions such as "what might an Anthropology of Secularism look like?". then digs deeper into concepts such as agency, pain, cruelty and torture. He digs into these concepts in a way that his words unearth the... Continue Reading →
"This fit of passion for the colonizer’s values would not be so suspect, however, if it did not involve such a negative side. The colonized does not seek merely to enrich himself with the colonizer’s virtues. In the name of What he hopes to become, he sets his mind on impoverishing himself, tearing himself away... Continue Reading →
Hannah Arendt writes in her book On Revolution: Quite apart from the threat of total annihilation, which conceivably could be eliminated by new technical discoveries such as a ‘clean’ bomb or an antimissile missile, there are a few signs pointing in this direction. There is first the fact that the seeds of total war developed... Continue Reading →
A pretty refreshing book that I would recommend to those that have an interest in Theology, Mysticism or Sufism. Al-Ghazzali, a philosopher, theologian, jurist and a mystic, touches on subjects such as "Knowledge of Self", "Knowledge of God", "The Love of God", "Knowledge of this World" in order to express the quest for happiness. In... Continue Reading →
Certain philosophers, most notably Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), have argued that the natural sciences and the human sciences are quite distinct in this respect. In particular, while it might be appropriate to ‘stand back’ from phenomena in the natural sciences to achieve objectivity, this is inappropriate in the case of the human... Continue Reading →
From Terence Irwin's translation: "The cultivated people, those active [in politics], conceive the good as honor, since this is more or less the end [normally pursued] in the political life. This, however, appears to be too superficial to be what we are seeking, since it seems to depend more on those who honor than on... Continue Reading →
The liberal writer, concerned with history and the progress of freedom rather than with forms of government, sees only differences in degree here, and ignores that authoritarian government committed to the restriction of liberty remains tied to the freedom it limits to the extent that it would lose its very substance if it abolished it... Continue Reading →
Thinking Prismatically 